13 Sep Why Beer Actually Tastes Better From A Can
Traditionally, the can has a bad rep. Canned beer is shackled to stereotypes of loutish lads and the lousy moment when you take that last, warm mouthful from the tin. And then there’s the liquid that it contains: often super-strength lager, or uninteresting and largely flavorless beer. But things are changing in Britain and beyond and we’re seeing that cans are, in fact, a great vessel for better-tasting beer.
Camden Town were the first British brewery to add a canning line in 2013, soon followed in 2014 by two other London brewers, Beavertown and Fourpure, who both have their full ranges of beers in bottles and cans (think cans and bottles taste different? Well there’s an easy side-by-side test for you). We can also now buy many canned American craft beers on this side of the Atlantic, with more domestic and international brews coming soon. But why should we care?
The answer lies in the freshness of the beer. There are three things that can spoil packaged beer: heat, oxygen, and light. As long as they are filled and stored correctly, bottles and cans are equally effective at eliminating the negative effects of heat and oxygen – but light is another matter.
Ultraviolet light can penetrate glass bottles and react with certain hop compounds, degrading them and, via some beyond-my-brain-capacity chemical reactions, creating 3-methylbut-2-ene-1-thiol. You may shorten this to 3-MBT, but you’ve probably heard of it colloquially by another name: ‘skunked beer’. That’s because 3-MBT is chemically close to the famously-foul odor sprayed by a skunk. In beer, it gives something similar to roasted garlic and farts, with its funky, earthy, sulphurous smell (it’s worth warning you that this reaction can happen very quickly, so if you’re sitting out in the sun with a lovely hoppy pint then you might want to find a shaded spot between sips).
As for the common complaint that beer “tastes metallic” from a can, I have one question: have you been drinking the beer straight from the can? If so, then of course it tastes like metal because your lips and tongue are touching the tin. On the inside of beer cans, there’s a lining between the liquid and the tin to prevent a transfer of flavor; pour the same “metallic tasting” beer into a glass and you’d never know whether it came bottled or canned.
While great tasting beer is clearly important, the humble tinny offers other benefits for the drinker: carrying a case of cans is far easier than a box of bottles thanks to the tins being lightweight.
If you happen to drop that case then it’ll probably fare better than the bottles. Then when you get that case home they’ll stack neatly in your fridge, plus they’ll cool down quicker if you’re thirsty after carrying them (though they also get warmer quicker, which is why most of these breweries are favoring smaller soda-sized 330ml cans).
And don’t forget the major bonus that you can take these tins to places where bottles rarely go, like to the beach or up a mountain on onto the golf course.
It’s not just the young breweries who are cottoning onto the benefits of cans. The well-established Cornwall brewer St Austell now cans their Korev lager to complement the keg and bottle versions. Thwaites, who are one of the main British contract-canners, have added 13 Guns IPA into their offering, while Adnams’s have their hoppy pale ale Ghost Ship in the larger 500ml cans. There’s also Pilsner Urquell, who have released a four-pack of Limited Edition cans, each with a different design inspired by images from their 172-year history, including different wax seals, wooden barrel brandings, importer names and old bottle labels, all combining to create a modern collage of old assets.
The potential of the design is an additional bonus for cans, given the 360-degree flat space to work with. Camden Town teamed up with the illustrator Mr Bingo for their Hells Lager can; Nick Dwyer’s striking illustrations of skulls, sci-fi and spaceships make Beavertown beers burst from the shelf; Fourpure’s simple, bold colors distinguish their six cans while giving space for more beer information for the drinker; meanwhile BrewDog, never visually lacking, are plumbing in their own canning line for a few of their core brews (they were previously packed by Thwaites).
This trend towards tins is coming from American craft breweries, where today around 500 of them – or one-in-six – have their beer in cans. In 2002, Oskar Blues, based in Longmont, Colorado, was the first craft brewery to do it and many have followed, including some of the better-known brewers like Boston Beer Company, Sierra Nevada,Founders, Flying Dog and Brooklyn .
If the UK had the same percentage of breweries canning their beer as in the US then there’d be over 250 of them. While we aren’t quite there yet, the numbers are increasing rapidly, as well as the range of styles available. And as a sign of the trend hitting the high street, JD Wetherspoon now has three different canned beers from Brooklyn’s Sixpoint Brewery .
Is it possible for beer drinkers across the land to forget about the old preconceptions and follow our American counterparts in adopting the tinny? As Barack Obama would no doubt say, Yes We Can!
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