Seventy-five years ago this month, something big happened. The noble beer can made it’s first appearance on shelves in Richmond, Virginia. It had taken a while; beer had a funny habit of reacting badly with the aluminium cans. After some tweaking, a plastic coating solved the problem, and beer packaging changed forever.
And God bless the can, while we’re here. Cans are lighter than glass bottles, so consume less energy to ship them. Yes, they’re not reusable, so consume extra energy to recycle, but they still beat glass in carbon footprint size.
And remember that plastic lining I mentioneds above? It’s still there. So stop telling me canned beer tastes “tinny”. If you want to put your money where your mouth is (sort of literally) I can arrange a blind sample. And by the way, kegs are big steel cans, nobody talks about draft tasting “tinny”.
So I encourage you to swing by your local beer supply shop, pick up some lovely tins, and raise a brew to seventy-five years of history.
