best beer you ever had from a can

[munche]

It's been said, but cans are better in pretty much every way. If you're the type of person that worries about can flavor, then you should be the type of person who carries around a glass even on party nights. I never drink from the bottle/can. You don't get the aroma or the visual aspect!

 

[billtzk]

Yes..............BUT. Suddenly, we have no place to recycle bottles. At least in our area, the cost of recycling glass became prohibitive for any of our facilities. No one that I know of (within 100 miles) will take any glass of any type.

I live in a big city, which probably makes it reasonable for the recyclers here to recycle glass due to the volume and economies of scale. The city contracts with a waste company that picks up both garbage and recyclables. They send two different trucks around, weekly for garbage, every two weeks for recyclables.

Everyone is issued two 90 gallon garbage cans, one green and one blue. The green one is for non-recyclable garbage destined for the land fill. The blue one is for recyclable materials, including clean plastics #1 through #7, tin cans, aluminum cans, glass bottles and jars, paper cartons, newspapers, junk mail, paper bags, cardboard boxes, etc.

When I stopped bottling full time, all but my most favorite bottles went into the recycle bin over a period of several weeks. About 400 bottles.

 

[Jaysus]

Tons of info about GOOD beer in cans here: http://www.craftcans.com/

 

[billtzk]

I've been doing a lot of reading, and I'll concede that there is a lot of evidence that cans are environmentally better than bottles and are also better for the beer. I still prefer a bottle.

That said, I've never seen any craft brews in cans around Dallas. Just a few English imports. So perhaps the can craze hasn't caught on here. I might be looking in the wrong places. Anyone in the DFW area know where to get good craft beers in cans?

I can my own beer these days, but the can is a 5 gallon soda keg.

 

[Krudler]

[edit]wrong thread, sorry

 

[jessup]

long live old chubb!!:rockin: oh, and being able to get brooklyn brewery lager @ citifield because it was in a can. priceless.

 

[AnonyBrew]

We have a local brewery called SanTan that cans their beers.

 

[Saccharomyces]

If I had a brewery I would put in a canning line. It's a superior package all around... no oxidation, less weight to ship, less space to store, no skunking problems. The up-front cost is greater ($180K vs $80K for an entry-level automated line), but over the long term I imagine it would be cheaper for the brewer, too. Bottles are really expensive.

 

[Wayne1]

Initial buy in for cans are still on the high side. Minimum of 100,000 per label. That takes up a fair amount of space.

I did see Blue Moon in cans on the last trip to my local liquor store.

 

[JonK331]

Anyone had Caldera? That is awesome canned beer as well. Maui Brewing also cans.

 

[chumprock]

Holy cow.. giant cans are giant.

 

[klyph]

I've said it before, but...

If anyone makes a cheap home can seamer and sells smaller quantities of cans, I think the homebrew community could make him a rich man.

 

[dummkauf]

Thanks to you and this damn thread I had to stop at the store on the way home and grab a couple 4 packs of surly cans

 

[Sea]

Anyone had Caldera? That is awesome canned beer as well. Maui Brewing also cans.

Yeah, they're canning it a few miles from my house.

They don't bottle because of the expense.

One of the owners told me over a beer at the pub that canning was a drastically cheaper option for them, so they went that route. Thus I'm puzzled by all the posts saying it's more expensive.

 

[munche]

Yeah, they're canning it a few miles from my house.

They don't bottle because of the expense.

One of the owners told me over a beer at the pub that canning was a drastically cheaper option for them, so they went that route. Thus I'm puzzled by all the posts saying it's more expensive.

From what I've gathered in the thread, it's a bigger initial investment so it's not feasible until a brewer is selling at a certain volume. As someone who never has room in my fridge for all the damned bottles, I welcome the canned movement with open arms.

Although Caldera's pale ale can is ugly as sin. Looks like store brand grape soda:

 

[mikeysab]

well, the title of this thread is a little misleading. Although there are amazing beers in cans, not all canned beers are amazing. I'm working on a variety 12er from Butternuts brewery, and they all taste kinda bland. I've been sick, so maybe my smell/taste buds are not working well. The Pork Slap isn't nearly as flavorful as I remember, which makes me think my cold is killing the tasting part of it. Then I think to myself that my mother in laws meat sauce at dinner was pretty darn tasty, so maybe the buds are working fine. I don't even know what I'm talking about.....g'night.

 

[permo]

Surly. That is all.

+1, abrasive, bender, coffee bender, furious, bitter brewer..etc,etc..etc..

I don't often buy beer, but when I do it is usually a four pack of surly cans for inspiration......I love how they use oats in EVERYTHING!

THe only offering of theirs I don't like is this year fall beer surlyfest of whatever they call it...it just tastes wierd to me. Nothing a can of furious can't make me forget though.

