Craft beer has slowly begun to embrace cans. Until just a few years ago this was unthinkable. Canned beer represented everything better-beer activists opposed.
It was the small Oskar Blues Brewing in Lyons, Colorado that changed it all when they bought a $10,000 micro-sized canning line from Cask Brewing Systems. Sales have been exploding ever since, and profits increased by more than 100% in 2006.
I recently visited the Sly Fox Brewing brewpub in Phoenixville, PA. In addition to having a couple pubs, Sly Fox packages three of their beers in aluminum cans. I bought a bunch and what I didn’t drink that night with my Phoenixville host Terry Bishop, I brought home with me.
Tonight, I pulled out the last three cans, one of each, to do a little informal tasting all by my lonesome while my lady rests in a hotel in Dubai while in transit to Afghanistan:
Pikeland Pils, 4.9% ABV, 44 IBUs, Original Gravity 11.7 Plato
I’m afraid this tasted just like a canned light lager. I’m sure it tasted better when I first got it almost two months ago. But now it tastes metallic. Maybe the freshness made a difference and there’s more of an effect the longer the beer stays in a can. The best thing would be to do a blind tasting of the same beer, one example from a glass, one from a can, and one from draft.
Dunkel Lager, 5.3% ABV, 21 IBUs, OG 13 Plato
A unique ruby-copper color, shy of a porter but a deeper red than most amber beers. This one struck me and Terry both as the best of the three back when I first tasted them with him. It’s a light, smooth easy-drinking lager without the metal-edged bitterness of the Pils but with just enough body and roundness on the back of the tongue to make it interesting.
Phoenix Pale Ale, 5.1% ABV, 40 IBUs, OG 13 Plato
It’s a perfectly good pale ale. I’d even call it better than average. Moderate hoppy bitterness balanced with a malty backbone. Nothing out of proportion. A medium bodied American style pale ale that doesn’t go out of bounds with the hops.
Shake Your Can and Say Yeah!
Extra points to Sly Fox for listing the alcohol level, bitterness units, and original gravity on each can. The bitterness is nice to know since people have very different preferences. The original gravity seems less important since it’s main implication – alcohol content – is unknown unless they also include the final gravity and since they include the alcohol content anyway, original gravity probably doesn’t mean much to most beer drinkers. It does have some bearing on the overall body of the beer though so for some people it might be nice to know.
In general, sharing factual information about a product says to me that the makers respect their customers and would prefer to inform them rather than insult them with unfounded and ridiculous marketing bullshit like “made from the finest hops” or “guaranteed to get your jimmy thicker.”
Benefits of Beer in a Can
Even though I drank all three of these from a glass, there is something very satisfying about drinking beer straight from a can. I guess it’s just memories of college (okay, high school too) sitting around crushing cans with my feet or between the palms of hands (I never had the guts (stupidity? coordination?) to smash ‘em against my forehead). Holding a beer can just feels good.
There are also considerable environmental benefits to using aluminum cans rather than glass bottles. I actually devote a section of my book to this very topic. It turns out that glass, although it has certain aesthetic benefits, is a worse option for the environment, at least in most cases. Glass bottles weigh much more and take up more space, which means they require more fossil fuel to transport. Glass is also much less efficient to recycle.
From the moment they enter the curbside recycling bin, aluminum cans take as little as six weeks to appear back on the shelf as new cans. Glass is much more energy intensive to recycle and takes longer to get through the process. Glass growlers are an important exception – since they can be used over and over again and because they are filled with beer at local brewpubs, which means the beer isn’t traveling far. And there are real problems related to aluminum mining, whereas glass is basically liquid sand. But the benefits of aluminum recycling are so significant that only glass growlers are favorable environmentally.
Another factor in favor of cans is that they can go places bottles can’t. Cans are much less prone to break and they weigh less so it’s easier to take them places like outdoor events, camping, tail-gating, the beach, or wherever.
And the new small-scale canning lines cost a lot less than big glass bottle lines. Low-cost small scale equipment means more local pubs can afford to sell their beers to take out, which means more people are able to support local beers even when they aren’t physically drinking at the brewpub.
Oh yeah, in case the title of this post was confusing, it comes from the Steve Martin movie The Jerk. The protagonist believes that his stalker actually just hates cans because every time the stalker shoots at him Steve is near some cans. Who knows, some craft beer drinkers may actually hate canned beer enough to shoot at those of us who drink them.
But I’m a rebel, so to them I say: Go cans!
Well, the craft brewing industry will only demonstrate its maturity when a little paper umbrella pops out when you open a can of their special cocktail beer.
