The Beer Bottle Organ

Peterson Beer Bottle Organ on 1990s TV

Last week, the largest musical instrument trade fair in the world, the Musikmesse, opened in Frankfurt. While this year’s focus is on tech (new mics, carbon trumpets and LED guitars), here’s a throwback to one of our old school favorites from the 1990s – the beer bottle organ.

A musical instrument created by Peterson Tuners, yes, the Beer Bottle Organ is exactly what it sounds like. Fitted with 72 bottles of beer, the wood organ blows air over the bottles, ranging in three octaves. Tuned by using mineral oil, this famous instrument doesn’t use beer, it uses glycerine or mineral oil so it won’t evaporate or warp when the temperature changes.

The Beer Bottle Organ all came about in 1998 when the Peterson Company celebrated their 50th anniversary with a twist – they created a prototype of the organ at the American Institute of Organ Builders convention (putting everything else on show to shame). By combining pipe organ components with beer bottles, while tuned with a Peterson strobe tuner, the goal was to make it sing like a flute. It plays the Star Wars theme on its keys and is programmed to play MIDI tracks (yes, it even plays "Eleanor Rigby").

In the past 15 years, six Beer Bottle Organs have been built. The type of bottles keep changing depending on the date, location and sponsor – in Germany, it’s Guinness, in America, it's Coors and in Hong Kong, it's, er, red wine? Two of the beer bottle organs were featured on a Pat Metheny tour.

The Bottle Organ is traced back to the early 1800s, the folks at Peterson claim they didn’t know – it was simply a “what if” situation sparked by the company engineers. Patrick Bovenizer, the vice president of Peterson, is in charge of handling all Beer Bottle Organ relations. He fills us in on the background of the Beer Bottle Organ and what actually happens when you fill it with beer.

Noisey: Since developed in the 1800s, whose idea was it at Peterson Tuners to create the beer bottle organ?
Pat Bovenizer: We were not aware of someone doing a bottle organ in the 1800 until after we had built ours. We were aware of someone that had experimented with it in the 1960s. An employee at Peterson named Gary Rickert decided to build our first organ for the 50th anniversary celebration for our company in 1998. Gary and others here designed the nozzles to blow across the bottles and the rest of the design. Peterson main products are musical instruments tuners and pipe organ related equipment so it was a natural fit.

It operates on 72 bottles. Why did you use Guinness beer bottles but now it's Coors Light?
There have been a cariety of bottle types used for organs. The bottle organ has been displayed at several music trade shows. When we displayed it in Frankfurt, Germany at the Musikmesse festival for musical instruments, Guinness was the sponsor, so we outfitted it with Guinness bottles. There was an article in FHM Magazine about it here in the USA at which time Coors was sponsoring it, so we changed out the bottles. A beer company named Leinenkugel from the USA sponsored one that was a minor league baseball park in the Chicago area for one year. We also built an organ out of wine bottles for a public relations company that was sent to Hong Kong. We have built a couple of other that are in pubs and one in someone's home. We built two for a musician named Pat Metheny who toured the world with them.

The bottles do not contain beer, but glycerine. What else?
Glycerine or mineral oil is all that is in the bottles. It is important that the liquid does not evaporate and stay stable with changes in temperature. With regard to the liquid used for tuning we have been known to use the bad joke: “We can't use beer because everyone knows it goes flat.”

How many beer bottle organs are there?
Six have been built. Some were reconfigured with different bottles for promotional purposes.

The organ plays unaided via keyboard or MIDI-controlled. What sounds best?
There are many songs that sound good. We normally use songs that fit the occasion or the sponsor. For Guinness, we had many Irish songs recorded but the Beatles songs sounded great, too.

How many shows has it played?
The organs that toured with Pat Metheny played hundreds of shows. Other organs at trade shows played four or five days at a time and the ones in pubs play regularly.

Where do you keep the beer bottle organs today? A museum, I hope.
They are in various places with their owners. Pat Metheny's organs are in his studio, but are no longer on tour. He does still use them regularly.

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