Shotgun a Beer with Just Your Thumb

Learn how to defy the rules of physics and pierce through metal using only your fingertip.  This Instructable shows you how you can shotgun anything in an aluminum can with just your thumb!

Shotgunning liquids has been around for a while.  It's the crude process of poking a hole in the bottom of a can (usually beer) so that you can drink whatever is inside the can way faster than normal.  

It's a fun thing to do at a party for sure, but it gets old pretty quick, and there's never anything good lying around to make the hole in the can with.  Using your finger to poke the hole raises things to a super-human level and is an unparalleled party trick for anyone who doesn't know that it's possible.


*****Shotgunning beers with your finger carries an inherent risk of injury and it's possible that your thumb could get cut as it pierces the wall of the can.  While this has never happened to me, or anyone else I've seen try this, my brain tells me that it's certainly something to be aware of.  Pierce responsibly and understand the risks involved of poking holes in metal cans with nothing more then your finger.*****

Step 1: Setup

There are only a few simple tips to shotgunning a beer with your thumb - most are all part of the setup.

Grab any normal aluminum can and position your dominant thumb (I'm a lefty so I use my left thumb) around 1" to 1.5" from the bottom.  The blue line at the bottom of the Pabst Blue Ribbon logo seems to be about the right spot.  Have the mouth of the can that you normally would drink from facing up towards the sky (at 12 o'clock on the top of the can).

Then, hold the can either in your other hand, or use your index and middle fingers to support it along the bottom of the can on the other side so you've got something to push against.  See the photos below.

Think about squeezing the can between your fingers and visualize squashing it like a grape and practice rocking the tip of your thumb so that your finger nail makes a diving motion in towards the wall of the can.

Finger Nail Length
While your length of your fingernail is important for a successful finger shotgun, I don't think that it means everything.  I've seen people with very short nails have success, and people with long nails have them double over and crease.  The ideal length is likely to have around 1/8th of an inch or so of the white colored fingernail extending beyond the cuticle.  That should be enough so that it can make direct contact with the can, but not so long that the nail becomes weak and flexible.

Comments

[i.am.flink]

Ingenuitive, but best saved for flavorless American swill. It would be a horrible waste to do this with a good porter or a highly hopped ale.

[poopsmcgee]

What "hopped ale" or porter comes in a can, in the U.S.?? Please don't try to use THIS shotgunning instruction web foible as a platform to baselessly disparage american beer. it is as if you are saying "rubber bands are nice and stretchy, but they don't smell enough like bacon.

[mrmerino]

Wow. Euro much?

[imBobertRobert]

you started up a riot of comments!

[sleebus.jones]

We have a "be nice" comment policy. Please be positive and constructive with your comments or risk being banned from our site.

Apparently you missed this when you posted, so I'm putting it up there again so you can get a clear read at it.

[baneat]

How did you miss the intent behind this post? I know it's harder to convey through text but he's not bashing anything but American beer. And American beer is not good. The only american alcohol I've seen imported into the UK has been Jack Daniels, even then our scottish whiskey is better in my opinion. All the good beer is imported from Germany, or brewed in a small scale.

[C18H21NO4]

Hey man I agree. I'm American, and very patriotic, but our beer tastes like goat urine.

[bendog38]

 How do you know what goat urine tastes like???

[C18H21NO4]

Things generally taste how they smell, and goat urine does not smell pretty.

[MasterMind555]

That means then blue cheese taste.............?

[Turtleholmes]

I don't think that it's much to do with 'all American beer is crap', more that people will like the beer they 'grow up with'. That isn't to say that an English drinker will never like American or even German beer, it's just that they're made differently to different tastes.

[sleebus.jones]

"All the good beer is imported from Germany..."

Didn't anyone ever teach you that when you say something like "all X is Y" that the chances you are are woefully misinformed approaches unity?

[cas6767]

I believe they call that an opinion due to the adjective "good". If he had said all the beer comes from Germany then that would have been misinformation. The beauty of opinions is that they are ALWAYS right like my opinion that you are being facetious and breaking the very rule you claim to be championing in what I'm sure you assume is an extremely clever ploy for attention.

[baneat]

I have to ask, do you refer to me?

also, it was an OBVIOUS generalization I made, people. Obviously I don't think all, derp, since I'm well aware some home brewer in Italy can produce far better beer on his small scale than a mass scale factory ever can.

sleebus, Didn't anyone ever teach you that when you say something like "all X is Y" that the chances you are making use of hyperbole?

[sensoryhouse]

 R u people kidding.  Budweiser and PBR are the best beers ever made.  People that wine about how beer needs to be fancy dont drink very much.  People don't pound down 30 packs of "fancy" German beer - but they do go through a couple hundred Buds in a good weekend.  Boom!

[K4nyix]

You're wrong Sensoryhouse, didn't you ever hear about the Oktoberfest, or Beer Festival in Munich ? there, people drink f*in' good beer, and each "glass" is a pint of 1 Liter. and they don't stop after a few glasses.
In my area, we have traditional local "fancy" beers, and my friends and I drink no less than 4 gallons of it, each, and that each week-end when we drink.

Budweiser DOES, to my opinion, taste like a terrible industrial brew. Although I love the USA and a lot of your stuff, your beer and your cheese won't ever be able to contest with german (or european, since belgian and british beers are so different and pretty good also) beers nor with french cheese.

