What School Won't Teach: How to open a Bottle of Star Beer

One of the most valuable lessons I learnt outside the four walls of an educational institution was 'you can't learn it all in school'. The streets had a different syllabus and the lessons learnt constitute tacit intelligence. This post is about how to open a bottle of Star without an opener.


In school I learnt the best way to open a bottle with a crown cork was to use an opener. It was fast. But most times I do not have an opener around. School says, you'll have to find one.


I was with a guy and we had two bottles of Star beer with no opener. The suggestion I had was to use the crown cork of one of the bottles to open the other BUT, once one was opened the same technique couldn't be used to open the other one.


Then...I learnt. He used the base of one of the bottles to tap round the crown cork of the other bottle. After doing that for less than a minute, it was easy to pull off the crown cork. It was as if it wasn't sealed in the first place. He did the same for the second bottle and I used my fingers to pull off the crown cork. There had to be a scientific explanation school would provide but on the streets, no one cared how.


That was one of the things I learnt school won't teach.