Fat tire cans?!

tdavisii said:

i know there are advantages.... but a CAN. You dont see a good trippel in a can of a real pilsner in a can. Like i said i want to see new belguim do well because of their ethics but come on. I hope i get use to it.

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tdavisii said:

You dont see a good trippel in a can of a real pilsner in a can.

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RC0032 said:

I would be ok if they lined the cans.

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RC0032 said:

I would be ok if they lined the cans.

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RC0032 said:

to the OP im sorry you have such a bad beer as a top beer

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Coastarine said:

Have you ever heard someone talk about a person who considers themself such a beer connoisseur that they alienated anyone who wanted to talk about beer with them?

That might be you.

Unless you were just ribbing in which case more smilies should be employed and this post ignored.

I think it's great news when a really good beer goes canned, and it is pretty rare. It's great news for the brewery especially, and a really good sign that the brewery is growing.

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mr_goodwrench said:

One of my favorite breweries, Oskar Blues, only packages their beers in cans. Never have to worry about skunked beer, and when you are going somewhere that glass isn't allowed, you can take along GOOD brews!!

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You Can Can Craft Beer
by Lew Bryson
It’s time to kill the myth that brew is better in bottles.

Two scenes. First, 30 years ago, I’m on a tour of Anheuser-Busch’s Williamsburg, Virginia, brewery when something went haywire on a huge canning line. In the few seconds it took a worker to hit the big red
STOP
button, more than 50 cans of Bud had been sliced open, spraying beer all over the floor. Canning was high-tech, high-speed, and very much big brewery.

Second scene, five years ago, at the Oskar Blues Cajun Grille and Brewery in Lyons, Colorado, brewery owner Dale Katechis lined up two cans and filled them manually with Dale’s Pale Ale, a full-fledged hop-snorter of a beer. He sealed them and, after filling four more, pulled plastic six-pack rings down on them. It was the beginning of what Katechis calls the “Canned Beer Apocalypse,” a name that was a reflection of how funny the whole thing seemed.

Putting craft beer in cans was just not something you did. Light beer belonged in cans, and frat boys crushed the empties against their heads. Craft beer belonged in glass bottles—which were better for the beer in some vague, mysterious way.

Like other things the craft-beer business put forth as dogma—blending batches is cheating, pasteurization of beer is always bad, a bit of variation in your beer proves that it’s handcrafted—that was more a case of making a virtue out of necessity. Canning equipment was wicked expensive and massive, with more capacity than craft brewers needed. Used bottling lines could be gotten cheap from all the small soft-drink bottlers that were going out of business. A few craft brewers had their beers canned at other breweries, but it was sporadic, and the product was aimed mostly at boaters, sports arenas, and airlines.

European brewers had been putting their craft-type beers in cans for years. Czech pilsners come in cans, you can pop the top on a can of Belgian witbier, and Guinness Stout was a pioneer with its funny little plastic widget inside the can for creating the famous Guinness “cascade.” There’s even a Belgian sour ale that comes in a can. But in America, there was a stigma to the can that just wasn’t going away.

Then in 2001, along came a Canadian company, Cask Brewing Systems, that had developed a two-head manual can filler. Cask Brewing cut a deal with Ball Corporation to make relatively small lots of cans—a 150,000-can minimum, about a semitrailer load, instead of the million-can runs that were the standard. Katechis received their brochure and laughed—his craft beer in a can!—and then stopped to think about it.

That pause was providential. Cans put Oskar Blues on the map. Originally a sideline, something for brewpub customers to take home, the unexpected popularity of the cans—coupled with the brewery’s excellent beer—has led to growth of 2,000 percent since that first fill in November 2002. They’re moving into a new, much larger brewery building this spring.

Katechis has become something of a can evangelist, and has encouraged other craft brewers to pack their beer in metal. Today the folks at Cask Brewing count more than 30 breweries that use their equipment, and the varieties that they can is tremendous. I just bought four cases of beer for a long weekend upstate—all cans, from three different breweries: I.P.A. from New England Brewing in Connecticut, pilsner and pale ale from Sly Fox in Pennsylvania, and Old Chub Scottish ale from Oskar Blues.

It just makes sense. The can is a superior package to the bottle. Cans are lighter and take up less space, making them cheaper to transport and store. They’re more durable once filled. Cans are completely lightproof, meaning the beer won’t get “skunked,” acquiring the nasty odor that comes from hops compounds breaking down in sunlight. Cans today come with a lining that keeps beer away from the aluminum, eliminating the metallic taste that used to affect canned beer. They seal up with very little air in the can, keeping the beer fresh longer. They’re even cheaper to recycle. Any “but it’s a can” stigma evaporates with the first taste of the emphatically nonmainstream taste.

