I had some ideas to make a wee bit of money for the club but I don't know how to execute them so I'm throwing the ideas out there to the more artsy-crafsty members of CHAOS. Two things were going through my mind: (1) What do we have a constant free supply of that we could somehow turn into our gain? (2) How can we use the byproducts of our brewing or drinking labors (e.g., spent grain; bottle caps)?
- Between asking bars to save bottles for us, dumpster diving for bottles, as well as our own consumption, I was thinking we could use bottles to:
(1) cut off the tops, just below the neck (with the right saw) and sand the edges down and either sell them as 10 oz. glasses or we can fill them with wax and make candles;
(2) simply sell them to other home brewers at prices below what the LHBS sells them for.
- I was also thinking we'd use the labels from the above-mentioned bottles to:
(1) laminate back-to-back and sell them in packs of 5-10 as coasters;
(2) somehow epoxy them smoothly and neatly to kitchen tiles for beer-related kitchen/batch tile options.
- We go through a lot of spent grain and so we could:
(1) bake dog biscuits;
(2) bake breads;
- Lastly, we could use bottle caps to:
(1) make bottle cap magnets;
(2) make bottle cap ear rings (don't laugh, I saw them on etsy.com along with cuff links and key chains).
Of course, all of this has some inherent cost (e.g., the wax and wicks to make candles) and we'll have to weight a potential selling price with the cost of production. I'm just the idea man on these.
- If they are impractical ideas, discuss below.
- If they are at all possible ideas, discuss that below, too.
- If anyone is simply interested in pricing out some of the ideas to find if they are practical/worthwhile, post what you find below.
- If you have other ideas on how to pull a small profit for CHAOS, pitch that below, too.
Yeah, that's why I posted the discussion. I'm not hand enough to figure out how to actual execute these ideas. I'm guessing there's a certain type of saw which could take the top off a bottle off quickly; some kind of buffer to buff/sand the sharp edges down.
It sounds, though, from your research, Tommy, that if one of us has the right tools, this would be a viable little source of money (we could get it down to $1/candle to produce; sell them for $5-6/candle).
Yet another idea: we could have plain brown; keep the labels on some; put the CHAOS logo on others.
GREAT WORK, Tommy!
Just to add a little design/style to the candle idea, we could use bottles with the labels still affixed (and in good condition); that way they wouldn't be plain ol' brown bottles with a candle in it.
???? Resin from what? I was basically thinking of how we can use stuff we already have, get for free, or would otherwise dispose of to make a little moolah for CHAOS. We could try to harvest the dust from keg polishing and use that as the "resin" in your faux amber. :-)
I wonder is some beer can be mixed with a resin to make a beer faux amber
...igz...