Archives : Canned Beer Week
Canned Beer Week 2: Brewpublic’s Caldera interview
September 26th, 2009
One final nod to Canned Beer Week before I move on to blogging other things (like the Great American Beer Festival, currently underway). Brewpublic (one of the best Oregon beer blogs out there) has an interview up with Jim Mills, the founder and head brewer with Caldera Brewing out of Ashland, Oregon—the brewers of Ashland Amber et al.
It’s a good interview, and the topic of canning beer comes up in the latter half:
Caldera, when we think of Oregon, has really been at the forefront of the craft beer in the can movement. How far do the cans get distributed and what go you interested in chosing cans while so many others have been using glass bottles?
JM: We are the first and only brewery in Oregon so far to use cans. We started with our Pale Ale in 2005 in the spring. The IPA was in August 2007, and just this past spring, the Ashland Amber. We chose it because up until 2005, nobody making canning lines were making small enough ones. It was either a quarter of a million dollars. Cask Brewing Systems out of Calgary came up with two small canning lines including a manual that basically we started with and is a nightmare…I never drank more beer in my entire life doing that filling one at a time…three people doing 16 cases an hour…
What about MacTarnahans? They had cans, was that similar?
JM: No, they contracted their canning out. We were the first to do it ourselves here in Oregon…the first since Blitz. So after that we got an automated system with two people doing about 60 cases an hour. So that’s a lot better.
Lots of good stuff there, go read the full interview.
Canned Beer Week 2: Moose Drool, bottle vs. can
September 25th, 2009One of the things I really wanted to do for this year’s Canned Beer Week was something I haven’t seen done anywhere else: a side-by-side comparison of the same beer, in a bottle versus a can. Think of it as a “lateral tasting” (as opposed to “vertical tasting” of different vintages)—and thanks to several large breweries that are now offering some of their beers in cans as well as bottles, it’s doable.
Two such breweries have beers that are available to me locally: New Belgium Brewing and Big Sky Brewing. New Belgium recently began offering Fat Tire Amber Ale in cans, and Big Sky has two: Moose Drool and Trout Slayer. The easiest one for me to get together this week was Moose Drool, their flagship Brown Ale that is Montana’s number one craft beer.
Here we are. Bottle vs. can, the same beer, both labeled 5.1% alcohol by volume, both American Brown Ales. Any predictions on the outcome—are they the same? Is one better? Which one? Any can versus bottle prejudice?
Here’s how I’ll present my review: broken up like I normally do (Appearance, Smell, Taste, Mouthfeel), and for each section I’ll list bottle notes first, then can. I wrote my notes concurrently in this manner, with the notion that the bottled version is the “baseline” (as it’s more commonly available and what the beer is expected to be like).
Appearance:
Bottle: Clear and brown with ruby garnet highlights, topped by a thick and creamy head. The head from the bottle is noticeably thicker and lasts longer than from the can.
Can: Slightly (but noticeably) darker brown, you can’t see through it as well; the head started big but fell quicker than the bottled.
Smell:
Bottle: Roasty chocolate malts with a touch of roast astringency; light-roast coffee.
Can: Rich and chocolatey, deeper aroma than the bottled; a touch of coffee and some brown sugar richness.
Taste:
Bottle: Roasted malts—slightly dry with a light character. A touch of chocolate, a touch of weak coffee, some caramel crystal malts hiding in there.
Can: Roasted malts with a creamier presence and not as astringent. Rich with slightly dry brown malt character. Coffee touch with toffee maybe, with chocolate more pronounced than the bottled.
Mouthfeel:
Bottle: Lighter than medium-bodied, thin on the tongue and finishes fairly dry.
Can: Medium-bodied, thicker with more presence, fuller body; finishes a bit sweeter.
Overall verdict:
Bottle: Decent brown ale but thinner than I’d like.
Can: The better of the two. Thicker, sweeter, and richer; definitely the one I would pick in a blind taste test.
Surprised? So was I, a little. I was willing to give the canned version the edge going in simply because it wouldn’t have the possibility of being lightstruck, but generally I was expecting the two beers to be about equal. Nonetheless, there is a noticeable difference between the two.
Can this be attributed to an advantage of being packaged in a can alone? I don’t know. It’s just as possible they were brewed on two separate systems—Big Sky is a fairly large operation, after all. But I think it pretty well demolishes the idea that bottles are somehow superior to cans—they both have their advantages and disadvantages, but with results like this, you can’t deny that canned is just as good, if not better.
(Want to replicate this taste test yourself? You can buy bottles and cans of Moose Drool from Liquid Solutions. Yes, it’s a plug. But it’s worth it!)