It’s not clear if it’s a spreading trend, or just a package that works well for new niche players in the market. The established players in craft brewing are too big to make the switch to cans on a whim. They’re looking for a solid record before they purchase the expensive high-speed canners they’d need to accommodate their big supply pipeline—proof that canned beer is not just a gimmick. Smaller brewers without a bottling line can jump right to Cask’s low-cost canning setup, which is what you’re seeing for now.

Beer drinkers have taken to canned craft brews—cans sell as fast as brewers can fill them, and the doubters have faded away on the beer-geek discussion websites—but there’s not a lot of popping the top and guzzling from the can going on. “How many people buy a Belgian tripel and drink it from the bottle?” Katechis challenged. He advocates pouring the beer from the can into a glass.

That’s okay, but when I’m out “recreating” with a couple of cases of Sly Fox pilsner cans in the cooler, I don’t see any reason not to pop one open and enjoy it right from the can. Maybe it’s not at 100 percent full beer-geek enjoyment, but it’s quick, it feels normal, and it tastes good.

Katechis is right about one thing, though: “It’s kind of fun that you can smash one on your forehead when you’re done.” Light beer or not, boys will be boys.

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Top 5 canned microbrews

Lose the bottle opener: These microbrews are easy to drink and and open.

Canned beers have come a long way in the last half-decade or so, with many award-winning microbreweries now proudly packaging their brew in aluminum. And while the jury is still out on whether or not cans are truly more environmentally friendly than bottles, there's no denying that the two containers play on equal ground in terms of flavor.

Fuller's London Pride
(England; $7.99 per four-pack of 16.9 oz. cans)

You might not expect to find one of the most awarded and acclaimed ales in the U.K. in a can, but voila! This is a classic "best bitter," a brew style completely unlike pale ale, porter, or stout. It is dry rather than aggressively bitter, lightly fruity, and, to borrow a British phrase, immensely quaffable. With more than a century and a half of experience behind it, the Fuller's brewery is the last remaining family brewery in London.

Sly Fox Pikeland Pils

(Pennsylvania; $8.49 per six-pack)

While boring, weak, mainstream American lagers are often deemed "lawnmower beers," I've always thought the quenching, refreshing character of a good German-style pilsner like this was more deserving of the term. Aromatic, crisply flavorful, pleasingly bitter, and dry enough to slake the greatest thirst, this is simply an outstanding hot weather brew from a well-respected and family-owned brewery located not far from Philadelphia.

Young's Double Chocolate Stout

(England; $8.99 per four-pack of 16.9 oz. cans)

For those who swear they taste chocolaty notes in black beers, here's a stout that ups the ante by introducing actual chocolate into the mix. It is, not surprisingly, quite chocolaty in taste, but also mellow in character, with roasty, coffee, and faint spice notes and none of the cloying sweetness found in some chocolate ales. A lovely after-dinner treat.

Oskar Blues Gordon

(Colorado; $9.99 per four-pack)

From the pioneering brewery that helped rehabilitate the sorry image of canned beer in 2002, when it became the first craft brewer to can its ales, comes this heavyweight brew of the style sometimes referred to as "double" or "Imperial" IPA, thanks to its high 8.7-percent alcohol content and robust hoppiness. Expect chocolate, hazelnut, and raisin notes on the nose and a big body of toffee and berry flavors mixed with citrusy bitterness. Not for the faint of heart.

New Belgium Fat Tire Amber Ale

(Colorado; $16 per 12-pack)

What started as a cult canned ale among mountain bikers in Colorado in the early 1990s is now available for the rest of us. This isn't an intimidating beer in any way; just a slightly biscuity, somewhat toasty, and well-balanced amber ale with an abundance of the quality some critics refer to as "more-ish," meaning that one sip has you wanting more.

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tdavisii said:

Never thought id get so many responses. YES there is a different taste to a can IMO. There is a stigma attached to a can as well. Dont get me wrong i drink PLENTY of cans. Just was thinking out loud

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tdavisii said:

Hey now Revvy take it easy on bad mouthing that shlitz. That is high quality brew.

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CBBaron said:

I have 2 problems with beer cans.

2) I can't reuse them.

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Timberwolf said:

I did not think Flat tire was sold in Michigan. If so where can I get my hands on this beer. I keep hearing about from friends outside of Michigan.

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Edcculus said:

Don't forget the Maui Brewing Company

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John Beere said:

If I ever go commercial - which I am gaining momentum towards - I will immediately go to cans instead of bottles...

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david_42 said:

There are tremendous advantages to both the brewery and the consumer in cans. Cans are lighter, cheaper to transport, cheaper and faster to process, 100% UV opaque, and are far more likely to be recycled. They stack better in stores and don't break. Means wider availability, higher quality & lower prices.

Other than the "canned beer is bad" attitude, the main barrier is the number of cans a brewery has to buy in one shot. Even though there are smaller canning lines available, there aren't any can printers focused on small production runs.

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PseudoChef said:

La Folie in cans would be the most badass thing ever.

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