Beck’s Brewery Made the First Playable Beer Bottle Ever

From now on, vinyl enthusiasts might have to start drinking Beck’s beer simply as a matter of principle.

The German brewery, celebrating its 140th birthday this year, has long been lauded for its pale lager. But the company recently decided to pay homage to a different kind of tradition after noticing the similarities between the shape of its beer bottles and the old-school Edison cylinder, which was used to play recorded sound before the advent of the modern platter-style disc. So the company created a bottle that plays music.

It’s a really cool idea but one that came with all kinds of technical hurdles. As you can see in the above video, Beck’s engineers had to answer a number of tricky questions before they could get a decent sound out of the bottle — like what they’d use to cut the grooves and how they’d get around the way sound behaves when it’s being transmitted through glass. They ended up with a terrific collector’s item that brings beer and music together the way nature always intended.

Admittedly, the world’s first playable beer bottle has few practical applications at the moment (especially since there’s no way they’ll play on traditional turntables), but it’s still pretty cool. And who knows? If it takes off, we could see all kinds of artists lining up to put their latest single on a bottle of Beck’s.

  Alcohol, Beck’s, Beer, Beverage, Creative, Edison cylinder, Germany, Innovation, music, Packaging, Playable Bottle, World’s First