By Biére de Lys
Have you ever heard something like, « Canned beers are cheap and taste like metal. It woud be preposterous to can craft beer! »
Lire l’article en françaisLast updated: October 10, 2012
To say the least, it seems to be the most common reaction among people who are somewhat reluctant to the idea of replacing bottles with cans. Culturally, the can seems not to be made for “good” beers. Beers have been bottled forever, and a certain tradition is embedded into these containers. However, the advent of cans should not be seen as a threat to this cultural aspect, but rather as a pro-environment alternative which brings about more efficient means and multiple advantages for the brewing industry
As of 2012, Brewers Association reports over 2000 craft breweries in the United States. The American industry is really large and goes in the same direction as the Quebec industry: always growing. Quebec only has 2 craft breweries who can their beer: Archibald (Lac-Beauport) and Corsaire (Lévis). Craft Cans, a devoted proponent of canned craft beer, reports 667 canned beers by 215 different craft breweries in the US. That is something! Not so astonishing, considering canned beer appeared in 1935, when Krueger sold the first prototypes. Moreover, Craft Cans’ sister website, Craft Cans Canada, reports 119 canned beer, by 38 Canadian craft breweries, mostly in British Columbia and Ontario. All in all, Quebec sure is far behind!
So, what about it?
On the one hand, popular beliefs pertaining to canned beers are ill-founded; on the other hand, one must absolutely consider the advantages for society’s different agents that a move towards canned beer could have. Such advantages are multiple and distributed, in that they are present both for the producer and for the consumer. Indeed, right now, especially in Canada, canned beers are by far sexist-advertising-oriented cheap beers, usually of bad taste and quality, aiming for the mass market with cheap prices and “ice-cold” stuff, which sets a chill in the beer lover’s spine when somebody talks about canning his beloved craft beers.
Hence, I suggest we should discuss what the advantages of beer-canning are for the whole of society. If you are too lazy to read the whole article, then I suggest you read it anyway and towards the end I’ll provide a link to a great poster a reader showed me that sums up and supports pretty much everything I’ll be arguing here. Just so you say, « darn I could have simply checked out that awesome poster ». But I hate laziness, so keep reading.
First argument: weight.
One bottle (341 ml) weighs between 180 g and 200 g; one can has a negligible weight (probably under 10 g). The weight difference is then around 1 kg per six-pack. A producer who ships several hundred liters at a time would see its per-unit transportation costs diminish drastically, since at equal volume (of beer) the weight is lessened. To picture it, the total weight of beer contained in a six-pack is about 2 kg; adding the bottles’ 1 kg means that using cans instead of bottles saves around 33% weight overall!. Should a producer deliver 200 24-packs, its transportation weight is reduced by 800 kg! That’s something!Moreover, the consumer who must walk a certain distance to bring back 24 empty bottles will see its burden highly lightened…
Second argument: volume.
It’s quite simple; bottles are an extremely inefficient way of using space. Picture yourself a common bottle within a 6-pack; its conical shape leaves a lot of empty space within the package. Now, imagine a 6-pack of cans, which contains the exact same volume of beer; the only empty space in a six-pack (imagine them in a box) is that between the cans, which is minimal. Ever realized that a 6-pack of bottles has the same length and width as a 6-pack of cans, only it’s almost twice as high? 1. That means in a given space, we can put nearly twice as much beer when it’s canned than when it’s bottled.I bet you can now clearly imagine the advantages. What about producers? It means a truck can carry nearly twice as much beer when it is canned 2, hence halving (or so) the transportation cost associated with a given quantity of beer3. Obviously, this advantage also applies for the consumer, who is less overstocked when transporting beer. There is another major advantage when it comes to retailers, who not only must store their beer (as for the producers!), but also must keep it cold. Canned beer allows the retailer to store a lot more beer in a given space, hence saving on electricity costs (or room expansion needs!). Moreover, aluminum is much thinner than glass, which basically makes it so that much less material has to be cooled, hence saving even more on the electricity bill. Have you noticed how much I mentioned “savings”? I hope you begin to see the reason for that 
.
Third argument: the container-deposit.
This damn refund! I have to say, what a good incentive to bring back your bottles instead of throwing them away, enabling us to re-use them instead of recycling them. Have you ever imagined the implications of such a process? It implies that retailers must have a permanently dedicated space to store empty bottles. It implies that they must pay the delivery guy an extra half-hour to pick them up. It implies that producers need a machine to perfectly clean the bottles and remove the label. And who pays for all this do you think? The consumer of course! It’s a production-related cost after all…
All these costs could be diminished – or altogether gotten rid of – with the advent of cans. A retailer could simply buy an machine to collect and compress cans, the content of which he could easily get rid of once in a while, hence taking much less space in his store. The producer could get rid of its bottle-cleaning machines and simply buy pre-printed cans from the same company who recycles the used cans. Everybody wins; by reducing costs, producers and retailers can reduce prices, about which the consumer rarely complains…
(2) or use a truck half as big to transport the same quantity of liquid as before, but economies of scales and fixed costs suggest the first option would be more advantageous!