Canned Beer Week 2: Breweries that can
September 25th, 2009September has been a synergistic month for the topic of canned beer. In addition to the NPR story and the Canfest announcement, Charlie Papazian over on his Examiner.com site had an article on canned beer last week. Naturally, the story focuses primarily on Oskar Blues as the first craft brewer to can their beer, but at the end is a gem: a list of microbrewers that currently offer their beer in cans.
It’s a great reference, and I’m going to shamelessly reproduce that list here:
- 21st Amendment Brewery
- Anderson Valley Brewing
- Arctic Craft Brewery
- Big Sky Brewing Company
- Blue Mountain Brewery
- Bohemian Brewing Company
- Breckenridge Brewing Co
- Buckbean Brewing Company
- Butternuts Beer & Ale
- Caldera Brewing Company
- Carolina Beer and Beverage
- Coastal Extreme Brewing Co
- Cottrell Brewing Company
- David’s Ale Works
- Four Peaks Brewing
- Harvest Moon, Belt
- Heiner Brau, Covington
- High Noon Saloon, Leavenworth
- Kettlehouse Brewing Co
- Keweenaw Brewing Company
- Mammoth Brewery
- Maui Brewing Company
- Micro Packaging Solutions, Flagstaff
- Milwaukee Ale House, Milwaukee
- Mudshark Brewing Company
- New Belgium Brewing
- New England Brewing Company
- New South Brewing Company, Myrtle Beach
- Northwoods Brewpub and Grill
- Old Capitol Brew Works
- Oskar Blues
- Pete’s Place, Krebs
- Prescott Brewing Co
- Pug Ryan’s Steakhouse & Brewery
- Rochester Mills Brewer, Rochester
- SKA Brewing
- Sleeping Lady Brewing Company
- Sly Fox Brewing
- Southern Star Brewery, Conroe
- Spilker Ales
- Steamworks Brewing
- Stone Coast Brewing
- Surly Brewing Company
- Thunderhead Brewing Co
- Tommyknocker Brewing Co
- Top of the Hill Restaurant & Brewery
- Ukiah Brewing Company
- Uncommon Brewers
- Upslope Brewing
- Warbird Brewing Company
- Wynkoop Brewing Company, Denver
Canned Beer Week 2: Ashland Amber
September 24th, 2009Last year I reviewed two beers from Ashland, Oregon’s Caldera Brewing for Canned Beer Week: their Pale Ale and their IPA. I liked both very much—both excellent examples of just how good beer can be from a can—and as Caldera had since released a third canned beer, Ashland Amber, it was a no-brainer to review it this second time around.
This is an American Amber Ale, one of my long-time favorite styles, and is 5.4% alcohol by volume. (Buy it now at Liquid Solutions)
Appearance: Clear and amber-brown, poured a nice yellow-tan head.
Smell: Caramel and slightly-roasted malts with a nice mellow hop character; biscuit-malty with a hint of brown sugar.
Taste: Rich and malty with caramel, toffee, and molasses notes; bitterness coming both from roasted (Black Patent?) malts and earthy hops that show a nice presence toward the back of the mouth.
Mouthfeel: Medium-bodied with a sticky, thick presence on the tongue, finishes bitter-ish.
Overall: Very nice amber ale, super drinkable (of course, my bias toward Ambers might influence this impression), definitely a beer that should be on your “can shelf.”
On BeerAdvocate, it scores an overall grade of B. On RateBeer, it scores 3.38 out of 5 and is in their 74th percentile.
Canned Beer Week 2: Maui Coconut Porter
September 24th, 2009This isn’t a new review, but a revisit of the Maui Brewing Coconut Porter I had while in San Diego this year (at Stone Brewing, of all places)—and exploring a bit of Maui’s canned beer offerings as well.
The beer is a “robust porter” brewed with six varieties of malt, and hand-toasted coconut, and is 5.7% alcohol by volume. The coconut character is fairly pronounced, but well-balanced with the dryish, roasty malts of the porter.
I liked it and compared it with my own Coconut Cream Stout, and it would definitely be one I’d like to have available here in Oregon. (Though at the price I found it at in California—$10.99 for a pack of four!—I’d suffer a bit of sticker shock.)
Coconut might well be the most unusual ingredient to appear in a (beer) can yet; it’s certainly a popular choice for Maui Brewing, as their getting high marks on the ratings sites for this beer: an A- on BeerAdvocate, and 96th percentile on RateBeer.
Maui Brewing also cans two other beers: Bikini Blonde and Big Swell IPA, neither of which I saw in California—I think their Coconut Porter is the flagship. But it seems to me if you’re brewing beer in Hawaii, the best way to get it to the mainland is in cans; perhaps they’ll start canning and distributing more of their beers. Hopefully it’ll appear in Oregon soon!