When I live out in western new york, I drank a bunch of canned pale ale called porkslap I think...it was awesome, citrus and apricot notes...with caramel.

 

[wedge421]

Yep the one and only problem with cans is im not sure that "bottle conditioning" is possible but im not sure

 

[Jaysus]

Initial buy in for cans are still on the high side. Minimum of 100,000 per label. That takes up a fair amount of space.

That (and the inability to change the 'label') is the main inhibitor to more breweries not canning. Actually canning lines take up next to no space in comparison to bottling lines.

 

[SkinnyShamrock]

My rant about bottles:

If you were a venture capitalist and someone came to you and said they were starting a company, and that they were going to manufacture a product, your next question would be, "How are you going to package it for sale?" They reply, "I'm going to put it in the most expensive, environmentally-unfriendly, expensive to ship, bulkiest, fragile, unstable, dangerous, least-recyclable container I can find, which has to be filled by incredibly large, noisy, complex, expensive, power-sucking machines, and then has to be labeled with messy quasi-toxic glue and expensive labels."

You would laugh in their face. But somehow, breweries get loaned money all the time to do just that.

Stigma or no stigma, cans are simply the best option. If you take a canning line and a bottling line of the same price, the canning line will be half the size, less complex (and therefore less likely to break), and MUCH faster. Cans are cheaper than bottles outright. They do not shatter into a billion pieces when dropped, throwing tons of harmful dust and shards everywhere. Bottles are very top-heavy, and like to tip over on conveyors for no reason at all, causing lots of stoppage and therefore lost productivity and money. More communities recycle cans, and it is cheaper for them to melt aluminum down than glass. They are quieter. Cans can be packed more efficiently, and therefore shipped more efficiently, saving money. They are pre-labled, eliminating the need for a labeler. They cool off faster in a cooler or refrigerator.

End rant. Thanks for listening.

 

[slowbie]

I don't often buy beer, but when I do it is usually a four pack of surly cans.

The most interesting homebrewer in the world.

 

[plaidpaint]

They cool off faster in a cooler or refrigerator.

They also warm up faster once you've taken them out to drink them

 

[permo]

Yep the one and only problem with cans is im not sure that "bottle conditioning" is possible but im not sure

New Belgium claims that their fat tire cans are "can conditioned" with a dose of yeast. To be honest, I find the fat tire cans to taste much, much, better than their bottled or draft counterparts.

 

[Jaysus]

They are pre-labled, eliminating the need for a labeler. They cool off faster in a cooler or refrigerator.

What if you want to change the label?

 

[dummkauf]

New Belgium claims that their fat tire cans are "can conditioned" with a dose of yeast. To be honest, I find the fat tire cans to taste much, much, better than their bottled or draft counterparts.

I don't know why you wouldn't be able to "can condition" if you had a canner. The cans have to be able to withstand the pressure, otherwise all cans would be flat. Plus if you overprimed a can, I would picture a hole just blowing out the side, as opposed to glass shards flying everywere with a bottle, sounds like a much safer option in my opinion(assuming you are setup to can)

 

[logan3825]

I don't expect New Glarus to come in cans anytime soon. I asked last time I did the brewery tour and Dan Carrey doesn't like cans. They probably don't want to spend the money either. They just built a new brewery a few years ago.

 

[dummkauf]

I don't expect New Glarus to come in cans anytime soon. I asked last time I did the brewery tour and Dan Carrey doesn't like cans. They probably don't want to spend the money either. They just built a new brewery a few years ago.

Either that or just the snobbery the OP was pointing out is preventing them from doing so as well. While the folks on this forum may think this through, the berwery needs to sell beer to stay in business, and regardless of a cans superiority to a bottle, whether it is superior or not doesn't matter, the vast majority of folks who are buying craft brews, have it in their heads that bottles = better beer. Regadless of the facts, the breweries will sell what the majority of the demographic they are aiming for want, and for "craft" breweries, that will likely mean bottling for a long time to come.

 

[logan3825]

I doubt staying with bottles is because of people who drink exclusively craft beer or people who post on these forums. I think staying with bottles would be aimed more at the people they are trying to bring over to craft beer. Those are the people who are less educated on beer in general. I will say that I think drinking beer out of a bottle does taste better than drinking beer out of a can. If you poured both in a glass I doubt you could tell the difference though.

Dan Carrey doesn't like cans. He and his wife own the brewery.

I had a can of Coke this week and it had one of the finger savers like the can in the OP.

 

[SteveM]

I've had a nice number of Sly Fox beers and they are excellent as a rule, but I have to admit that for no rational reason, I start with a low expectations on what I'm going to get from a can. And if I'm buying a mixed six, a couple of cans don't "look right."

One huge advantage: they are a lot easier to fit in the refrigerator.

 

[SPLASTiK]

You can buy Rodenbach in the can... at least in Europe. I brought some back a couple years ago.