Can your bike rack handle a six pack?

My cheapo bike bag holds exactly a six pack.

The measure of a good bike rack is its ability to carry a six pack of beer. That was my minor epiphany a year or so ago while wandering the aisles of the North American Handmade Bicycle Show in San Jose. In addition to the extraordinary bicycles on view—from Calfee's incredibly cool and exceptionally beautiful bamboo number, to the precision workmanship of cult frame maker Richard Sachs—I was captivated by a bicycle rack made by Ahearne Cycles of Portland. Ahearne's rear half rack, with exotic purple-heart wood base, held a full half case of bottled beer (Fat Tire, of course). It even had a bottle opener welded into its elegant, yet utilitarian, metal frame.

Most bike racks can't do much better than a six pack, but when you think about it, a six pack is actually a fairly good unit of measure. If your bike rack can carry a six pack of bottled beer, that probably means it can also carry a half gallon of milk and a small box of breakfast cereal. Out of flour for that batch of pancakes you promised to whip up for the kids? No problem. Need a bag of ice to make sure that extra six pack you toted earlier in the day is nice and cold when friends stop by? Done. In short, if you can transport a six pack of beer on the back of your bike, there's probably a lot of other stuff you can carry, which means there are that many fewer times you need to get into your car to drive to the store for this, that, and the other.

If you are a bit more ambitious, you could order one of those Ahearne rear half racks combined with a front grocery rack, which is designed to hold a sack filled with bread, eggs, cheese, wine, and darn near anything else they sell at your local market. Or consider the basket bike from ANT, whose 20" front wheel creates a void in the bicycle's profile for an extra-deep basket that can hold three to four bags of groceries, which is a whole lot of beer. 

Amount of carbon dioxide not produced since July 10, 2008 thanks to commuting by bicycle: 24.76 pounds