You cannot say "industrial food is better than traditional food, just because there is more of it". That's just... messed up. Since when MacDonald's is better than a good dinner ? Unless you can't boil water without burning up your house, that's not possible.

[marco!]

true dat!

[TheBestJohn]

 Go Canadian or go home =P

[fire bat]

 w007 (4/\/4|)14/\/ 823\/\/5|<1 473|-| \/\/1/\/

[cas6767]

Moosehead!!!

[firestarter1000]

Damn! straight

[JacobsJ192]

I think I'll go home.

[sweetpoetaoe]

I've made good beer and im american? andCktoberfest beers are fantastic german style beers, that most anyone that can stand up to some taste can drink down in large quantaties.
"American Beer" or what people think of it is just american style lager, after prohibition the only companies with enough money to keep going were the ones willing to cut corners, mainly using corn and whatnot. Some love it some dont.
Theres other styles Of beer that were invented in america, and Most people still wont taste or have them brought to mind
The California Common, The Black IPA, and most cascade hopped beers.
Most beer styles have their American counterpart as a style of it, like american stouts, such as sierra nevada's.
Just basic knowledge ya'll
BUT this post is just about a method of drinking faster, and its a great method for most who have tried it. Very good party trick!

(and you probably couldnt do this on "fancy" beer anyway , its probably in a bottle)

[mettaurlover]

This comment does not seem to be posted with malicious intent. He is merely stating that American beer has less flavor than other beer, which may, in fact, be true. He is also stating that it is a waste to do something like this with a quality liquid, which is, in fact, true as if it goes through your mouth fast, anything loses its flavor. Therefore, it is not against any of the 'ibles rules.

[sleebus.jones]

My mistake.  I did not realize that "flavorless American swill" was being positive and constructive.  Apologies.

[harley_rly]

dude its nothin, theres no reason to react like that, so what if European's are proud of their beer

[mettaurlover]

Technically true. We do very little well these days.

[gormly]

Yea! America Bashing on instructables! Sweet, why'd it take so long?

[i.am.flink]

Not America bashing, just pointing out that the vast majority of beers brewed in America are good only for washing car tires.

If it tasted good, people would have less interest in consuming so fast that you can't appreciate the flavor. A properly brewed ale or lager will have many distinct features of taste and smell.

Unlike the typical American brew that is best consumed ice cold and quickly so that the taste buds are numbed and the nose has little time register the smell. When in a novel, you read  a phrase similar to, "the bar smelled like stale beer and sawdust," they're describing the smell of budweiser, pabst, coors, olymbia, miller, and the multitude of other cheap brews.

[knex_mepalm]

What is considered good beer? Here in Australia people can charge $8-$22 for a bottle of beer, we also have cans but bottled is better tasting..

[gold03]

 I think we should try putting our thumbs through bottles! Now that would be a trick!

[knex_mepalm]

 Hey, Hey, no stealing my party trick, although I might post a video of how to do it soon. It is this awesome trick where I use a hammer about 4-inches I think, don't know about measuring the hammer I'm guessing the top bit. I use the hammer to smash the bottle, seemingly it would explode it leaves a small crack which I blow on and it becomes and hole and I drink out of it.

[baneat]

Cans vs bottles is pretty subjective IMO. Drinks to me taste better in ALU cans than glass bottles, I think the can itself imparts a flavour, and I like it. I forget what 8 AUD is, like £4? That's a lot. a pintbottle of good beer goes for roughly £2 over here, and britain's taxed to hell.

[knex_mepalm]

 Over here we're taxed by wages up to 60% if you earn more than "Euro"600,000

[I Love Guns]

Beer in Australia is much more heavily taxed than in America so the beer costs up to twice as much.

Although Americans are only allowed to buy beer at 21 :p i think. (18 in Australia)

[i.am.flink]

Of the mass-market beers, I was pretty partial to Swan Lager. Also, the Foster's Lager locally-brewed in Australia is worlds better than the swill brewed in Canada for North American distribution.

The times I've been to Perth/Freemantle or Sydney, I've pretty much had those only two, with the exception of a bottle of Emu.

Price does not determine a beer's quality. I wish I had had more time while in Australia.

An example of urine brew that you might be familiar with would be Tiger beer, which I was unfortunate enough to be stuck with in Singapore for quite a spell. All I can recommend about that brew is that it's suitable for brushing your teeth if the local water isn't potable.

[R1Ch0]

next time you're in sydney, try a coopers vintage extra strong, it's twice the kick of a normal beer and tastes excellent, although the down side is, it cost $22 AUD for a 6 pack.

[veeguy]

I was pleasently surprised while living in Kenya. I found 2 excellent brews from Kenya Brewing -Tusker Ale and Pilsner Whitecap beer.  Good warm or cold (I prefer warm).  They also brew a local version of Guiness Stout, but I've never aquired the taste for stout.

[knex_mepalm]

 Thanks for the info, the Tiger beer works wonders on pen marks on fingers and molotovs (not that I would make one). Nice beer knowledge, Switzerland and Germany produce top quality beer...to me.

[Zetheros]

"Not America bashing, just pointing out that the vast majority of beers brewed in America are good only for washing car tires."

And poisoning slugs in the backyard ;)