country club

Country Club is the classic example of me finding a soda, drinking it, and not taking notes.  It was red, and tasted vaguely red. (Bilz falls into that category as well!) That is about all I remember from it. Not memorable enough to want another bottle - but a lovely bottle cap nonetheless.

pony malta

One of the great things about buying soda and beer for the bottle caps is the possibility of discovering delicious, unusual and tasty beverages.  Who knows what kinds of drinks are out there that I haven’t tried and will love some day?  However, one of the downfalls is having to taste some that are truly awful.  The latter applies to Pony Malta.  I think the best way to describe it is drinking a tree sandwich. That’s right—a tree stuffed between two pieces of malty bread.  A malt beverage hailing from Colombia, Pony Malta was procured at my local corner deli. It’s billed as an energy drink, but I am not quite sure who will have the energy to drink this. Yuck.

international

One of the nice things about living in NYC is that there is a plethora of international options when it comes to both beer and soda.  My neighborhood in particular is multi-national.  There is a strong showing of Egyptian, Greek, Brazilian, Italian and others. I have also been lucky enough to travel to places like France, Greece, Chile, Barbados and Argentina, among other places.

Some of the bottle caps from my travels (and my neighborhood) can be found below! 

The bottle cap with the "B" is from Barbados, a beer called Banks.   I'm actually not sure where the "5" bottle cap is from.  I think it is from Barbados as well, but any guidance would be much appreciated! It was procured so long ago, and I wasn't keeping notes back then.

These next four caps were all from my recent trip to South America.  Kem, Lemon Stones and Vital are a soda, beer and water (respectively) from Chile.  Kem is "tropical fruit drink" that sort of tastes like pineapple.  Lemon Stones is a beer, but it tastes more like hard lemonade than actual beer.  And Vital, well, it's just a bottled water that you can either get con or sin gas.  I believe we were in Isla Negra when we got those!

Austral, I've been told, is one of the southernmost beers  in the world, brewed in Chile, of course! It's made in the southern Patagonia town of Punta Arenas and is quite tasty.
Although in the US you might think of rappers and glamour, Cristal is really more like the Budweiser of Chile. You'll find it in pretty much every convenience store down there, and the country's most famous soccer team, Colo Colo, has the Cristal logo plastered across their uniforms. So it's everywhere in Chile, but, trust me, the only special thing about the beer is its bottle cap. 
Kunstmann shows the German influence in Chile - this is another popular beer from that region. It's brewed in northern Patagonia, around the town of Valdivia, where large communities of Germans settled. In my opinion, Kuntsmann is the best beer of Chile. It's rich and flavorful and there's one variety that comes with honey. I drank this Kuntsmann at night in Valparaiso, the lovely port city, and I had an incredible view of the entire city.
The Coke, Fanta and Sprite are all South American as well (I'm not sure the photos are clear enough, but all of the additional info on those are in Spanish.) These were from the Chilean town of Constitucion. Baltica is another Chilean beer--it's very bad!--and Presidente is a Dominican beer.

 

Laziza was procured on the evening that Mubarak stepped down from Egyptian rule.  We were close to the neighborhood known as Little Egypt and suddenly we heard loud car horns and saw swarms of people waving flags and chanting. The neighborhood just exploded! We wandered into an Egyptian deli and found Laziza.  It is a non-alcoholic  malt beverage made in Lebanon, and I opted for the apple flavor - it tasted a lot like sparking cider. It was a wonderful way to toast the fall of a dictatorship.

I'm not sure where I got these last two bottle caps - but I believe one is Nicaguran and one is from Kent.

My new favorite is this beer bottle cap:

How can you not like an owl on a bottle cap?!?  This is from a Japanese beer that I found in my local grocery store. I think this fits into both the international AND hall of fame categories!  A nice way to end the post....

steaz

One of things I hope to do on this blog is write about the new sodas and beers that I try (based entirely on their bottle caps, of course!)  Last night I was in Harlem going to a dinner party, and beforehand, we ducked into a health food store and picked up a few new sodas. One that I had never seen before was  Steaz, which seems to be more of a carbonated tea drink.  Frankly, it wasn't that good. We also bought a root beer - that cap will be posted in a few days.

You can look forward to a few upcoming posts, including my "hall of fame."

boylans

One of my favorite things about bottle caps are the variety. Even within one brand there can be multiple bottle caps. I actually started collecting because of Boylans.  I've included my collection of those bottle caps here. 

 Here is another variation:

 

Creamy Red Birch Beer is one of my favorite sodas! It is surprisingly hard to find in my neighborhood, so whenever I see it, I usually purchase a few.  You'll also notice that Creamy Red made it into my "hall of fame," which has some odd criteria.  I either really like the cap (design, image, etc) or it's an amazing beverage. 

And the last kind... your classic Boylan. 

Stay tuned for additional posts of my collection of bottle caps.  Thanks for visiting!