"bottles" news and stories

Oil is a wonderful necessity in the kitchen, but it's always plagued with those pesky drippings that waste oil and make a big ol' mess.

However, Noro (a Barcelona-based designer) has cooked up a new bottle system called Verte, which offers a two-lip cap system, like you can see above. The oil or liquid pours from the inner lip, and excess is caught by the outer lip. But don't let it steal your hearts just yet -- it's only in the design stage right now, and there's a serious downside to this.

Unless you keep your bottles in a well-sealed area, or they come with tops, you'll soon have a mess on your hands. The bottle might stay clean, but that space between the lips will get filthy, and who wants oil to be recycled by passing through a dirty and dusty second lip? The oil would remain on that lip, dust would cling to it in no time, and there goes your perfect system.

[via Serious Eats]

Every good beer drinker knows drinking out of the bottle is a no-no (Busch Light drinkers excluded). The only way to get the full nose and aroma is to pour that bottled brew into the proper glassware.

Still, sometimes having your buddy turn to you and ask, "Don't you want a glass for that?" can be equally annoying. Beer snobbery has become as growing a concern to the casual beer drinker almost as much as seasonal beer food pairings have been worrying the aforementioned beer snob.

Well, finally someone has come up with a solution. Fred & Friends has produced the Hopside Down beer glass. This glassware is designed to look like a longneck beer bottle, but turned upside-down with the bottom sliced off. The effect: The look of drinking out of a bottle but leaving an open air environment to let your nose enjoy all those precious hop and malt scents.

I haven't actually tried these glasses yet, so I can't vouch for their quality, but they certainly look cool. (And people who drink beer always do it to look cool!)

[via Al Dente]

As with everything else these days, the price of glass is going up. Some wine and beer bottlers have already switched to less glass-intensive bottles and a French champagne maker is experimenting with the same idea.

Mumm, is experimenting with bottles that are 65 grams lighter than regular champagne bottles (which are about twice as heavy as wine bottles), in an attempt to cut down on costs. The company is currently storing the test bottles for two years to make sure the thinner glass can withstand the pressure that is produced by the bubbly. If they do determine to use these lighter bottles, Mumm will also have to get approval from Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne, the trade association that represents grape growers and champagne producers.

If the bottles survive and the CIVC approves the change, we'll be seeing these new, thinner champagne bottles around 2010. The question is, if Mumm gets CIVC approval, will other champagne bottlers will be quick to follow?

[Via the Guardian]

When the first organic wines came out, there was something of a hippie stigma attached to them. The method of growing the grapes was more important than the finished product and, as a result, the wines really couldn't compare to the more traditionally produced vintages. But everyday consumers and connoisseurs alike are no longer turning up their noses at organic wines because there are excellent ones available now. More vineyards are making them and the wines are getting better all the time. The reason for the turn towards organic wine is that consumers' demand for organic products is growing in scope, stretching beyond produce. Their demand means that the market is bigger - the supermarket Sainsbury's reports over 400% growth in the sale of organic wine in the last year - and to fill it, more organic wine is being produced.

Of course, as Jonathan Ray (The Daily Telegraph wine expert) points out, "good wine is good wine" and some of the very best are not organic. But if organic is a criteria that is important to you, for reason, it's nice to know that there a good wine options and that the number of them is growing all the time.

Source

Faced with the prospect of revolutionary solar-powered thin-film technology, we can think of only one thing: beer. The folks at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed micrometer-thin solar cells and heating/cooling devices that could be attached to all kinds of surfaces, including walls, cars or bottles. These would be way less cumbersome than the self-cooling beer cans I posted about a few months back. The solar powered thin films would also require no moving parts. In their press releases, the Rensselaer researchers mention self cooling soda bottles, but we know what they're thinking...

[Via SCI FI Tech and vnunet]