Ye Olde Brew

Once upon a time the Awesome Fiancee used to live in a very cute little cottage type house that dated back to the 1920's. When she moved into the house there was a stash of empty bottles in the basement that were rumored to have always been with the house, dating all the way back to when it was built. A lot of them had been covered in dirt and mud so it appears someone possibly dug them up somewhere on the property while planting a garden or found them laying around and just decided to hold onto them. They're old, quirky and cool looking and just exude us, so when we combined housing units we decided to take the bottles with us and clean them up so we can use them as decor for our wedding.

Well the wedding is a scant 17 days away (!!!!!) and we're ramping up our bottle cleaning efforts. Yesterday I grabbed a couple that seemed to hold some real promise in the cool and quirky looks department and started in on them. After I had scraped away some of the dirt and mud on the first one I noticed it had "Suffolk Brewing Co., Boston, MA" stamped on the side. I used to live in Boston and have lived in New England all my life and have never heard of that brewery. I thought it was really cool and decided to keep plugging away on the cleaning to find out what else we had. I started in on the second one and found "Continental Brewing Co., Boston" stamped on the bottom. A little time with Ye Olde Google tells me that the Suffolk Brewing Co. in Boston was open from 1861 through 1890! I'm holding something that is close to 150 years old AND it's a piece of glass! Flush with excitement at my Antique's Roadshow moment of discovery I did some digging on the second one and found this article in the NY Times archives from August 8, 1900 discussing the merger of the Continental Brewing Co., of Boston, MA with 9 other Boston breweries to form the Continentals Brewing Co. (no that's not a typo)Now that I know what we have I may dial down the cleaners I'm using on these bottles.