"Problem Children" CANs

One day, when everything is in CANs, we will be here sharing our fondest memories of beer in glass vessels. Someone will come up with the idea of putting beer in those old dinosaur bottles... just a thought..

 

I've really bounced around with my love/hate affair with CANs actually. Started out hating, then appealing to them, now I just love their convenience and portability.

Part of that was to flat out stop drinking out of them, which works wonders for me.

 

Not the only Oskar Blues can to leak like this. Their Pale Ale did this to me, and not much of a drop. What was left of the leakers (was ******* me's fault when I dropped the cans and they bounced) tasted fine. I got around 2/3 of the two cans. Only cans which did this to me (and again my fault). I love the beer, the brewery. I'll still buy it canned if it's a style I like. The cans taking a tumble beats me getting bruised from a tumble or worse.

 

I don't know if this adds any value to the discussion, but here's a can with a clear side seam. I found this in the tucked away in a crawl space in my house years ago. House was built in the 60's, anyone know if that's the era of this can?

The funny thing is the rattle of the pull tab inside when you shake it.

 

Yes, but a seamed can, made from a flat sheet (as shown in the photos) must have a top and a bottom. Can anyone who has seen these aluminum cans with side seams explain how the base of the can is made/attached?

Yeah, the 3-piece steel cans were still being used by some brewers into the mid-1980s, even after other brewers began using aluminum cans in the 1960s. I'm sure there's info somewhere on when AB went all aluminum (and, it's possible that their breweries switched at various times based on can supplier, etc.) the fact that Williamsburg VA (opened 1972) is listed but Fairfield CA (opened 1976) isn't dates that can from the early 1970s

Putting the pull tab inside the can was an anti-littering move (I used to do it) - an unfortunate one for some people it turned out. Better to blow out a flip-flop than a trip to the emergency room.

 

Somehow I know you were the person who was going to answer that! And based on a quick google/ebay search, that seems right. And my can is in pretty good shape compared to a lot of others listed, I could probably fetch a firm $3 for this can

Yes, and a storyline of an Emergency! episode back in the day, when the fine paramedics of Station 51 responded to a call of a man choking on one. How I remember that but not what my wife told me this morning, I'll never know.

 

Yeah, 3 bucks.... maybe if it was "bottom-opened" with a can piercer and the "pop top" not popped (altho' I guess it gets value points back for containing the original tab).

I don't know, there are actual "Budweiser" breweriana collectors so maybe cans from that era are in demand because they used to list the actual brewing site first - so, yours being from the NH brewery in Merrimack, their smallest - is likely hard to find for a West Coast Bud Man...

 

I doubt it.

That's exactly what's happening with these "smoothie" beers. The sheer amount of sugar present in the packaged product pretty much means that there will always be an uncomfortably high risk of refermentation and explosion unless steps are taken to kill all yeast present. I've seen and heard of a lot of domed cans occurring, so this isn't just a process issue in crimping on can tops. Based on what you've written, I'm guessing your company uses a bath pasteurizer? If so, I'm curious as to your experiences with it, since this seems like the most economical and advantageous way for a small brewery to go about stabilizing these beers. How long/labor intensive of a process is it, relative to batch size? Do you experience much flavor change in the pasteurized product?

 

In the research facilities, I have both a hot tub and a tunnel available - right now with small batches we're using a water bath, which holds about 385 cans. We've had our thermal process conditions given to us, but to achieve target we hold cans at 160 F for 12 min, 45 sec. I'm sure I could challenge that eventually as we gain experience with the process, but would obviously need to prove it. I think for beer can go a bit cooler (memory failure here). There's a small change in flavor that gets more pronounced if the time is too long or temp is too hot. Basically a "cooked" taste.

There's ways to build spray cabinets which would be faster, probably better controlled, and you can recycle the hot water - pump, spray bars, in-line water heater, some temperature probes. Probes in the cans are a good idea too, but they get pricey pretty quick. There's a small spray booth pasteurizer available commercially that holds 100 cans and can be had bare bones or with full-on instrumentation with data recording stand alone - garden hose, air pressure, electricity - slick unit but 100 cans at a shot. We used a table we normally use for cooling hot bottles with cold water, and hooked it up to a controlled temperature hot water source we already have. Water recirculates at 180 F so we it our target can temps. But it took us a couple weeks to "pattern" the water flow so heat was evenly distributed when loaded. We made what we have out of what we had on hand, pretty much.

So labor wise - it takes ten-fifteen minutes to fill, about a half hour to heat up to the target 160 after the huge heat sink of 385 cans at 38 F goes in, then the 12.75 minutes, then another half hour or so to cool. One guy watches the clock, everybody pitches in to load/unload. We can do four batches in 6 - 7 hours. If we're filling well, we're usually a batch ahead - so we'll have the 385 in, and the next 385 filling and sometimes that catches up and we stock pile in our cooler. Usually by the time we're emptying the tub, the next 385 is ready to go. We could probably make it better, but the goal is to ultimately use the tunnel. The tub takes up probably 6 ft by 4 ft - the pasteurizer we draw the water from - huge, but we already had it and there's other, easier ways.

Spray is faster and more efficient, in my opinion - looking forward to trying the tunnel, actually. More efficient, but it does take up space. It heats faster/cools faster than a huge pile of cold cans becoming hot cans sitting in water will, so my residence time will be shorter to achieve the same kill rate. Our tunnel is a small one - guessing about 15 feet long by about 8 feet wide.

You have to know some values for the target organism (in our case, yeast/mold, spoilage and pathogens) to validate and verify the process meets requirements and have good temperature data to run the calculations (preferably from inside the can at the slowest to heat point). Then it is monitor, monitor, monitor to show it's repeatable - that took us about a month. And monitor while making real product too - it never ends. Either method, need to map the temperatures pretty accurately to ensure it's hitting targets for all the cans - can't have cold spots or cans not reaching target.

 

Yeah and so is New Belgium's La Folie, so Classic and maybe even Grand Cru could work in a can, but probably will not benefit from aging.

 

I prefer bottles over cans for no worries and aging beer. I have succumbed to cans since many great beers prefer this for their summer packaging. If Amy's canned soup can be BPA free, why not beer cans? I can't say cans ruin the taste of beer, but the plastic liner in the can is a bitch. Sort of like Teflon-