I can’t tell you how happy I am that Heineken ships beer to us in these fantastic 24 ounce cans. Kinda like a mini-keg, now that I think about it! Nothing like METAL to shield delicious beers from all the evils of the world!
The West coast of America is far away from the European brewers. I can remember when I was a fledgling beer drinker, occasionally getting some Heineken in – you guessed it – “them green bottles!” That’s OK, a lot of the Euro beers arrived in green bottles - that seemed like the thing to do. Grolsch, Lowenbrau and a host of others came in green glass. It was no surprise at all when we cracked one open, poured it into the glass and experienced that skunky UV-struck taste and smell!
Of course we had no idea that’s what we were experiencing. Back then, we thought ALL German/Dutch/French/Italian beers, or anywhere else shipping green glass had that smell and taste. We “expected it!” Hey, “that’s the way import beer tastes!"
A lot of brewers have now given up the green glass, and I think that’s a great thing – still we have some holdouts that come over wearing the green glass, Heineken included for that matter. The beer has to be radically protected to survive without ‘Ol Sol shining down the sinister love on these. Metal shields the beer wonderfully.
I think Heineken is taking the right approach – still including the green for marketing purposes – a great big green can! I just wish they would follow Pilsner Urquell’s lead and switch over to the brown glass. You aren’t going to lose market share fellas, we’re not married to green glass…. In fact you might pick up a few sales points! The beer community now gets it! Proost!