"Problem Children" CANs

I'm going with big stouts are fine in cans, maybe even preferable. Id be ok with barleywine and strong ales in cans too.
The line for me is sour/mixed firm /living beer. That belongs in glass. The extra acidity has me concerned about the lining and the metal can, and the living potential worries me structurally

 

Please stop.

 

i started a thread about ageing wild/brett beers in CANs, i got no action on this. since i have asked steve crider of 2nd shift about bridget and he says "drink fresh". i have never nor will i age a CANned beer. i am curious about others who have.

though the poster of the thread needs to talk to brewers on why liquid is being put in CANs. every brewer benefits in so many ways

 

Seems to me cans might be seen as safer than bottles. The cans, at least, display evidence that the worst might soon happen:
"expand their bottoms (!), accordion their lids, pooch their lids, square their lids to the worst - expand in a geyser-like fashion though their vent or the worst, peel the lid..."
Whereas a bottle appears "normal" right up until the explosion and the subsequent flying glass fragments.

The concept that cans are "unbreakable" is also faulty, as anyone who's ever dropped a can of beer in just the right (wrong?) way and experienced the spinning powerful spray of beer that results.

And there's the can that "lost" in a match-up with a worker's box cutter or forklift fork. I once saw a case of beer I wanted on a pallet on overhead shelf in a walk-in cooler. Reached up and grabbed it and as I pulled it down and it was no longer level I was showered with stale beer. Examining the case, I saw the tell-tale rectangular holes from a fork lift in the cans.

(And, no - I was offered neither a discount nor courtesy shower in the store locker room.)

But, I'm not anti-can at all - and nowadays buy most of my beer in cans --- and would buy more but some distributors and/or retailers still seem reluctant to carry bottles and cans of the same beer. Understandable, given the crisis in shelf space these days.

 

Known to be a potential problem for mobile canning lines.

 

Yes, please.

 

Live beers trying to get out of their cans? Obvious solution is to stick with dead beers, like stouts, porters, quads, etc.

 

CANs are an abomination, regardless of the style of beer they CANtain. They wholly disregard the most important segment of the beer drinking CANmunity: The crown-Cap collector! They are a sure sign of the decline of Western civilization and the end of history! We need to stand together to meet this scourge and do away with CANs entirely.

 

I prefer cans to glass personally, and there’s just too many positives to ignore. I can see the issue if the cans were unlined, but they haven’t been around in decades, the metallic taste kinda died in the 70s, probably earlier, but no real love for those old steel cans. But they were fun to try and crush them.

 

Happened to me recently thanks to Sly Fox's damn holder (I had a few of them break now, not sure what is going on there). One of my precious Helles beers broke loose from the carrier, hit the pavement and started shooting beer in a small but powerful stream. I refused to let this beer go to waste so I quickly dumped it into a glass and consumed it, wasn't too bad. But on the flip side a bottle may have completely broken and I would have no beer, you never know.

I do think that conditioned beers taste a little better from a bottle. I remember years ago when SN Celebration was first canned SN did say that there would be a taste difference and I found that to be true; it wasn't drastic or made the beer taste badly or anything but you could notice it.

Cans have their place and I love canned beer., big fan of how much lighter they are to transport I do like bottles too, though. I also find the pour from a bottle to be a little better than from a can, no matter how hard I try the bottle just comes out better.

 

They never existed. The first steel cans were lined (developing an adequate lining is what delayed the beer can, which came out long after canned food). American Can Co., creator of the first cans used by Krueger Brewing Co., called their lining "KEGLINED" - a vinyl compound developed by Union Carbide.

 

There you go, no reason to ever really dislike cans, those retro cans are quite stout and could take a beating. The only issue I’ve ever had with a can was my fault the can didn’t fail. I hit a can of 24oz BA Ten Fidy on the edge or the door and spewed beer all over my kitchen. That was the soy sauce episode and I can’t ever drink that beer again.

 

I prefer bottles myself. Cans are supposedly better as there is no chance of the beer being exposed to light. If there is a beer I want to try in cans, then so be it.

 

Yes. An area brewery in my neck of the woods uses CANs that have seams running vertically from lid to bottom that do not always provide a good seal. I've noticed these types of CANs from other breweries, too ... many from Texas and most of those are very young breweries. It all adds up to cheap CANs.

I love CANs, prefer CANs, but as many are pointing out, some beers feel like they belong in glass. Belgian abbey ales, farmhouse ales, big beers made for cellaring.

Also, what about bottle-conditioning? Do we know how well CAN-conditioning works?

 

Well, I'm a home brewer and I've never tried "can conditioning"!

 

When Crooked Stave first started to experiment with canning their brett and acidic beer, they’d send cans to Ball for corrosion testing and found can liners coming off. I couldn't tell you what developed from there.

Pendulums swing back, and if @woodychandler is having second thoughts of all people, then perhaps it's a very small sign of the start of consumers tiring of the rhetoric. I have no problem with canned or bottled beer. I buy both. The industry rhetoric around cans and the consumers' evangelical embracement of it is ridiculous. Sorry @woodychandler

Regarding mobile caning lines, yes, the concept will cause additional or different stress on the system, but another issue is that brewers can't exactly subscribe to the saying "the beer tells you when it's done" if the mobile canning line is scheduled to come on Wednesday. Having said that, I'm not foolish enough to think that brewers with in-house systems aren't subjected to their own production schedules.

Regarding fermentation in the package, not all cans and all bottles are created equal, but I'd be curious if someone has a link to any info regarding various pressure tolerances. Duvel Single being in a can and standard Duvel being in the characteristic Belgian glass bottle (that's designed to withstand pressure) can both be a case of marketing and image (and era)... but it's also easy to assume that the production differences are playing a role since normal Duvel undergoes second fermentation in the bottle in the warm room. I'd be curious to know if the unusually high carbonation of standard Duvel makes cans a non-option.

 

Right. Seems dangerous.

But isn't Sierra Nevada Pale Ale bottle-conditioned? If so, are the CANs?