Beeramid (beer can/bottle + pyramid)

A “beeramid” is a “beer can pyramid” (although beer bottles are sometimes used). The bottles are usually stacked empties. The term “beer can pyramid” has been cited in print since at least 1972 and “beeramid” since at least 1984.
 
“Beeramid” is also the name of a drinking game involving playing cars in pyramid form.
 
 
Wikipedia: Beer Can Pyramid
A beer can pyramid, often called a beeramid (a portmanteau of “beer” and “pyramid”) is a pyramid made from discarded beer cans.
 
Found in places frequented by drinkers, a large beer can pyramid was often a monument to the local party scene. Inspired by films such as National Lampoon’s Animal House during the heyday of party culture, beer can pyramids were most frequently seen during the late 1970s, the 1980s, and the early 1990s, and could often be found in fraternity houses, dorms, and other collegiate locations throughout the US, and other places where canned beer was consumed in volume. Beer can pyramids are rarely erected in commercial establishments, however, due to the potential impedance to service and possible liability of the owners. Although occasionally retailers stack beer packages in elaborate ways in an effort to gain consumer attention, these would not be considered normal beer can pyramids.
 
Drinks Mixer
BEERAMID (drinking game)
1 deck of cards
4-8 players
1. The dealer lays out 15 cards in a pyramid form and deals 5 cards to each player face down. Each card in the pyramid represents one drink. ...
     
18 May 1972, The Daily Messenger (Canandaigua, NY), “Taking A Look AT Indy With Kathie Meredith,” pg. 7, col. 4:
... build pyramids out of beer cans, ...
 
16 June 1972, The Hawk Eye (Burlington, IA), pg. 3, col. 7 photo caption:
A Steamboat Days record…of sorts
As far as can be determined, a new record in beer can pyramid building was established in the Steamboat Days beer garden tent Thursday night. The stack was 20 cans high with a 21-can base, which, according to one observer of such majestic monuments, was $27.50 worth of brew.
   
20 November 1973, Springfield (MA) Union, “People’s Forum,” pg. 6, col. 5:
I’ve seen some strange sights along the way too, like beer-can pyramids at the rest stops and couples necking in the emergency lanes, even an occasional sleeping state trooper.
(...)
BOB GUYETTE
Greenfield
 
25 May 1975, Dallas (TX) Morning News, “Questions: Not Answers” by John Neville, pg. C3, col. 4:
Why do people build beer-can pyramids in their apartment windows?
 
Google News Archive
23 August 1978, Pittsburgh (PA) Press, Suburban South-West, pg. 1, col. 1 photo caption:
SUPER STACKERS—When the locust sings and summer plays out its long, lazy days, children waiting for the school bell seek new forms of amusement. From such leisure came a beer can pyramid in Carnegie.
 
Google Books
Texas Crude:
The how-to on talkin’ Texan
By Ken Weaver
New York, NY: E. P. Dutton
1984
Pg. 64:
Joe-boy’s crazy. He likes to set three tallboys next to each other, then put two regular cans on top of ‘em, and then set one of them little six ounce cans on top. Calls it a ‘beeramid’.
 
Google Books
Doonesbury: A New Musical
By Elizabeth Swados and G. B. Trudeau
New York, NY: Samuel French, Inc.
1986
Pg. 50:
Zonker. Oh. I’m building a beer can pyramid.
 
23 June 2002, Charlotte (NC) Observer, “Carolinas High School Graduates Cut Loose on the Grand Stand,” pg. 1G:
He and his friends, though under the legal drinking age, built a “beer-a-mid” monument to their week.
 
Google Books
Fell in Love with a Band:
The Story of The White Stripes
By Chris Handyside
New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press
2004
Pg. 65:
The evenings would start civilly enough, to be sure, but it wasn’t an uncommon sight by the end of the evening to have beeramids as tall as men and drunken declarations of love and war that would be forgotten once Thursday morning opened its sleep-encrusted eyes.
 
Google Books
Baltimore Beer: A Satisfying History of Charm City Brewing
By Rob Kasper
Charleston, SC: The History Press
2012
Pg. 106:
The guys I ran around with when we went “down the ocean” to Ocean City used to make “beeramids,” structures similar to the Egyptian pyramids, except these were made out of beer cans.
   
New York (NY) Post
‘Power’ chords
New song cycle pays tribute to collegiate drinking game
By LARRY GETLEN
Last Updated: 11:56 PM, February 18, 2012
Posted: 9:39 PM, February 18, 2012
If you’ve ever been blotto enough to drunk-dial your boss, desecrate a statue or ask a cop to hold your beer, then Ali Spagnola has a song for you. Her new record, “The Power Hour Album,” features 60 one-minute songs that take the listener through the arc of a “power hour” — which, as any college student knows, is a game in which masochistic drinkers down one shot of beer every minute, 60 times in a row.
(...)
As fans consume more beer and gather empty bottles, she encourages them to play the dead soldiers like percussion instruments and build a “beeramid” [a pyramid made of beer bottles].
 
Y! Screen
Kaboom: Beer-A-Mid
5 days ago (September 10, 2012), Eyeboogie Kaboom
Kaboom features a gorgeous host Tara Conner and explosives expert Rene Diamante. The concept is simple and impossible to resist: Ridiculously fun objects getting blown to smithereens. On this episode the duo blow up a pyramid made up entirely of different beer bottles. Hence a Beer-A Mid!