Canned Beer Week 2: Hell or High Watermelon Wheat
September 23rd, 2009Yesterday I reviewed 21st Amendment’s IPA, and today it’s their watermelon beer getting the treatment: Hell or High Watermelon Wheat. (Told you it was punny.)
I’ve tried this beer several times on tap: at the Oregon Brewers Festival in past years and more recently at The Abbey Pub here in Bend. Every time I’ve tried it, I honestly don’t see what the big deal is; the way I’ve heard people talk about it, I always expect watermelon flavor on a par with a Jolly Rancher candy. But it’s always a very mellow, earthy, hard-to-detect presence in my experience.
But I’d never done a formal tasting and review so it was, er, high time to do so.
Their Watermelon Wheat (buy it now at Liquid Solutions) is 4.9% alcohol by volume (according to the can) and is, in their words:
The definition of summer in a pint glass. This unique, American-style wheat beer, is brewed with 400 lbs. of fresh pressed watermelon in each batch. Light turbid, straw color, with the taste and essence of fresh watermelon.
Appearance: Very clear burnt-yellow color, with a fizzy thin head that fell quickly.
Smell: Mild, sweetish, toasty wheat notes, slightly sourish and very light fruit aromas.
Taste: Crisp, mellow with mild earthy watermelon flavors—very understated. Nice American-style wheat going on, clean and toasted.
Mouthfeel: Light-bodied with a bit of a crisp bite behind it.
Overall: It’s decent, a competent wheat beer—though again I’m underwhelmed by the watermelon aspect. Perfect beer to be canned as it’s light, accessible, and drinkable—good for summer, as promised.
On BeerAdvocate, it scores an overall grade of B-. On RateBeer, it scores 2.83 out of 5 and is in their 29th percentile.
Canned Beer Week 2: Canned Beer Festival
September 23rd, 2009Apparently there’s going to be a Canned Beer Festival taking place on October 23rd in Reno, Nevada, and being put on by Reno’s own Buckbean Brewing Company. I picked up the story from KevBrews, who in turn ran the press release itself.
Buckbean Brewing Company, Nevada’s largest production microbrewery, will bring to Reno this October the first ever CANFEST – Reno International Canned Beer Festival, the first international beer judging and tasting for canned beer, to take place at the Grand Sierra Resort & Casino, Oct. 23, 2009.
Buckbean, a company that packages their beers in environmentally-friendly 16 ounce aluminum cans, hopes to shed light on the various breweries across the US that distribute their brews in cans and crush the many myths regarding beer in cans. Proceeds from the event will benefit The Nature Conservancy and the Great Basin Bird Observatory.
The competition will commence and finish in the Grand Sierra Theater October 23, from 6:30 p.m. -10:30 p.m. Judging will take place prior to the public tasting. Celebrities from the beer world will judge the beers individually, based on categories still to be decided. Beer seminars, beer and food pairings and a forum of brewers that can beer are planned.
Tickets will cost $35 and they plan to have a number of “canning brewers” there, to enter their beers for the competition.
Canned Beer Week 2: Brew Free! or Die IPA
September 22nd, 200921st Amendment Brewing out of San Francisco—they of the (formerly) Watermelon Wheat fame that is always a hit at the Oregon Brewers Festival—began canning two of their beers just under a year ago, and it was fairly recently that they started distributing in Oregon.
I found them both at The Brew Shop here in Bend and decided to start with their IPA—Brew Free! or Die IPA. (The Watermelon has a similarly punny name.)
BFoD is an American-style IPA, 7% alcohol by volume (though the website says 7.2%), and they dry hop the beer with four different types of hops. Serious beer in a can! (Buy it now at Liquid Solutions.)
Appearance: Darkish-orange in color, hazy, with a nice creamy dense head leaving good lacing.
Smell: Thick spicy-citrus hops and a flossy-sugar sweet malt punch.
Taste: Great hop-forward character here—green and sticky, a touch of resin, a bit of “dusty” spiciness. Malty, clean, understated sweetness.
Mouthfeel: Medium-to-full-bodied, great sticky presence on the tongue that manages to finish clean.
Overall: Solid IPA, flavorful and enjoyable to drink—you keep coming back to take another pull. Not over-the-top hoppy, either—well balanced. Definitely one that should be on your “can shelf.”
On BeerAdvocate, it scores an overall grade of B+. On RateBeer, it scores 3.63 out of 5 and is in their 92nd percentile.
