I don't know who invented the screw top. I don't have the time to research the patents and find out. But someone did. And so soda and beer companies changed from the "old-fashioned" round top at the bottle neck to one with threads. Wine companies who produce single-serving bottles or simply wine that won't improve with age use an adaptation of the screw top. By and large, the screw top (for beer or wine, anyway) is considered declasse by the snobs.

For wine, I think, this is a perfectly legitimate opinion. The point of real cork (as opposed to synthetic corks or screw tops) is to allow subtle aging and improvement of the wine. The cork substitutes have more to do with potential spoilage of the wine than cost. Cork is the bark of the cork tree, and is a renewable resource. You don't cut down the tree (or harm it in any way) when you harvest the cork. But natural cork can fail, with bad wine as a result. More correctly, wine sealed with bad cork allows more air to interact with the wine. The wine ages much faster and swiftly turns into vinegar. Wine sealed with plastic (cork or screw top) doesn't age. So holding on to wine that isn't sealed with real cork won't improve your investment.

All "macro" beer brands in bottles (Coors, Bud, Miller, etc.) are screw top. Their beers are lifeless (that is, they've had the living yeast filtered out of them) and begin to degrade as soon as they are bottled. These companies want their beer consumed as quickly as possible--thus the "born on" dating system made famous by Anheuser-Busch. The screw top simply makes it easier drink more beer faster.

Or safer, anyway. Back when I was in college, you could get a case of Red, White and Blue for four bucks. Our town had a bottle deposit law, so your case actually totaled $5.20, but that's still pretty reasonable for 24 beers (22 cents a beer is pretty sweet). One problem with Red, White and Blue: It didn't have a screw top. And we didn't have an opener. Being college students, we hit upon the perfect solution. Simply crack the neck of the bottle against the table, breaking off the top of the neck (including the cap) and then holding the remaining bottle above our mouths. Ideally, it took about 20 seconds from slam to slam (if you will). A lot of Red, White and Blue could be drunk rather quickly in this manner.

Craft beers (the preferred term for "microbrews") generally aren't slammed. They're too expensive for that. But most of them, like the Red, White and Blue of my youth, use "round top" bottles. I would guess that the main reason is that most craft brewers started out as homebrewers, and round top bottles are the only kind that are easily capped by hand.

A good number of craft beers are "bottle-conditioned." They are bottled unfiltered, their yeast left to continue its work on additional sugar (which can be anything from unfermented beer wort to refined corn sugar) and create carbonation. Like wine, bottle-conditioned beers are a living food product and continue to improve with age--some for as long as 25 years.

The only craft brewery I can think of that uses screw top bottles for bottle-conditioned beer is Sierra Nevada. And I have to say that I've never had one give out. I recently opened a 2000 bottle of Bigfoot Ale, and it tasted fine. In other words, my distaste for screw tops might well be grounded more in emotion than reason.

Still, when I popped an Anchor Steam a couple weeks ago and saw the screw top threads, I about had a heart attack. I love the Anchor Steam bottles. For those who don't know, Anchor Steam bottles are shorter and slightly stouter than regular longnecks. These bottles still manage to hold twelve ounces, mostly because they have no necks. Their pear shape is elegant and ideal for holding--though I always decant to serve. For some reason, their shape is perfect for homebrewing. The beer I put in sanitized Anchor Steam bottles carbonates faster and ages better than beer in regular bottles.

And so when I discovered that my source for beautiful homebrewing bottles was no more, I kinda flipped out. I left a message somewhere in the brewery's labyrinth voice mail system (no reply as yet), scoured the company's web site (to no avail) and searched the web at large. There's no mention of the new bottles anywhere. Is it possible that I'm the only one who cares?

I doubt it. Maybe this is a new change. Maybe it was a test. In truth, it doesn't matter much, because Anchor Steam beers aren't bottle conditioned. And as I noted with Sierra Nevada, I'm not sure that would even make a difference. The only folks who are likely to care are homebrewers like me who love using Anchor Steam bottles.

I'm not about to run out of the old bottles, mind you. I also recycle my own homebrew bottles, which means I've got a few cases of old Anchor Steam bottles. Even assuming the usual breakage, I should have a case or two of the bottles lying around my deathbed.

So we're not talking a major crisis--despite my difficulty breathing when I made the discovery. I'm probably overreacting. But beer is important to me. Not as important as my family or music, but decidedly more important than movies or my car or most other "things." And any significant change in my beer world can be just as cataclysmic as the thought of Bob Dylan rolling around onstage in a wheelchair touting the virtues of speedballing Viagra and Cialis. I may be liberal in my beliefs, but there are some things that just shouldn't be.

Jon Worley keeps a couple dozen cases of beer in his basement as a reserve--just in case terrorists attack his local water system.