“The phone books are here! The phone books are here!”
(re: second to last paragraph)
“All I need is this thermos” . . . filled with craft beer!
hmmm, The Thermos is a good idea … if it works ..
Remember, it’s not the can, but the beer you put in it ! I’m looking forward to more good beer in cans. Oskars’ is a big BIG for me .. malty and hoppy.
Cheers !
So true!
The best way to serve a good beer is from a keg. Sorry.
We tried some bottling a bit ago, and it works well, but since we are home brewing we will reuse the bottles. What Germany does is ideal, 1, they have local brewers in almost every town, 2. you buy your beer (and every other drink) at a “getrinkt markt”, and you pay a deposit and bring back the damned bottles! They refill them at the LOCAL brewery.
The aluminum boxite industry is a horribly dirty and nasty industry. It’s just about as bad as the coal industry. I don’t like encouraging the use of aluminum cans, unless we can be sure that the aluminum will indeed be recycled. And I really wonder if the aluminum doesn’t affect the taste – and the nutritional value – remember they warn you not to cook certain things in aluminum pots. I’ve tasted a difference of beer in a can and in a bottle of non-craft beers, and I always taste the metallic taste. Now I don’t know if that isn’t just because I’m drinking from the can or what (since i’m literally tasting the metal before the beer hits my tongue.)
Glass is recycled too! I guess I’m must a big advocate of glass for beer. Now if we can come up with recycled bottles made of CORN, (not petroleum) products, I’m not sure how well they will hold beer, but I since plastic bottles hold coke, why not corn plastic bottles holding craft beer?
ok, I guess they can’t do those yet (bottles out of corn plastic). But here’s an interesting article on corn plastic. There are problems with it, but it may end up being the wave of the future.
For that matter, why isn’t beer in plastic bottles (which is now fairly recyclable). It can house soda, so why not beer? Does it affect the taste?
A little research (I mean VERY little) revealed to me that because of beer’s sensitivity to oxygen, unlike soda or bottled water, the industry (at whatever level) has not put beer in plastic bottles. However, the plastics industry (yes, I QUAIL at using them as a source) claim that there are new plastics that will be capable of bottling beer. Miller is now going to start putting their beer in plastic bottles at stadiums. It’s a controversial move in some ways, because more plastic bottles will be tossed in landfills, but on the other hand, with the mandatory recycling laws that are popping up all over the country, it might be more environmentally friendly than even the corn plastic concept, at least for now. Apparently, PET products are far easier to recycle at this point than their corn equivalents. Corn plastics need at least 140° to degrade in a landfill – over a week, and most community composting sites don’t go to that kind of temperature. (And home composting systems don’t work). If the temps don’t get that high then corn products will last about the same amount of time as PET products do. Which is unknown, estimated at 1000 years. Currently there are only about 113 recycling centers that can handle corn plastic products. Hmmm. wonder if this would be a problem for hemp based plastic?
Eventually, we will have the technology to handle corn based plastics. In the meantime, it’s probably worthwhile encouraging using recyclable plastic for beer, if we can be sure it won’t affect taste or leach into the beer. Or just stick with glass or kegs (which is my decision).
Glass recycles pretty well.
Hi Chris… doing research tonight… so here I am again.
The problem with using aluminum is two-fold. Even though recycling aluminum cans uses 5% of the energy and produces 5% of the waste that fresh mining of aluminum boxite mining produces, the fact is that 800 million tons of aluminum cans are NOT recycled every year. Even though recycling aluminum cans is the best recyclng method in the country, people just don’t do it. They need an incentive. Money might work.
This is a press release, so I think I can repost it under fair use:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 17, 2006
CONTACT:
Jenny Gitlitz, CRI Research Dir., Dalton, MA (413) 684-4746
Pat Franklin, CRI Executive Dir., Washington, DC (202) 263-0999
Glenn Switkes, IRN Latin America Dir., Sao Paolo, Brazil 011.55.11.3822.4157
Peter Bosshard, IRN Policy Dir., Berkeley, CA (510) 848–1155
[...] makes that “canned” beer taste a thing of the past. Plus, there are now several fine craft breweries canning their beer. Just a few weeks ago I attended a tasting with the brewery/owner of Oskar Blues – the first micro [...]
[...] because he lives about five minutes down the road from a great brewpub in Phoenixville, PA called Sly Fox Brewing. I’ve spent a couple memorable afternoons and evenings there with him and wish I had that [...]
Recycling is unbelievably important, today more than ever. It makes me very happy to discover resources like this on the net today providing free information for the masses. I just wish there were even more people making such positive contributions to the internet. Thanks for the info.
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