Canned Beer Week 2: Canned beer on NPR
September 22nd, 2009Earlier this month canned beer received some prominence when it was featured in a story by NPR: Craft Beer In A Can? A Gutsy Move Is Paying Off. It focuses primarily on Alaska but also touches on Oskar Blues Brewing (who has become the defacto poster child for canned craft beer, I think). It dovetails nicely into Canned Beer Week and has a few interesting tidbits about beer in Alaska to boot.
But [beverage distributor John] Burket didn’t have many converts in Anchorage until early this year, when the city stopped recycling glass. Since then, he’s watched the market for good canned beer explode. In Anchorage, the cans often cost a dollar or two more a six-pack than similar beer in bottles. But Burket says even that doesn’t seem to matter.
“Actually the biggest problem we have now is trying to get more and more in. We get some in, we run out, we get some in, we run out.”
That supply issue is one Clay Brackley knows well. He’s the head brewer at the Sleeping Lady Brewery in downtown Anchorage. A few years ago, the pub invested in a small hand-canning system, to package its Urban Wilderness pale ale. In the beginning, Brackley says, sales were bleak. “The first couple of years were very depressing, very tough,” he says.
But then this summer rolled around.
“It’s been insane this year. It’s been over a thousand times what we did last year,” he says. “They sell faster than we can make them.”
(Seems odd that an entire city would stop recycling glass, but apparently there’s just too much of it—it costs too much to ship it out of Alaska, among other things.)
Incidentally, I believe Sleeping Lady Brewery is Alaska’s only craft brewer to can their beers.
Canned Beer Week 2: Mama’s Little Yella Pils
September 21st, 2009During last year’s Canned Beer Week, I spent some time focusing on Oskar Blues Grill & Brewery as they were the first microbrewer to can their beer beginning in 2002. In addition to informally interviewing Marty Jones, their Marketing Director, I also did (post-Week) reviews of three of their beers:
At the time, Oskar Blues beers weren’t available in Oregon at all, Marty graciously sent me the three to review. Since then, I’m happy to report, not only are their beers available in Oregon, but they’ve added a new one to their line: Mama’s Little Yella Pils. I thought it was fitting to kick of Canned Beer Week 2 with a review of MLYP.
Here’s their blurb about the beer:
Our new canned good is a delicious, small-batch version of the beer that made Pilsen, Czechoslovakia famous. Mama’s is made with hearty amounts of pale malt, German specialty malts, and traditional (Saaz) and 21st century Bavarian hops. It’s the perfect antidote for the watered-down, cornfed versions of pilsner clogging America’s shelves. Our first canned lager, it’s also fermented at cool temperatures with a German yeast. While it’s rich with Czeched-out flavor, Mama’s gentle hopping (about 35 IBUs) and low ABV (just 5.3%) makes it a luxurious but low-dose beer. Look for our Gold Metal Winner on US shelves in March. Sadly, the Feds rejected our “Take Two and Call Us in the Morning” line on the can.
Appearance: Golden yellow with a slight haze. Crisp white head, though not a lot of effervescence.
Smell: Crisp, mild, toasty wheat character, a surprising sweet aroma—kind of a caramel?
Taste: Bitter and malty—almost more like a Hefe than a Pils [my initial impression]. Yeasty? Bready—French bread crust. Hop bitterness is clean and spicy.
Mouthfeel: More of a substantial body from the yeast/cloudiness than I’d expect from a Pilsner. Finishes clean.
Overall: Different; lots of character here, less to style than I would expect for a Pilsner, but on its own it’s tasty and drinkable.
On BeerAdvocate, it scores an overall grade of B. On RateBeer, it scores 3.12 out of 5 and is in their 58th percentile overall.
Canned Beer Week 2
September 21st, 2009It’s the third Monday of the month, and The Brew Site is back with a Theme Week after a summer hiatus. This time around it’s a topic revisited: Canned Beer Week 2.
Back in February ’08, I first devoted a week to exploring beer that comes in cans—not the American Macro brews (which is another topic I’ve covered twice before)—but craft beer.
Craft beer, you’re wondering? Yes indeed: a growing number of microbrewers is releasing their beers in cans rather than (or in addition to) bottles, and people are becoming more and more aware of the advantages cans have over glass. Let’s reiterate a bit as a refresher:
- They’re lighter than glass, making them easier to lug around, plus they won’t break on you;
- They cool down more quickly than bottles;
- They’re more “stackably” ergonomic—that is, they stack and store better than bottles;
- They allow no light to strike the beer at all, meaning no skunked (lightstruck) beer.
Since the last Canned Beer Week there has been a relative explosion in the number of craft brewers canning their beer, and what is more available to me to drink and review. So it’s definitely time to take a new look.
