A knack for rust and a passion for Washington beer cans has now transformed into a collection big enough to be its own museum for Amboy resident Jeffrey Berry.
Berry launched the North County Beer Museum Facebook page on Monday, March 24. His private collection features pre-1963 Washington beer-related items.
“Everywhere a man has been, he’s drunk beer and thrown down cans,” Berry said. “He’s still doing it right now somewhere.”
Berry was first introduced to the hobby of collecting beer cans, bottles and other memorabilia when he was 8 years old after a 15-year-old neighbor had around 40 beer cans stacked on his window sill.
“He told me and another neighbor kid that he had every one ever made,” Berry said. “I set out to prove him wrong. … By the time I was 12, I had almost 250 different cans.”
He said he was even more intrigued when he came across a newspaper article featuring a local collector, Jerry “Hop Gold” Hyatt.
“I looked him up in the phone book and called him, told him I collected beer cans. He told me to have my dad bring me over,” Berry recalled. “Schmidt beer had a 21-can set in the ‘70s. He had all 21, but he only gave me 14 and told me I had to come to trade meets and do some trading and find the other seven myself. I wound up lifelong friends with the guy, and he just passed on last fall and, God, I miss that guy.”
Berry said the first beer can hit the market on Jan. 24, 1935, in Richmond, Virginia. For the war, they quit making cans in 1942, which makes those seven years the golden era for cans, he added. In the early 1960s, pull tab beer cans hit the market, he said.
The search for beer cans, since bottles are hard to find unbroken in nature, has led Berry on great adventures and even roadside stops to search through piles of rusty metal.
“I use my love for beer cans as an excuse to be outside. I love hiking. I think I went on like 60 hikes last year,” Berry said.
On the Cedar Creek Grist Mill property where he resides, he has even found old cans as recently as two months ago.
Berry’s main focus is anything from a Washington brewery. Locally, the Star Brewery in Vancouver brewed up Hop Gold and, later, the brewery also pumped out Lucky Lager. His collection also includes well known names such as Olympia and Rainier beers, of which Rainier has stood the test of time, though it is no longer brewed in the state of the namesake mountain. However, the Tacoma Rainiers still rock the classic “R” and name as a Triple-A baseball team for the Seattle Mariners.
Berry said he is always seeking new items to display and new piles of rust and places to search. Anyone with items or other information, and those who would like to request a tour of the museum, can text 360-607-3568.
