Grolsch bottles...blast from the past

Hi All,

Newbie here, to brewing not drinking of course. I'm mostly lurking, and constantly dazzled by the wealth of info here. This forum is quite the treasure.

I stumbled on some posts mentioning the "fliptop" Grolsch bottles. Thay bring back some pleasant memories...

In 1992, when I was living in Japan (Univ. student) I was introduced to Grolsch by a friend from the Netherlands. We were lucky that it was available at our local grocery store in Japan, complete with the fliptops! He taught me a trick that his buddies in Netherlands enjoyed: Use your finger to "karate-chop" the Grolsch cap off the beer, and it opens every time easily. But if a newbie tries it, he gets his hand badly bruised and the beer of course won't open. Of course there is a trick involved.

His pronunciation, as you would expect, wasn't my American "Grohlshhh" but more a throat-clearing noise, "Hchrollltz." OK, I can speak a bunch of languages, but not Dutch. (He never encouraged me to try, as most Dutch I've met speak English better than I do.)

Over the last 18 years or so on occasion I'd buy one of those bottles for fun (and to show off that "trick") but haven't considered using them to bottle homebrew until now. The most we've used them for is oil&vinegar dressing

I think this requires a youtube video for better understanding.

+1

with a few failed attempts by neophytes to get it started

Ja, toon ons de grolschtruc

Translation

Yea, show us the hchroltz trick.

I'm willing to bet it's something along the lines of, "hold bottle in left hand, with thumb on the metal hasp, with fingers of right hand, (and much misdirection), chop at the cap of the bottle, while flicking the hasp with your left thumb"

shortyjacobs said:

I'm willing to bet it's something along the lines of, "hold bottle in left hand, with thumb on the metal hasp, with fingers of right hand, (and much misdirection), chop at the cap of the bottle, while flicking the hasp with your left thumb"

Click to expand...

Awwwww, now you went and spoiled it!!!!

shortyjacobs said:

I'm willing to bet it's something along the lines of, "hold bottle in left hand, with thumb on the metal hasp, with fingers of right hand, (and much misdirection), chop at the cap of the bottle, while flicking the hasp with your left thumb"

Click to expand...

Nope, left hand is at bottom of bottle, gripping it firmly, to remove any hint of trickery there.

I just showed the trick to a guy at my LHBS. Worked fairly well (I'm out of practice) but hurt my hand still. Ouch.

I want to see somebody sabre a grolsch bottle