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A Very Clutch Guide to Opening Beer Bottles without an Opener

Bottle opener fall into a nebulous interdimensional vortex? No problem — here's how to pop that cap off with literally anything else

You’ve been waiting for this moment since Monday. Your fridge is full of Coronas. Postmates is on the way. That OnlyFans creator you love just posted a sweet, new video. Ah, life is good.

You grab a beer and comb through your kitchen drawers. Then, your heart sinks. Crap, you lent your bottle opener to a friend, and they never gave it back. What now?

Don’t panic just yet — Sam Martin, founder of You To Brew, a small team of homebrewers who sell mead-making subscription boxes, is here to teach us how to open a beer without a bottle opener. (Good save, Martin!)

The Basic Technique

While there are many ways to open a bottle without an opener, they all rely on the same underlying principle: creating leverage. Here’s how Martin says leverage can help you open a beer with another beer, for example:

  1. Grab two beers, one in each hand. 
  2. Put the first beer on a table, and grab around the top of the neck — just under the cap — with your non-dominant hand. 
  3. Hold the second bottle with your dominant hand, grasping it by the bottom of the neck.
  4. Place the lip of the second bottle underneath the edge of the first beer cap. 
  5. Finally, using the second bottle for leverage, push down with your dominant hand to pop the cap off.

Here it is in practice:

“Once you know how to create that leverage, any item with a lip can act as a bottle opener,” Martin explains. He recommends using a lighter, a spoon, a video game controller, a remote, a wrench or a paint-can key. (Many people use their teeth, but dentists don’t recommend it, because you could end up chipping a tooth.)

@openitmeow

I re-watched the vid again and found the man’s expression too funny. hahah!#funnyvideo #foryou #foryoupage #openbeerchallenge

♬ original sound – real_meow

Other Examples

If you manage to perfect this technique, there’s almost nothing you can’t use to open a beer. @karlopeningbeers on TikTok is living proof of that. Here, he opens a Coors with a Guitar Hero controller:

@karlopeningbeers

Object: Guitar hero controller.

♬ original sound – Karl Smallwood

Here, he pops the lid off a Heineken with a phone charger:

@karlopeningbeers

Object: Phone charger.

♬ original sound – Karl Smallwood

And here, he frees a Guinness of its cap with a plastic lemon: 

@karlopeningbeers

Object: Plastic lemon.

♬ original sound – Karl Smallwood

So, go ahead — grab your nearest object, and open that beer. Quick, that new OnlyFans video is waiting for you.