Bottles of Long Ago

Recently my mother mentioned to me that she had a beer bottle she found while cleaning out one of the rooms in her basement.  At first it didn't strike me as anything out of the ordinary (my dad uses my beer to pay the neighbor for mowing his lawn, so I get bottles back every now and then).  It was when she gave me the bottle that questions began to come to the surface. 

 Bell's when it first started out was originally Kalamazoo Brewing Co.  But when you really look at this bottle, it becomes obvious that it is much older than Larry Bell's baby.  This meant I had to do a bit of searching. 

My first stop was to Bell's general store to see if anyone there had seen something like this.  While there we talked for a few minutes about the original Kalamazoo Brewing Co. that existed before Prohibition.  Not a lot of information but enough to know that the bottle came from that original brewery.

Next stop was to the Kalamazoo Valley Museum.  Not as fruitful as I would have liked but there was still a bit to be learned there.  First and foremost, my bottle is in better condition than the ones they have there (score).  Another tidbit was the date of the bottle.  Because of the amount of bottles in circulation it is difficult to pin point an exact date on the bottle.  Closest date available is more a circa date to say when they might have been in use.

 This lead me to my (currently) last stop; the local history room in the Kalamazoo Public Library.  This lead me to an article from 1982 from the Antique Trader Weekly.  The article's main focus was on some of the breweriana from the brewery, but there were a few historical tidbits that I found interesting for my research.  The main bit was the detail of the years that the brewery existed: 1860 to 1915.  In the grand scheme of beer history it was around this time that Anheuser Busch was in its infancy. 

The Volstead Act (prohibition 18th Amendment) was ratified in 1919, but Kalamazoo was a leader in shutting down booze.  Prohibition shut down the brewery and bars in 1915.  As with many other breweries in the US, Kalamazoo Brewing Company did not come back when Prohibition was ended in 1933. 

The seam down the sides of the bottle and bubbles in the glass tell a story of an older practice of glass manufacturing.  The brewery had two different size bottles in the clear glass and they also had brown bottles as well. 

Time for a pint...