Scavenger Chic

DIY Beer Flight Set

• By Joan
• January 6, 2019
• 7 Comments

Happy New Year everyone and welcome back. I’ve really enjoyed my time with family and friends over the past month.  I travelled a little bit, entertained, decorated, cooked and cleaned.  I even took a few days to move my second son into a mid 80’s house  (that’s the year built and not the cost  🙂  ).  I see a lot of projects in his future and hopefully, I’ll get to help so I can bring you even more before and afters,  projects and diy’s.

I actually finished this project a couple months ago, but since it was a Christmas gift, I couldn’t share it until now.

Over the past year number 1 son has been brewing beer and experimenting with hops and yeast and malt.  Since I don’t drink beer I’m relying on others to tell me that it actually tastes pretty good.

He has had a couple of beer taste tests using odd shaped mismatched glasses.  I just want to make his beer tasting official with beer flight sampler glasses and holders.

For my holders, I already had a 4 foot 4×4 on hand, it was one of the side rails from a pallet, but since I wanted to make a set of 6 samplers, it wasn’t quite long enough. I needed a total of 6 1/2 feet.  A brand new 4×4 from the lumber yard would cost $13.70.  Time to do a little scavenging.

This is the ideal place for shopping for a 4×4.  This is a wooded area next to a river and a railroad track.  If you don’t find anything dumped here you just might get lucky finding something that has been washed downstream.  Even better, you’re not only picking up garbage, you’re saving yourself $13.70.  If I had gotten here a week earlier, I probably wouldn’t have seen my beautiful, aged, 4×4, but after a first frost, a lot of the greenery had died off and there he was just waiting for me.

OK, so the end is rotten but the rest is in perfect condition. It’s better than new, it’s aged, weathered and FREE.

 Did you know that you couldn’t legally home brew beer until President Carter made it legal in 1978

Besides the 4×4, for this project you’ll also need clear address labels, a couple tin cans and beer sampler glasses..  The top 4×4 was my woodsy find and the bottom one was the end of a pallet…don’t often find 4×4’s on a pallet but I’m gonna use it.

After a little looking, I found my beer glasses at the Webstaurant store for about $1 each (not including shipping), you can find them here.

There are 1.2 million homebrewers in the U.S.

I originally posted my soda can labels back in 2016 and they are perfect to number the beer flight holder so you can figure out which beer you’re tasting.

Print out your number labels on 1 x 2 5/8″  clear address labels.  The labels aren’t totally clear, they print out with a light film.

Adhere the labels to the inside of an aluminum can and cut out leaving a small border around the outside edge of the oval.

For beer tasting I needed 6 each of the numbers 1-4.

Scrape off a little of the white film surrounding the number to reveal some of the shiny surface.  Be careful not to scratch off any of the printed numbers, it scratches off rather easily.

Apply a little vintage wax to give the numbers the aged look.

Now for the stand…lay out your beer glasses on the 4×4 to determine how long the stand should be.

Remove any nails and cut the 4×4’s into bite sized chunks.  These are 13″ long.

Make a pattern to mark the center of each glass.  You probably can’t tell, but there is a hole where those black dots are, mark with a sharpie.

Next step, drilling the holes for the tasting glasses.  For me this is the part of the project that took the longest.  Probably because I have a fairly weak drill.  I had to ditch my battery powered drill and resort to a super old electric drill that comes complete with a chuck key (do you even remember what a chuck key is?), it’s more powerful than my battery operated drill but it tended to overheat very frequently.

If they sold a 2″ spade bit this would be a one step process.  Since the largest I could find was 1 1/2 inches it turns into 2 steps.  First, use a 2″ hole saw to cut a hole at least 1″ deep.

Follow the hole with the 1 1/2″ spade bit.

It’s easy to break away any excess that was leftover between the hole saw and spade bit.

Use a sander to smooth down all the edges.

Mine were stained with a combination of vintage wax mixed with a little black chalk paint ( use sparingly).  It’s the same treatment I used on my mantel to give it that railroad tie look.

Use black felt or similar fabric to line the bottoms of the drilled holes.

Use tacks to attach the soda can labels.

Before finishing up the project, I took sandpaper to the holder one more time getting rid of any last rough bits and making the corners a little lighter in color.

I ended up giving the beer flight kit to number 1 son one day early.  He showed up Christmas eve with new beers for tasting and I couldn’t possibly let him have his tasting without his new glasses.  I must say that they worked perfectly!

P. S.  When you’re not using your beer flight set for tasting, they also make great votive candle holders.

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