The Key to Freeing Your Beer: Bottle Openers

How many bottle openers do you own? I bet you don't know; I don't. These ones are just from the kitchen drawer. I know there are others: in my car, near the beer fridge, in my luggage, attached to key rings, with the camping gear and who knows where else.

Now, regardless of the number of openers, which is your favorite? My top two are the green army man (which actually belongs to my better half) in the center of the picture and the paint can opener one that's almost touching his right hand. Army man wins for coolness factor and the fact that he could double as a hand held weapon should anyone try to snag my beer. The other one, which I did in fact purchase at Home Depot in the paint department, wins on bottle cap gentleness. Seriously, if you want to open your beers and cause zero damage to the cap, go buy yourself a few of these $.97 openers.

Before acquiring fancy bottle openers or being concerned about dinging the cap, flat ones, like the two in the upper right hand corner of the picture were my go-to favorite. In fact the one with "Summit" nearly worn away was THE bottle opener for years. These flat, heavy duty openers don't take crap from any bottle cap and slide nicely into a back pocket. I just received a couple of new ones in the mail from Custom On It, in orange, which is sure to make it stand out in the drawer.

I'm interested to hear why your favorite opener has earned that honor. Is it because of where you got it or who gave it to you? Is it because of its unique design? Or, like me, are you more practically minded? If you have a picture of it, great; link to it (since the comment box doesn't seem to have an attachment feature). I'll select one commenter to send one of my new, orange Beer Musings bottle openers to.