Is there really in difference between beer in a can versus in a bottle?

Assuming a perfect situation, cans are not susceptible to oxygen or light, two very key things to avoid exposing to beer, on top of numerous other benefits like being lighter, higher resilience to drops/potential breakage, more space efficient (for shipping, shelf space and customer storage), more easily recyclable, etc.

I tend to speak the gospel of cans when talking to customers about packaging for beer. It's a bit harder for my... older... customers, who grew up in the era of canned beer generally being shit because of the packaging, being afraid of a metallic taste. Generally I dismiss their fears and tell them (in a nice way) to get used to beer in cans because that's where it's all going.

I say that there is no taste difference and I do not suspect that in a blind taste test, I (or really anyone) could definitely & accurately tell the difference between one beer from can and the same beer from a bottle. But I don't know that personally. It's eventually something I want to challenge myself on. For science.

 

I agree completely.

I would also say the opposite for Yuengling. I trust Yuengling more out of a can than a bottle. For reasons I’ll never understand, they won’t part with those green bottles.

 

For me, I don't really see to much of a difference. Convenience depending on what's going on is usually the choice.

 

Have you tasted a lot of skunked Yuengling beers?

Cheers!

 

Boy that cans a huge miss. Why not just stick with the iconic Green with a red dot?

 

Imo it moves too fast to skunk here, based on price it’s very popular. The only skunked beers I’ve ever had was beers like St Pauly Girl, Heineken in bottles, I’ve never had a skunked AAL of any flavor.

 

I wouldn’t say a lot, but certainly enough to avoid the bottles when possible. Like most, I doubt that it’s an issue on Yuengling’s end. Most likely it is probably a storage issue after it leaves there.

 

Well, back in the old days (>5 years ago) we were purchasing Yuengling by the case at our local Retail Beer Distributors and those green bottles were within enclosed case boxes. Nowadays six-packs (and singles) are easy to buy (well, they are for me) and those green bottles of Yuengling Traditional Lager are either sitting on retailers shelves or in glass door refrigerators getting 'bombarded' with fluorescent lighting which can cause skunking. I do not purchase six-packs of Yuengling Traditional Lager (not my favorite beer) so I was just wondering.

Cheers!

 

Are we certain they are being trucked? With this many bottles involved, maybe they are being loaded in train carloads for the shipments. I think we would agree that if both ends of the transport cycle are along a freight train line, that decimates the amount of CO² emissions. (Yes, a diesel train has emissions. But since it would run regardless of having a carload of reusable glass bottles in its consist, and the number of trucks it would remove from the route's highways, the amount of its CO² emissions should be close to equal.)
As for me, I crush the aluminum cans. I haul the crushed cans to T & Z Metals on west Parker Ave., which is 1½ blocks from Binny's Logan Square store, so you can likely conject I shop for more beer afterward. (If Illinois was a deposit state like Michigan or Iowa, this would be where I would return my empties.)

Well, to avoid straying too afar into that topic, I'll scribe that Yuengling's culture is resistant to change, even if that change might do it some good.
I still have downstairs in the basement cases of Yuengling reusable bottles bought from a distributor in Harrisburg, PA. on 24 October 1994, when I was motoring back to Chicago from our indoor soccer opening weekend games in Baltimore, MD. & Philadelphia, PA. {These were the games when I had Keith Kokinda testing doing play-by-play for us, and myself being the color commentator.}
I think this distributor no longer exists. If it does, it might be 'Fine Wine & Good Spirits', or somewhere near 29th St. I found it by reading the Yellow Pages® {remember that?} in my motel room. It was in northern Harrisburg. It was before I observed the Harrisburg HEAT's daily practice, when I got to speak with a few players, including Mark Pulisic, and John Wilsbach.
These bottles (both 12 and 16-ounce) are brown. If somebody | anybody wants to reuse them for homebrew, he | she is welcome to have them.

I have been binging on downloading craft beer podcasts when venturing to the local Chicago Public Library branch. One podcast (Steal This Beer), orbits around blind-tasting commercial beers that have been shipped to the hosts, John Holl and Augie Carton, for sensory evaluation. The beers are obliterated from visual identification by a 3rd person, Justin Kennedy. This sounds like a solid opportunity to judge if a craft beer is different from a bottle than from a can. I think Justin should endeavor to find both packages from a brewer (New Belgium, Avery, and Metropolitan put select brews into both containers.) and ship those to John & Augie.

 

Sierra Nevada can conditions Pale Ale.

 

Industry folks have told me that cans have higher TPO than bottles after packaging. No O2 gets into the can after that, while it does in the bottle, so the bottle loses its advantage in a short time.

