Stubby and steinie A short glass bottle used for beer is generally called a
stubby, or originally a
steinie. Shorter and flatter than standard bottles, stubbies pack into a smaller space for transporting. The
steinie was introduced in the 1930s by
Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company and derived their name from their similarity to the shape of a
beer stein, which was emphasized in marketing. After the end of Prohibition in the U.S. in 1933, many breweries began marketing beer in steel cans. The glass industry responded by devising short bottles with little necks, nicknamed stubbies, and types with short necks were called steinies. Capacities varied, with 12oz being the most common size used for soft drinks. The steinie dominated in the U.S. by 1950, and the neck became longer, such as seen with the familiar Budweiser bottle. Stubbies were popular in Canada until the 1980s. Standard SP Lager from Papua New Guinea and
Victoria Bitter in Australia, are some of the few beers still sold in 12oz neckless stubbies. The U.S. steinie shape dominates for small beer bottles the world over, in sizes from half-pint to the European 500ml. The word
stubbie is only in common use in Australia and Canada. In Australia it is generally referred to as a 'stubby'. Stubbies are used extensively in Europe, and were used almost exclusively in Canada from 1962 to 1986 as part of a standardization effort intended to reduce breakage, and the cost of sorting bottles when they were returned by customers. Due to their nostalgic value, stubbies were reintroduced by a number of Canadian craft brewers in the early 2000s. In the U.S., stubbies have generally fallen out of favour, with only a few brands still using them such as the Session
Lager by the
Full Sail Brewing Company, Switchback Brewing Co in
Burlington, Vermont, US and
Red Stripe, a Jamaican brand import.
Coors Brewing Company uses the stubby form for nostalgic packaging of Coors Banquet.
Belgium Belgian beer is usually packaged in bottles in four or six packs, or in bottles similar to those used for
Champagne. Some beers, usually
lambics and fruit lambics are also bottled in servings.
Britain Through the latter part of the 20th century, most British brewers used a standard design of bottle, known as the London Brewers' Standard. This was in brown glass, with a conical medium neck in the
pint and with a rounded shoulder in the half-pint and nip sizes. Pints, defined as , and half-pints, or were the most common, but some brewers also bottled in
nip (1/3-pint) and
quart (2-pint) sizes. It was for example mostly
barley wines that were bottled in nips, and Midlands breweries such as Shipstone of Nottingham that bottled in quarts. This
standardisation simplified the
automation of bottling and made it easier for customers to
recycle bottles as they were interchangeable. They carried a
deposit charge, which in the 1980s rose to seven pence for a pint and five pence for a half-pint. Some brewers however used individual bottle designs: among these were
Samuel Smith Old Brewery, which used an
embossed clear bottle, and
Scottish and Newcastle, which used a clear bottle for their Newcastle Brown Ale (both designs survive in the size). Other brewers such as
Timothy Taylor had used their own embossed bottles and rare examples continued to be reused into the 1980s. During the 1980s the industry turned away from refillable bottles. UK beer bottles are all one-trip, and most are 500 mL (16.9 U.S. fl oz; 17.6 imp fl oz) or in volume. The compulsory high recycled-content of these bottles makes them very dark and the lack of temper makes them chip easily when being opened.
Netherlands (pijpje) Most beer producers in the
Netherlands sell their beers in a brown bottle. Its official name is
Bruin Nederlands Retour CBK-fles (Brown Dutch Return CBK Bottle), with CBK standing for Centraal Brouwerij Kantoor, the former name of the Dutch trade association of larger breweries, Nederlandse Brouwers. The name is abbreviated as
BNR-fles, but the bottle is more commonly known as '''' (little pipe). The total length of the bottle is 207 mm, with a conical neck of about one-third of that length. The bottles carry a 10-cent deposit. The breweries share a pool of re-usable bottles of the same type.
Germany In Germany, approximately 99% of beer bottles are reusable
deposit bottles and are either . At any given time, an estimated 2 billion beer bottles are in circulation in Germany, each of which sees an average of 36 reuses. Many smaller, traditional breweries have retained the Euro bottle as part of their
corporate identity, particularly
Augustiner,
Tegernseer, and
Schlenkerla. Steinieflasche neutral.jpg|330ml "Steinie" bottle Euroflasche neutral.jpg|500ml Euro bottle NRW-Flasche neutral.jpg|500ml NRW Bottle 20181028 Vichy beer bottle.jpg|330ml NRW Bottle, also called "Vichy" bottle Longneck bottle neutral.jpg|330ml Longneck bottle Hacker Pschorr Kellerbier.jpg|500ml
Bügelflasche Longneck, Industry Standard Bottle (ISB) or North American longneck A North American longneck is a type of beer bottle with a long neck. It is known as the standard longneck bottle or industry standard bottle (ISB). The ISB longnecks have a uniform capacity, height, weight and diameter and can be reused on average 16 times. The U.S. ISB longneck is . In Canada, in 1992, the large breweries all agreed to use a longneck bottle of standard design (named AT2), thus replacing the traditional stubby bottle and an assortment of brewery-specific long-necks which had come into use in the mid-1980s.
