thoughts on craft beer in cans

When you drink out of a can, you're smelling aluminum. Anything you're smelling during the time of tasting inevitably becomes part of the flavor. So you're tasting a hint of aluminum (not in the beer, but because of what you're smelling!). Glass has no odor, so you're only smelling and tasting what the brewer intended for you to smell and taste. Canned and bottle beer are made the exact same way, there is no physical difference.

 

Obviously we need to find out more about Keystone's "specially lined can". They obviously were on to something.

 

Not sure if your being sarcastic or not, but we really should look to macro brewers to develop better liners. Not only do they have a much bigger budget for research, they also have a product that has almost no flavor, which means the taste of the can will show up more easily in their beer. I think one day cans will be the way to go, I just don't think we're there yet, more work needs to be done removing the BPA and other bad residues left during the can making process. I also can't count the number of times people make the keg argument, for all of you that do, kegs are made of stainless steel (best choice) or non BPA plastic (not bad but I'm afraid of plastic letting air in over time), while they might exist I have never seen an aluminum keg.

 

Speaking in terms of BA ratings, I always thought Sculpin was a 3.75.. Until I had it from a can.. It is now a 4.25.

 

Yum

 

Love Cans!

 

Cans are better for the beer...but I sure wish that Lemongrass Saison would come in a bomber sized bottle! One can is not enough.

 

not a big fan of cans I think beer tastes better from a bottle and to be honest it looks better too.

 

how about drink two cans?

you drink from the bottle?

 

I love my Oskar Blues growler. Metal, of course.

 

I was about as anti-can as they come until recently. Shitty beers taste like the can, but craft brewers seem to be aware of that these days and are either lining the cans or treating them to prevent the taste. I was damn sure that there was no way Heady Topper could be better than Pliny the Elder solely because of the can. Boy was I surprisingly wrong!

 

Cans make less noise than bottles when I'm dumping a big pile into my recycling bin. I vote cans.

 

A while back when cans where first introduced I hated the idea. As mentioned in above posts for me it used to devalue the goodness of a great craft beer. Thought being that imagine asking for a serving of wine at a restaurant and having a wine can cracked at the table. Felt awkward seven thinking about it. In recent years I've grown to really appreciate the canned brew simply thinking of it as a decanter. Beer in cans is a great thing. Keeps light out and is much more versatile. Im a huge fan now.

 

I think it would be interesting for a brewery to do a limited run on their most age-able beer in 16 oz stainless steel cans solely for the purpose of long term ageing. A stainless steel can might be the perfect vessel for ageing a nice robust IPA.

 

The fact that Heady comes in a can isn't what makes it better than Pliny, it's just a better brew period, since Heady isn't available in bottles, not sure how you would know how Heady tastes from a bottle.

 

I would love to see this happen, preferably a barrel aged imperial stout and if they use the same grade of stainless as kegs, I'm 99% sure this would work since kegs seem to age well. I don't think it will happen though due to cost.

 

In the US post-Repeal era, aluminum kegs, along with carbon (unalloyed) steel and laminated wood kegs, were used until the industry settled on stainless steel as the primary replacement of the traditional wooden keg. Here's a list of the keg material along with their pluses and minuses from the 1947 edition of the MBAA's The Practical Brewer:


IIRC, aluminum kegs lasted into the 1970s-80s (?) but do not know what sort of lining, if any, they had.

 

I agree, it is better. But to think anything would be better than Pliny was hard enough, let alone something in a can. And I never said Heady was in a bottle or implied that I ever had it in a bottle. I would suggest more comprehension and less dickery.

 

Sorry wasn't trying to be mean just made the assumption since you thought the can is one of the things that made Heady better, also wondered if maybe the Alchemist used to can it and you actually got to try it out of a bottle, I wish the Alchemist would do a small batch bottling so people could compare side by side.

 

Thanks for the information, I wasn't aware of that. Do you know if any brewers still use them?