Imported beers

And they would also be less sensitive to going bad from sunlight. The short answer is that American have a stigma against drinking beer from a can. Why? Because its considered cheap beer and a decidedly unsophisticated way to drink it. Apparently Americans are also too lazy to pour their beer into a glass to form a nice head and get a better sense of smell out of their brew, but we don't want people thinking we're trailer trash by drinking out of cans.

You do still get a metallic taste from some beers. Also, if you've got a "bottle conditioned beer" or "receptacle conditioned beer" you can't see in a can when the yeast has settled and, whilst pouring, you can't see from a can when to stop pouring to prevent the yeast going in the glass.

(Yes, I'm >

Americans? All Americans? Seems to me, with Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors controlling -what is it now?- 90% of the beer market in the US, I think you have to say American drinkers of "upscale" or "imported" beer have that prejudice and the prejudice is feed by the beer marketers and advertisers (and is not unlike the "cork"/"screw cap" divide in wine). It's the same reason that so many great imports come in green glass- there's an "image" of green being upscale and a mark of a premium beer.

And altho' the boom in the microbrewed segment of the market (well, boom in that there are a lot of breweries and a lot of brands tho' they only have a fraction of the market) has meant a great expansion of beer knowledge and beer interest in a small portion of the beer drinking population, the fact that most of the breweries are rather small has meant that the cost of canning equipment versus bottling or kegging has prevented the need for a "re-education" by the micros on this subject.

Don't know where you are (I'm guessing from this statement, the UK?) but in the US the vast majority of packaged beer, domestic and imported, comes in 12 oz. containers, both bottles and cans.

The word "considered" in the above sentence is superfluous.

Mike B

Oh? So, then, you say (...thinking of some canned beers I've had...) Jever, Pilsner Urquell, Budvar Budweis are "cheap beers"? (And that doesn't even consider the 1 gallon canned brands and then there's those really big cans of 15+ and 30+ gallons, SO big that the prejudice not only disappears but reverses...).

And while drinking FROM the can is "decidedly unsophisticated" (while convenient in some instances) I don't think the package determines the quality of the product.

It's more of a perception held by "marketing" types who are usually somewhat clueless on what people really want.

It use to be that cans left a metallic taste in the beer. I don't know if this is still true.

Some breweries use plastic bottles so they can sell the beers where they can't sell in glass.

Phil

It's kind of funny, really, because most of these beers would be sold to some level of "beer snob" -- you're not going to sell Joe six-pack a lot of Jever Pils. Joe Six-pack, though, knows that cans are a great way to package beers. It's half-educated beer snobs that claim cans give beer a funny taste.

I think the short answer is: Heineken.

Their genius (really) marketing folks figured out decades ago that they could create a premium look by sticking to green bottles (even though it's sold elsewhere in brown bottles) and now the American market associates green bottles with fine imported beer.

No, really.

--Jeff Frane

It didn't used to be any such thing. Beers that have metallic tastes in them have other problems going on. (And don't give me the old canard about beer's acidity leaching something from the aluminum of the can. Soda's more acidic than beer, and no one's complaining about metallic Coke.)

And, how would beer get a metallic taste from a 12-inch can but not those big 30-gallon cans they call kegs?

Pretty much everything Americans say about the drawbacks of cans is myth.

The only reason you don't see many American craft beers (and imported quality beers from Germany, CR, etc.) is because of two reasons: one is stupid stigma, and the other is that canning lines are extremely expensive compared to kegging and bottling lines, and most brewers have a hell of a time paying the bills without investing in something that most of their customers are going to turn their noses up at.

-Steve

Because most beers come in bottles. Bottling lines are way cheaper than canning lines.

While there's a weight difference, the biggest amount of weight in any shipment of beer is the beer itself.

I seem to recall from your previous post that you're in Australia. Is there a difference in standard can sizes and bottle sizes there? Because here in the States, the most common bottles and cans hold exactly the same amount:

-Steve

Yeah, that was my point above when I wrote-

"I think you have to say American drinkers of "upscale" or "imported" beer have that prejudice and the prejudice is feed by the beer marketers and advertisers..."

I agree Heineken may have popularized the "green bottle=premium import" concept (altho' Molson probably wasn't far behind) but I wonder how far back it really goes. Green glass was also a standard bottle of US ales- Ballantine's various ales most notably (kinda ironic, the hoppiest beers went into the bottle that had the most effect of hops) and several quirky US brands (think Rolling Rock's silk-screened long necks and Straub's "greenies"). I've seen very dark green glass bottles of Bass Ale that were imported into the US in the 50's. Clear or very lightly tinted green glass was a very common bottle pre- and post-Prohibition- of course, those bottles often pre-date six-packs (esp. the open basket six pack holder), glass door coolers in brightly-lit stores, etc.

On the other hand, apparently Jever uses the green bottle in Germany.

And Heineken might be the most common canned import found throughout the US, so, go figure...

This may be changing with that advent of the new cap-able alum bottle:

There's one US microbrewery that's already offering their beer in this container, but I forget which.

nb

Big Sky from Missoula Montana.

Best regards, Bill

If bottling lines are cheaper than canning lines, that's reason enough not to can.

Phil ====visit the New York City Homebrewers Guild website:

Cans these days are thinly coated on the inside with a pretty much inert and tasteless resin, so it's a moot point. The place where you pick up the metallic taste is from the freshly sheared stuff where you pop it open...which is not a problem if you POUR IT IN A CUP. Of course, I was on a boat drinking cans of Dale's Pale Ale from the can (field expedients, you know), and didn't notice any metallic flavor at all. The hops pretty much blew it away if it was there.

Kegs is food-grade stainless steel. Cans is not.

That last reason is concrete truth. But canning lines are not that expensive these days. The reason most micros don't can is the same reason most micros don't use twist-offs: not much cheap used equipment out there at the right size for a micro. There are two-head canners out now, which is what Dale's started with; it was such a success for them that they moved up to a multi-head filler recently. Brown's Brewing, a brewpub in Troy, NY, is opening a production facility in the spring and will be packaging in draft and pint cans only. Works for me.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Modern cans weigh next to nothing, and Corona still uses those seriously hefty bottles. Next time you're in a beer store, heft a case of Bud and a case of Corona: you'll notice the difference right away. If the amount of glass in the bottle can make an appreciable diff in the weight of a case...it's a big part of the weight. How much does a case-worth of beer weigh? 12x24(8 oz. 288/16 pints, and 18 pints of beer is roughly 18 pounds (Gawd...the metric system!!!) Anyone know how much a 12 oz. beer bottle weighs?

In any case, losing the bottles to go with cans would make a big difference...but I've never seen figures on whether shipping losses are higher on bottles or cans.

As Bill said, it's Big Sky, but these containers are VERY expensive, much more than bottles or cans. Big Sky went with them because they were cool, same reason Heineken did. But they're not cheap at all. And plastic bottles are a pain to run, they keep falling over in the bottling line.

Did you see the word "all anywhere in my post? I'm in America, and I was generalizing. Calm down.