Beer In Cans

It was once believed that beer in cans was inferior to beer in bottles, and this may have been true back in the days when people's choices were limited to a handful of flavorless macro swills. Today, more and more craft breweries are catching on to the benefits of canning their beer. Many beers, especially hoppy beers and lighter colored beers, are susceptible to light damage. Cans eliminate this risk of damage to the beer. On top of that, they are much easier to transport and send in the mail. I definitely welcome this ever increasing trend.

 

Yeah. Well the only benefit their seeing as far as I'm concerned, is the cost.

I can taste the difference between can and bottled beer and I do not like cans at all. I know they're cheaper etc. but I'll pay more for the taste it's meant to be any day.

 

The first thing I do is pour them out of the can and into a drinking glass or porcelain beer stein

 

pour in glass.. I cant drink out of cans.. always gives me chapped lips. ..

 

I expected the replies I saw.
Some beer is better from a bottle some are better from a can. Most are better from the tap. And all are better in my belly.

 

I never said anything about drinking from the can, but rather beer sold in a can.

 

It depends on what you're drinking, but I have never noticed anything bad about beer in cans. Then again beer that lacks flavor to begin with might suffer from a "canned" taste, but with flavorful beers it won't be detected. The beer will usually just taste fresher.

 

Really? I can distinctly taste a metallic element. Similar to when beer is poured into plastic cups, which is a further 10x worse than tinned beer. I suppose over time this would get worse and a predominately new batch of tinnies would be okay. Also, do you pour you beer into a glass? I usually don't drink out of a glass unless I'm being served at the pub. I used to drink from the glass all the time at home. Perhaps I should go back to.

 

Maybe they make tinny beer in Germany. J/k. Although if a beer in a can is sitting to long of course it will lose quality. And if that beer has less flavor to begin with then of course those tastes will be more noticeable.

 

Yes, I always pour my beer into a glass.

The only time I noticed a metallic taste with canned beer is when I was drinking crappy beer which didn't have much taste to begin with. I suppose if someone was drinking water out of a can, they might notice some tinny flavors as well. With a heavily hopped and/or malted beer, you're not going to taste any tinny flavors, and the benefits that come from the beer being protected from light sources are almost always going to outweigh any negatives.

 

It was ever in a can, I won't be drinking it.

 

That, too. Almost all the top brewers in the country are resorting to cans for their beers (Tree House, The Alchemist, Trillium, Tired Hands, etc.). Then again, these beers are meant to be consumed fresh (usually within a month), so they're not just sitting on the shelves for months like Coors or Budweiser.

 

Its Beer ??? Drink it out of an old Welly boot its still beer
Think we will ever see Whisky in a can ? NO
There is a reason for that
Its hot you are Thirsty You Drink a Beer
wanna get Buzzed You drink a beer or ten
Wife Bugging ya Few beers to dull the pain
Life Sucks Beer

If I went to savor or Enjoy a drink Beer is not gonna do it ,a ten yr old malt might though

Just leave Beer for the Real drinkers Eh

 

Irm has a Point though here !
There is an exception to every rule I guess

 

cars in museums.

why are there even cans, or bottles.
how about ceramics,
or chemically inert polymers made from silicates.

is it a question about content,
or the chemestry of containers,
and possible interaction between the two?

 

Well if we just apply a little logic and science to it, it becomes obvious that glass is by far the best choice of medium when packaging any food stuff over cans because metal react with other substances and glass doesn't.
So of course canned beer will pick up some degree of "contamination" from interaction with the metal, it may be imperceptible, but it is happening. The coating on the inside of the can helps, but molecules from the can still migrate into the beer.
You simply do not get any interaction between glass and beer or whatever.
Light isn't an issue, that is why they use amber or green glass.
The only reason for canning beer over bottling it is lower cost, lower weight, and easier storage/shipping, but it certainly isn't done in interest of the freshness or taste of the beer.


I have always been able to tell the difference between canned and bottled, same as difference between canned veggies and frozen.

 

Cans are great for festival campings and the like. If I have cans at home I usually don't pour it in a glass when I grab one. I just drink out of the can.

I dislike drinking beer out of paper or plastic cups as well.


But this is about preserving the quality: I can see how glass bottles are even more neutral here. And yeah, they changed the brown colour of the glass once they found out the light isn't an issue.

 

You are wrong about green glass and light. Anyone who has had a skunked Heineken knows this. Green glass does little to protect beer. Most green bottled beers are skunked. If you have the same beer in a can, you find you do not have that problem. Amber bottles offer slightly more protection, but not enough for world class beers that feature hop oils that are highly sensitive to light damage. If we're talking a shit beer like Budweiser or Old Milwaukee, a brown bottle is probably sufficient since those beers are basically flavored water with a hint of alcohol. However, this is about craft beer made with fresh, premium ingredients -- not macro swill made with adjuncts likes corn and rice.

Secondly, the beer many craft beer drinkers consume is generally consumed fresh. Most of the world class IPAs are intended to be consumed within a month or less of canning, which does not allow enough time for any reaction or contamination of the beer as you speak of.

A lot of the arguments against cans I am reading in this thread apply to crap beers that are produced in mass and then sit for prolonged periods of time so that they do indeed pick up a tinny flavor.

I agree you can tell the difference between a canned and bottled beer, but that's only if you drink shit beer that's been sitting on the shelves for 6-12 months.

Simply put, if cans were bad, the most world class makers of beer would not be utilizing them for their beers. But they are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqNzRmiYd2c

 

So it depends on the beer as well. And on the time it has been in there. Maybe those green bottle Heineken beers are intended to be consumed within a month or less as well, but because they're for export they can easily get stored for a month which may take away from the quality. If the same beer in a can gets a reaction if it's in there for longer than a month, I guess cans are not better than glass.
Also: I think the damage that can be done to the beer in a bottle through light is kept to a minimum because they're not stored for weeks in a very light area. It is just not how you store beer. If that is done different I find it plausible that the quality changes. They changed the colour because beer is generally stored in like a dark closet, fridge or cellar anyway. And green glass is apparently fancier looking than brown

 

I highly doubt Heineken intends for its beers to be consumed within a month or less. The green bottles are all about marketing. Pretty much all bottled beers are going to receive light exposure just from sitting on store shelves or inside of a lighted cooler. It's not about how the beers are stored after they're purchased, but once they're put out on display for purchase.

Back in the 90s, when I thought Heineken was actually a good beer (before I knew better), I would notice that every time I bought a six-pack it was skunked. However, if I bought a case where the bottles were enclosed, or if I bought it in cans, it did not have this light damaged aroma and flavor.