When talking oxidation, how oxidized was the beer in the tanks? For NEIPA some brewers introduce O2 with the dry hops. Very early on in the craze I was traveling, and asked for a taste of one at a brewery I stopped at. The sample looked like gravey, it was oxidized on draft. Yuck. Color changes due to oxidation can happen over a day or so depending on amount and temperature.

There are canning lines, a there are canning lines. A local small brewery would work with the mobile canner to get TPO down, they owned a Dissolved Oxygen meter. After some time they bought their own canning line to keep the process under control. These are smaller lines that are a linear filler of multiple cans, then 1 seamer, so some cans are exposed longer than others.

Big breweries have canning lines with large rotating fillers. As @JackHorzempa said, it those are run too fast some of the foam can spill out the outside edge, leaving a space for air. One brewery I toured said they would run at 2/3 maximum to prevent that. Good QA.

Oh, @JackHorzempa, I've had a 20 year old Bigfoot in a vertical that was flat and oxidized. My wine drinking friends liked it as it was like port. There was a big difference in a 2007 to 2008 Bigfoot, as that was when the changed from twist off the pry off. Much bigger change in carbonation and oxidation when going 2006 to 2007, or 2008 to 2009.

 

Jeff,

After HomerecCon 2019 (Providence, RI) my wife and I travelled up to Canada for a week’s vacation. While visiting the beer garden of a small brewery on Cape Breton Island I struck up a conversation with a fellow beer drinker and I found out that he was the assistant brewer enjoying some beers after his shift was over. He volunteered to give me and my wife a private tour the next day which we gladly accepted. I posted in a past thread some aspects of that tour:

“While I was on vacation earlier this year I took a 'private' tour of a small brewery conducted by the assistant brewer. I pestered him with lots of questions on that tour and to his credit he responded to every one of my questions. He showed me the DO (Dissolved Oxygen) meter they had (I was impressed that they had this equipment - it is not a cheap device). He then showed me the four head canning line they had. The next exchange:

Me: Does your canning line meet your TPO requirement?
Brewer (with a sheepish expression): Well, we find that the cans from the first two heads meet spec but the cans of the last two heads exceed the amount we want for TPO.
Me: Do you sell a lot of beer via distribution or mostly on premise (at the taproom).
Brewer: Most of our sales are taproom sales.
Me: Well, most consumers drink their beers fairly quickly so they likely wouldn't notice the effects of the last two heads of the canning line.
Brewer: He just shrugged.

If most beer consumers drink the beer they purchase from their small, local brewery in a timely manner having a very low TPO during canning is not as critical as it is for distributing breweries where their beers may be consumed with many months of age upon them (like the Sierra Nevada beers at my local retailers).”

Cheers!

 

Bottle vs can is like the difference between flying 1st class and coach. Both are going to get you to the same place, the difference is in how much you'll enjoy the ride.

 

This came up in another thread not too long ago. My response: there is no questions in my mind that I have noticed far more quality control issues and inconsistencies/batch variation since the industry has moved to canning as the predominant vessel. Whether that’s the cans themselves or the canning process (most say the latter) doesn’t really matter to be at all. Bottom line is more of the product is affected negatively, which is a problem.

I’ll let zid, tolar and others explain (or at least propose possible explanations) as their responses are more educated than mine. All I know is that in my personal experiences I’ve had way more negative issues with cans than I ever had with bottles, and I know that is not a recall bias or a product of my imagination.

Also, being someone who very frequently ages beer, often for prolonged periods of time, I do worry how beers will age in cans. I know I know, no light and no air so they should age fine, if not better. But I am skeptical. I also worry how literal years in aluminum will impact taste.

 

Hell yes, I'll take a glass bottle every time over a can, and draft over a bottle. Too damn many beers tasting more like can and less like beer. I avoid them like the plague.

 

Well, the beer in a can is separated from direct contact with the aluminum by the plastic lining every beer can has had since the beginning. (Granted, others "worry how literal years in plastic will impact taste".)

 

I always preferred a bottle of coors light over a can of coors light. Gotta be cold as the rockies though!

 

I was waiting for someone to say that. In the last year, I have had many cans with black/brown crud in the rim, sometimes next to the opening. That said . . . I like bottles for beer, wine and whiskey.

 

Good point, but yeah same principal. I would imagine those can linings would last a long time if they are plastic but I guess that’s another factor to consider when aging.

 

Ah, really, I feel like I should know that! I found this article with some interesting details about can conditioning: apparently Fat Tire is can conditioned as well. Locally, for me, Trve Brewing is saving a lot of money conditioning in cans rather than bottles.

https://daily.sevenfifty.com/why-br...vada Pale Ale,experiences to the beach koozie.