How to Open a Beer with a Pen

Published on Thursday, January 8, 2009, by CHOW Video Team / Edit Post

Everyone has a trick to opening a beer bottle when you don’t have an opener handy, even CHOW’s staff photographer, Chris Rochelle. Here he shows how to open your beer with a pen. And if you don’t have a pen around, you might have a piece of paper. And if you don’t have a piece of paper, you surely have another beer bottle.

CHOW Tips are the shared wisdom of our community. If you’ve figured out some piece of food, drink, or cooking wisdom that you’d like to share on video (and you can be in San Francisco), email Blake Smith and tell us what you’ve got in mind.

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POST A COMMENT |13 Comments

COMMENT

  • Dude, great tip, you are a master !

  • Must've been a slow day at Chow.

  • No $hit! ? ! I'm impressed! Will have to try!

  • Many of these methods exert a lot of pressure on your finger. Great if you have strong, tough hands. It's easier if you use something that distributes the pressure over a greater area. In many of these shots they could have used the corner of a table to open the beer by just banging down on the top with your fist. Anything that will catch the edge.

    Now, you may not want to use your best knife...+READ

    Many of these methods exert a lot of pressure on your finger. Great if you have strong, tough hands. It's easier if you use something that distributes the pressure over a greater area. In many of these shots they could have used the corner of a table to open the beer by just banging down on the top with your fist. Anything that will catch the edge.

    Now, you may not want to use your best knife for this, but a couple of twists of the tip of a knife will make a cap easy to pop off.-COLLAPSE

  • Hoo-garden, Hoog-ODD-in GREAT BEER. And does he have a beer at the office??? I know he didn't throw it away after opening.

  • To meana - If you were in Belgium it would be pronounce hoog-ODD-in. But we're in America and if you said that in a bar here you'd confuse the bartender.

  • i thought it was pronounced hoo-garden?

  • I like the one with the folded up piece of paper even more!

  • hells yeah. CH comes through with some real cooking knowledge.

  • I love that this guy has sufficient experience to know which beer brands require more or less effort to open. Impressive!

  • rulers, buckles, screwdrivers, another cap, bumpers, fence posts (last two slightly different technique) were rites of passage growing up without twist-offs...
    Had a friend who used his teeth.

  • Bic lighter. Same technic.

  • Chris, your finger's turning all red. Doesn't that hurt?
    I love this little series--all guys whose job titles aren't food related, all opening beers--cute!