Poll: Bottle or Can?

I am by no means an expert in the canning industry, but to my knowledge here in the USA there aren't any manufacturers able to do a BPA free can liner in a commercial scale. I could be mistaken, but to my knowledge this is the case. To your question about steel, yes there are several good companies that use steel for canned items: think green beans. The plastic liner material in this cans is WAY higher than in a beer can, and for a concern about BPA that would be a bigger issue. The thinness of the liner is one of the big concerns for us. The thin jet and denser the liner, the more hop aroma and flavor is lost or "scalped" due to absorption into the the plastic. We look at this a lot in bottle crown liners and although it may seem trivial, it's actually a big deal. Can come with all sorts of liner densities. Soda cans for example have a much thicker liner due to the high acidity of the product. We feel those liners would negatively effect beer flavor due to the loss of hop aroma.
Using a steel can without a liner or a thin beer-grade liner would impart lots of free iron into the product. Iron is one of the principal "beer killers" and is a compromise we're not willing to make. We don't support our beer being poured through chromed faucets because of iron pickup, and that is mere seconds of exposure. Cans would be much longer and a varying temperature.
As for the steel in kegs, kegs are stainless steel. Food grade stainless is very expensive (more expensive than copper at the moment) and also very hard to work with. It would be hard, if not impossible to make into a beverage grade can. Moreover stainless is also very heavy. It would increase the weight of a load of beer and probably negate the shipping saving in a can vs bottle argument, not to mention the environmental aspects of shipping weight in regards to cans. Thirdly, stainless is as easily recycled as aluminum beverage cans and not accepted in municipal facilities with a consisten standard.

Again, I'm not an expert on the subject, but have done a bit of work on the matter. We believe that the industry standard is the best available at this time. Is it perfect? Hell no, but we work with the product we have until we can get to the product we want. Every year this technology improves and sooner-or-later there will be excellent, cost effective, BPA-free materials available for all of us to use.

Bill

 

Chemophobes are a pet peeve of mine! Lol

 

It is always nice to see fellow BAs that are concerned about the environment. I do agree that the initial impact is heavily weighted in favor of glass due to the mining of raw material. If you want to eliminate the cost of transportation from the equation you may be missing a valuable consideration but even if you do there are some other issues to consider. When I began looking into this there were two points that I thought were pretty significant. The first was that the heavy weight and low value of glass for recyclers led to much of the glass making it to the landfill. The high value and low weight of cans makes them quite valuable to recyclers - more are recycled and fewer make their way to the landfill. Even though glass if a non-toxic material it still takes up space and leads to landfill expansion. It is also my understanding that the energy bill for recycling aluminum is significantly less than the energy bill for recycling glass. I think much of this problem could be addressed if industry could settle on a common size and shape foe glass containers and mandate that they be reusable. It would go a long way toward removing them from landfills and reduce the energy bill for recycling glass. Of course, there are many who would object to more regulation. But, without those changes, I think cans wind up being the better total life cycle choice.

 

bottles are better for some reasons and worse for others. but I still chose bottle because i'm more used to it I guess

 

Bottles....dont need chemicals leaching into my beer. Something about a bottle is better for me. Cans are for PBR and the like.

My favorite beer of the last year does come in a can so I can be persuaded


Just my opinion

Enjoy

 

Well, most glass is new glass. And only 30% of aluminum is from recycled. So it is convenient for folks who want to believe aluminum is better to ignore the actual costs of finding and processing new aluminum from bauxite, which is 70% of the aluminum used in the manufacturing mix. Need for bauxite is likely to increase in total tonnage, and impact, in future. This makes aluminum prohibitively expensive in terms of environmental impact. It is extremely unlikely that an increased recycling rate for aluminum will translate to a decreased tonnage of bauxite ore, since such a high percentage of it is needed to produce new aluminum products. That is my opinion about it based on reading I have done.

 

If I have to drink from either of those two vessels, bottle. But it all gets poured into a glass anyway.

 

Does it have beer inside?....then i like it..

 

With five pages of responses, I'm sure this is not the most original addition to the conversation, but...where's the "I don't really have a preference" option?

 

Your point about recycling is a good one. I don't understand why we don't just mine landfills after they close for all the recoverable metals and plastics. That said I still support bottles and refuse to buy cans because of BPA concerns. But as someone who is hoping for new technology that will eliminate BPA completely, I hope the industry can find a way to be both safe for humans and the enviroment.

You realize that BPA mimics estrogen, not every chemical is cause for concern but something that mimics female hormones isn't something I want.

 

I love bottles... Cans have tainted my brain with the taste of aluminum.

 

I understand that, but there are many chemicals that mimic hormones, are hormone interrupters or theoretically interfere with bodily functions. The question is whether or not you consume enough BPA from cans and other food safe plastics for it to have any negative effect. There is not any research that indicates BPA used in food safe plastics, cans etc. causes problems. From a scientific standpoint, I am not concerned until there is solid evidence suggesting otherwise.

 

You realize that hops mimic estrogen, too, right?

 

As with anything, the answer depends on many factors. However, I went with bottles, for nostalgia and the way they feel in the hand when pouring. Besides how would one collect the labels and caps from a can?

 

Bottles look better for those who save rare/interesting stuff.
Cans have lots of advantages, and I'd be all for shelf beers moving to cans.

 

That's why you pour it into a glass (It's what separates us from the animals!)!

Seriously, I once would have agreed with you, but I've had too many outstanding canned beers to not have grown out of my prejudices.

 

I'd say that's the post directly above yours.

 

The US brewing industry had a variation of that system - the "One-way" throw-away bottle only started outselling the deposit "Returnable" bottle in 1971 (not to be confused with the state mandatory deposit containers). Most of the bottles (primarily 16, 12 and 7 oz. brown long necks, some steinie 12 oz. and quarts, 12 oz. green and clear long necks, clear 12 oz. select bottles, etc) used were interchangeable between breweries.

Among the numerous reasons US brewers eventually dropped the package (by 2007, The Brewers Almanac listed Refillable bottles at "0.0%") that apply to this conversation was the cost (labor, transportation) of returning the dirty, empty bottles and the energy cost and high water usage rates of cleaning the bottles. So the fuel costs of both returning and cleaning the bottles has to be part of any "energy bill" calculation.

And, yeah, similar systems do still exist in Canada, Germany and elsewhere but rebuilding the system in the US would probably involve huge costs and consumer resistance to both returning bottles and buying beer in "used" bottles. Besides a few isolated cases of true refillable bottles by breweries (Straub, brewers who clean and re-use growlers, etc) Boston Beer Co. has apparently quietly begun to re-use some of their proprietary bottles according to their 2013 Annual Report.

Both production breweries that BBC owns, in Cincinnati and outside Allentown, PA, were built during the "refillable/returnable" era and might still have the original bottle washing equipment that was standard in pre-craft breweries.

 

Bottle, but cans are really growing on me.

 

Im all for cans. Protects the beer better from light contamination and I feel like they travel better than bottles.