can beer is "flatter" than the same in bottle

Yup and Nope.

 

Your argument is still flawed in saying that cans are less carbonated in general

 

The discussion was about CO2 level, and that can be quantified in the bottle, can, or keg. Brewers use a device called a Zahm and Nagel tester to measure the CO2 right out of the brite tanks.

Edit, unless one tastes the sample in a blind triangle taste test, then the taste is biased.

 

All I'm saying is three beers doesn't not represent the carbonation levels in all cans versus bottles. Of you took say 1000 bottles and 1000 cans of a few different beers, then I would give you credit.

 

Actually, no, the implication of my comment is that the brewery has a target carbonation level when the container is filled, regardless of which container is being used. When the bar puts beer through their lines the CO2 and pressure are used to prevent oxidation of the beer and to keep the carbonation at about the target level. Tap lines under pressure do not increase the carbonation level of the beer, they do help prevent loss of carbonation. So your inference isn't correct.

 

I love canned micro beer. I'm looking forward to Sam Adams Oktoberfest cans.

 

A few years back, a group of us here in SEPA decided to address the issue of whether beer from can or bottle differed because of the container. One readily available beer that comes in both bottle and can is Yuengling Lager. Indeed, Yuengling Lager is so common in this area of PA that you can walk into many places and say for "pour me a lager" and you'll be served Yuengling.

Doing a blind tasting (with plenty of water and some low sodium water cracers to reset the palates) there were six people involved. They had varying degrees of experience with craft beer but all had had Yuengling Lager before and some were convinced they could pick up a metallic taste from the canned beer. The canned beer and the bottled beer were purchased from the same distributor and they were canned/bottled withink 3 days of each other.

Plastic tasting cups were used for each and each taster had 3 samples of canned and 3 samples of bottled but without knowing which containers the sample was from. The 6 samples were poured by someone who was not engaged in the tasting. In addition, the order of samples was random for each taster. Each taster was allowed to freshen their palate between samples with the spring water and/or the water crackers. On the rating forms used samples were idenfied as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. After finishing each sample, eachtaster was asked to decide if the sample just consumed was from the can or from the bottle.

Effectively the tasters were at chance level when identifying whether the samples had come from a can or a bottle. Even the tasters who went into this event believing that the can added a metallic taste to the beer could not tell the difference...

 

It's not that cans are more expensive--in fact, it's just the opposite. Both making and transporting cans is a lot cheaper than bottles (storing too!). But most small breweries do not have a dedicated canning line and contracting out requires a greater commitment than they usually can give. A company that's used to small batches may have concerns about contracting someone else to make a much larger batch for them, as this may significantly affect the contents. So you have to have distribution lined up and be certain of the recipe before you can line up for canning, unless you start with a canning line from the beginning and have full control of it.

 

Your test may scientifically prove something but it doesn't answer the question at hand for the following reasons:
1. You should have EXACTLY the same beer in the cans and bottles. This means the beer needs to come out of one pipe and supply a bottle line and a can line at the same time. In the big scheme of things only a brewery worker can get these samples.
2. Taste testers should be asked to discern differences in CO2 level. That's not the same as asking "was it a can or was it a bottle?"

 

Pouring beer properly requires skill & knowledge.....or on occasion, luck.

 

I remember Sierra Nevada Bill saying something about beer in cans, so I searched for it. I don't think this the exact one I was looking for, but it still has a lot of good info (though much of it won't make sense out of context).

 

Aha! I found the one I was looking for. Completely relevant to this topic; especially the second paragraph.

 

Re 1: Short of owning a brewery it is hard to do it that way, and for most pracitcal purposes it was the same beer and the goal was not to produce "exact" results. Approximate results in a blind tasting give us more information than the tests reported by the OP.
Re 2: Asking the more specific question is definitely desirable as it specifes which difference is crticial and reduces ambiguity, but it is still worth knowing that the tasters reported no difference and one could argue that a radical difference in carbonation/mouthfeel would be detected and reported as a difference between samples.

While it may not answer EXACTLY the same question being asked the results are more meaningful than observations made while pouring two different samples of unknown ages from two separate containers at two separate times.

Finally it was not claimed that the results address EXACTLY the question being discussed. The implication of making the post is that the results are relevant if not definitive.

 

I've got Zahm/Nagel CO2 testing experience in a large brewery. I would not deem it ya'lls "favorite brewery." What I say will just add to the confusion but here goes.
1. The Zahm device is a simple piercing device with a pressure gage and a thermometer built into it. It is used to pierce the bottle crown or can lid and then measure pressure and temperature. Before reading temp and pressure the containers are heated to around 68 degrees and shaken vigorously for maybe 10 seconds. Once you know the pressure and temp, you consult a chart and you get your answer which is in volumes of CO2. Every beer/package has a CO2 spec which has a spread of, perhaps, .20 vols. (the beer is heated to 68 degrees because the chart is based on 68 degrees. Based on my Coca-Cola days of long ago I still remember that a pressure of 39 and a temp of 60 equals 3.60 vols. And 50# and 75 degrees equates to 3.75 vols. I also remember that 12.01 ounces of Coke weighs 369 grams and 12.13 ounces of Coke weighs 373 grams. But I digress.
Other electronic CO2 measuring devices are out there but I never liked them. They get out of calibration and you don't know it, are expensive and require a technician to repair. What can be simpler than a gage and a thermometer?
2. Running the exact same beer which is feeding 2 or more lines? There is a significant "apparent" CO2 difference from one package SIZE to another size. The bigger the size, the higher the "apparent" CO2. I always called this an "apparent" difference because the beer was the same beer but in different size packages. In fact, our CO2 specs reflected this difference in package sizes: 7 oz bottles had a much lower CO2 spec than 32 oz. bottles. This CO2 difference was deemed to be due to the vagaries of package volume and headspace and had nothing to do (we thought) with differences in actual CO2 content or "fizziness."
There very well may be a difference in "apparent" CO2 between 12 oz. cans and 12 oz. bottles. I recall that based on thousands of tests there was a slight difference between package types but I don't remember and I don't want to guess. Again, this would be an "apparent" difference and would not answer the question before us. In conclusion, Zahm/Nagel results will not help us answer this age old mystery.

 

Ha! Even Shiner brewers want better beer.

I'm kidding, of course. I have no idea which brewery you work for or which beer you contribute to. But thank you for the post. Gotta love the max'ed out geekiness factor...

 

Put out an APB on all breweries about to spend millions on a canning operation.

I've had enough beer in cans to say if there is a difference it's far beyond my capabilities to detect it. I actually prefer cans to bottles.