(3) of course total costs will increase because there will be much more beer in the truck
Kevin Logan
Nice, well balanced article!
Cantacular
Check out this infographic supporting all of your claims!
http://www.respectthecans.com/cans.jpg
Jonathan Rondeau-Leclaire
wow this poster is absolutely great. thanks for that! perhaps i’ll try to create one of the same kind in french, we need more cans in Quebec!
Cantacular
Cans are c’est magnifique!
Jacob R
Nice article. Love canned beer. But what is the likelihood that production or transportation savings will be passed on to the consumer? Of this I am not certain. So far I’m seeing 4 packs of six point cost more than 6 packs of other brews. Fail.
Paul B.
Look at Cask Brewing’s website, http://www.cask.com for a video of the canning machine that made craft beer canning a reality. Easily 90% of the companies canning their own craft beers are, or were, using a Cask system.
Jonathan Rondeau-Leclaire
wow thanks for that! I’ll definitely look into it
rd johnson
Great article! Whenever possible, pour beer out of the can and into a glass or cup if available. If you choose to drink directly out of the can, your mouth and tongue touch aluminum on the outside of the can, and you certainly will sense a metalic taste if you do that. That is no different then licking your aluminum garage door. The inside of the 21st Century can is treated with a baked on food grade lacquer that never allows the beer to touch aluminum. The consumer drinks pure beer from the brewery, not destroyed by light and that chemical reaction that occurs in bottles. Canned beer can be taken places where bottles cannot go…pools, beaches, boats, planes, hiking, etc. Cans truely are the beer container of the future!
Jonathan Rondeau-Leclaire
Good point! I personnaly don’t taste the can much whenever I drink from it (i-e almost never) but it does have a little something. Maybe breweries should consider wrapping the top of the can with the same material as for the inside?
Cans are indeed the container of the future!
Tom Horst
Jo, Great article. Just a couple comments. First, here in Colorado, we have a new company out of Longmont called Mobile Canning. They actually have an entire canning line that they bring to the brewery in a truck, unload it and set it up. They are the ones that do my canning for me. I didn’t have to invest thousands of dollars to buy a canning line – which was one of the disadvantages you listed. Somebody should do that in Canada! The beer I currently can (we intend to move to others in the near future) is a kolsch style ale. It is a beer that does not have a good shelf life and does not travel well. With the can its shelf life has increased considerably from when we produced it in bottles. Sales have increased and the beer stays so much better! The can is a wonderful package for beer (think kegs – how many times have you heard someone say that beer just tastes better on draft?). The can is really just a small keg – no light or air gets in – unlike the bottle. Best of luck with your project.
Beer Soaked Erik
Nice article on craft cans. (I followed your link from Forbes.com.) I’ve been a fan of canned craft beer since last year when I was in charge of supplying drinks for a friend’s pool party. His one requirement, no glass allowed. My one requirement, no Bud, Miller, or Coors allowed. So I did a little research and found a nice variety of beers from Oskar Blues, Caldera, 21st Amendment, and Maui Brewing Company to bring to the pool party. Since then I’ve found quite a few other breweries releasing craft beer in cans. I’m from California, so it’s nice to see the canned craft beer has a place up in Canada as well. Cheers to #craftbeer!
Jonathan Rondeau-Leclaire
Glad you liked it, thanks for the comment too! spread the word, drink to the golry of #craftbeer !
Eric D. DeKeyzer
Great article!
We basically call cans « mini kegs » to help off-set the thought of cans not being for craft beers. Most consumers when asked for draft or bottled beer will choose draft; well, with the can they’re the keg you can take with you. We’re also a lake resort area and are not supposed to have any glassware on or near the water; so you can take canned beer anywhere.
The cost disadvantage actually has a « silver lining » (or in can’s sake, « aluminum lining ») to them. There are a number of small engineering companies starting to manufacture canning lines specifically for the craft beer market at more cost concious and smaller volume than what was typical 10 years ago.
Typically another big cost disadvantage is that printing directly on the metal usually brings about a minimum order of 185,000 cans per order. For perspective purposes, that’s 3 semi loads of 1 printed style of cans; also a 20 BBL system will make roughly 5,000 cans (depending on size of can). This minimum order makes it really tough on the craft breweries. We got around it by utilizing Shrink Wrap Labels for our cans, which the typical minimum order is 10,000. The shrink wrap labels also allow us to have a more vibraint label than if we printed directly on the metal; metal only gets 1 print layer while the plastic of the wraps get multiple print layers.