Large bottles In the United States and Canada, large bottles are , or one-sixth of a US gallon (colloquially called a "bomber," a "deuce deuce," or "double deuce"). Some breweries also choose to use bottles, often for smaller batches of beer. The European and Australian standard large bottle is and is also used occasionally in Canada. In South Africa they are referred to as a "quart"; in Australia they are known colloquially as a "longneck","king brown", "tallie", "largie" or simply a "bottle". A liter and 1.25 L are also in use.
Forty A "forty" is American
slang for a bottle commonly used for cheaper varieties of beer and of
malt liquor, though some bottles are erroneously called forties.
Growler A growler () is a glass, ceramic, or stainless steel jug used to transport
draught beer in the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil and other countries. They are commonly sold at
breweries and brewpubs as a means to sell
take-out craft beer. In the United States, a growler is . Less commonly can be found "growlerettes" or "howlers", which are half-growlers, or 32 U.S. fl oz.
Small bottles There are also smaller bottles, called
nips,
ponies (United States),
cuartitos (Mexico, "small fourth", in reference to the larger 355 mL
media "half"),
throwdowns or
grenades (Australia), among other names. In the United States, the size of these bottles is usually , and are similar to the size of original
Coca-Cola and
Pepsi Cola bottles. The term
pony dates to the 19th century, and is due to the diminutive size, being used earlier for a
pony glass, and similarly for a
pony keg. The best-known brands of ponies are
Rolling Rock (pony introduced 1939)and
Miller High Life (pony introduced 1972), and the 7 oz size of Rolling Rock likely contributed to the standardization on this size. Other major brands, such as Budweiser and Coors, are also regionally available in 7 oz bottles; these were introduced in the early 1970s, following the introduction of the size for Miller High Life. The popularity of Rolling Rock ponies has led to the
folk etymology that "pony" is from the Rolling Rock horse logo. This is incorrect: the term "pony of beer" in the United States predates Rolling Rock (introduced 1939) by over 50 years, and advertising for Rolling Rock from the 1950s uses the term "pony bottle" generically, stating "... Rolling Rock is the Largest Selling 7 oz. Pony Bottle of
premium beer in Pennsylvania". Among Mexican beers, Corona sells ponies and
cuartitos, branded as
Coronita, from the Spanish diminutive
-ita. The American-market 7 oz. ponies come in 6-packs and the Mexican market 210 mL
cuartitos come in boxes of 12. In Australia, a limited range of beers are available in a bottle, nicknamed a
throwdown or
grenade. Pony bottles are most popular for the on-premises market, where they are sold by the bucketful. The motivation in the 1970s was to target lighter drinkers, and to ensure that the lager beer stayed cold until finished. The market for beer in small bottles is smaller than that in regular size bottles, which cause added difficulties and expense: the bottles themselves are harder to source, and require either a separate bottling line or retooling the bottling line between runs. As a result, US craft breweries only rarely bottle in small bottles; temporary examples include
Flying Dog Brewery (2007–2009) and
Rogue Ales (2009–2011, using extra bottles from Flying Dog).
"Darwin Stubby" A Darwin Stubby refers to several particularly large beer bottle sizes in Australia. It was first introduced in April 1958 with an capacity. The Darwin Stubby is available by
NT Draught in the Northern Territory. The Darwin Stubby has an iconic, if
kitsch, status in Australian folklore.
"Caguama" and "Ballena" bottles In Mexico,
caguama and
ballena are popular names for a beer bottle. The beer brands that are sold in these bottles include
Tecate,
Carta Blanca,
Sol,
Indio,
Victoria,
Corona Familiar and
Pacífico. The name "caguama" refers to the
Loggerhead sea turtle, which is called "caguama" in Spanish, and is used mostly in central and eastern Mexico. There are larger sizes of beer bottle called a
súper caguama or a
caguamón. The name
ballena is Spanish for whale, and is mostly used along the northern Pacific coast.
Gallery File:Viru-New-bottle-Nov-2010.jpg| Cone-shaped bottle of an
Estonian beer File:Grolschfles2005.jpg| Two
pijpjes File:Darwin stubby.jpg| Darwin Stubbies in several variations File:Beer growler.jpg| Half gallon
growler ==Closure==