House Sitting

While on your next holiday away from home, won't you consider inviting the Bottle Opener Review to look after your place? We're good, clean boys with a penchant for filling your kitchen with delicious smells and recycling bins with empty glass bottles. While other, less honest, house-sitters might raid your pantry or liquor cabinet; we are after nothing of the sort. It's the contents of your kitchen drawers with which we are concerned. It's your churchkeys we're after.

So, may we advise that you prominently place your prized opener in plain sight? Even if you don't, we're enterprising lads and can usually ferret out the odd corkscrew, keychain, or otherwise make do. Such was the case on this excursion. We delved hands-first into the depths of kitchen drawers, tossing serving instruments and cutlery to the wind, seeking out the key to our libation salvation.




As fate would have it, we were in luck - with a bit of elbow grease we were able to unearth a true classic; a vintage can opener, with bottle opener prong as a designers afterthought. Swing-A-Way by name, and cherry red handled, our companion for the evening seemed like it would fit the bill.

Our communion began with that rich, majestic brew they call Rush River Nevermore Chocolate Oatmeal Stout. Nevermore is the perfect compliment to a snowy Wisconsin evening spent at a friend's residence, and our opener provided us with it in a speedy fashion.

When you can open your beer this easily, why not have another?

Considering the difficulties we've faced with previous openers, the Swing-A-Way uncapped our libations expediently in two different maneuvers. The traditional forehand method is a graceful way to open your bottle, while the radical backhand approach adds a little more excitement to cocktail hour.

Using this opener was like reciting a well-known hymn - after all, who among us hasn't used one at some point in their life? For a little slice of Americana like the Swing-A-Way, we'd have to give it the average American household score of 2.55.

But the question still remained - what might we buffer these beverages with? Well, we eat food besides pizza, right? Checking... wait, we might only eat pizza. However, please credit us for experimenting with different kinds of pizza. Before, we've shared our When the Cubs Win the Pennant pizza, topped with sauerkraut, pineapple, pepper, and barbeque sauce. Craziness.

Now, we are unveiling a saner pizza with less energy devoted to the toppings and more devoted to the crust. Tonight, we dabbled with the Chicago-style pizza - with flaky, buttery crust made hours earlier. (1)

If you want Chicago-style pizza, then you go to Chicago. But, we implore you to cut down on your travel time and try making this pizza at home instead. Heck, you can spend the extra time sampling bottle openers.

(1) You can find the recipe here.

Our Chicago-style pizza is both decadent and filling. A few pieces combined with the Nevermore Oatmeal Stout and a rolling fireplace had our reflexes slowed and our wits addled. Thankfully, the Swing-A-Way opener is easy to yield. It forgave our cabin-cozy, slothful selves and dispatched the top of our Green Flash Brewing Co. West Coast IPA with ease.

The zesty brew ignited our spirits, sending us out into the frigid night to gaze at all the stars of Downsville. And, like good house sitters, we walked the property line to ensure no riff-raff we stealing into the outbuildings. We doubly inspected the greenhouse.

So, let us look after your house, will ya? Your Reviewers will take good care of your kitchen, your recycling, and of course, whichever churchkey we find first.

Opening Review

At the end of the keychain, bottom of the drawer, or side of the fridge lives a special someone. So special, that you'll never leave home without one and never be caught without one at home. At a hootenanny, watch an entire group of Carpathians fumble through their pockets as they protest in amazement that there is not one to be got.

Clever, creative or curious design can turn an ordinary opener into a drinking totem. Lassoo a brew or two and bring your appetite as well. Welcome to the Bottle Opener Review - a blog dedicated to the search for quality bottle openers, and their appreciation.

The premier review will be of one of the most widespread and commonly available keychain bottle openers, the extruded aluminum promotional keychain opener.

The meal prepared with the review was mock-duck thai red curry, with short-grain brown rice.

With mother nature telling Trevor to "lose those sleeves" and father time telling Will he had lost enough blood to "reenact the passover", the heat in the kitchen took a toll on our chefs and faithfully handsome authors.

The opener in question is, as previously mentioned, one of the more pervasive and cheaply available extruded aluminum, made in China, openers. The specific item used was a promotional keychain for QBP's FrostBike open-house (2007). The test-beers were Tyranena Brewing Company's Bitter Woman IPA. (Caveat; the beer in question is actually a twist-off cap, which hopefully did not skew results)

First impressions were that the opener was "dinky at best", unimpressive, but pleasantly simple. Also noted were that it was discrete, incredibly average, uninspired, and (for better or worse) non-lethal {footnote 1}.

The FrostBike opener uses a traditional "pull-up" style, but has a fairly small amount of leverage. As far as opening abilities, this opener does about as well as you'd expect from looking at it. Out of six beers opened, only one was able to be opened in one pull - the rest required a secondary pull to finish them off.

Overall, we would recommend this opener for fidgeters, avid bowlers or Bananarama fans.

Final verdict? We give it two bottles out of six - for ability to remove a cap, but without class or style.

{Footnote 1} How do you tell if a bottle opener is non-lethal? Simple. Get three beers and two friends together in an empty room, lock the door, place the beers and opener in betwixt the once friends and let St. Peter do the math. For those of you who liked the review, you're lucky this opener was non-lethal. For those of you who hated this review, why are you still reading?