Back in “the day,” drinking beer from a can was, well, slummin’ (can we say that?). Or maybe it was just that beer in bottles are considered more upscale, more imported.
Either way, today, some of the best beer on the planet is in the can.
Case and point: Dale’s Pale Ale from the Oskar Blues brewer in Lyons, Colorado. A friend pointed us to this gem months ago. It’s damn good.
“When we started, the idea of canning beer was blasphemous,” says Dale Katechis, founder of Oskar Blues (in Bon Appetit). “It was frowned upon as a cheap way to deliver lager-style cheap beer. The fact is, if you put bad beer in a can, it’s going to be bad beer. But our goal is to deliver beer as fresh as possible, and the can is the best.”
Since Oskar Blues first hand-canned their crisp, hoppy Dale’s Pale Ale eight years ago, today some 50 domestic craft breweries as well as 25 Canadian and a dozen internationally are following suit, placing their premium beers in cans.
Why the can?
The three biggest enemies of beer are light, oxygen, and heat. Cans eliminate the first two hazards, points out Bon Appetit.
In addition to Dale’s Pale Ale, Fat Tire Amber Ale from New Belgium is considered a can champ. What’s replacing beer bottles in your fridge?
Oh, and as for the metallic taste myth, Garrett Marrero at Maui Brewing Co. clarifies that “Today’s aluminum cans feature a water-based polymer lining that eliminates any metallic contamination. That is, the beer never comes in contact with the aluminum.”
“You’d have to bite the can while you were drinking from it,” Marrero jokes.