We’ve been keeping this under wraps for quite some time, but it seems we’re already “leaking” information. Probably out of excitement (wink-wink). Time to come clean.
We’re switching to cans!
As with any significant change in an operation, you can imagine there’s a big WHY floating about.
We’re doing this because we respect and love what we put out to the people. And that’s good craft beer that can always be better.
We want people to enjoy our beer as fresh as possible. And packaging is a really important part of all this. A good canning line will help us finally deliver our beer as intended.
For the rest of you guys sticking around, we’ll elaborate. There are three great enemies to talk about, and no, we’re not talking about nazis from the Underworld.
Numero uno
In any bottling process, there’s some chance of oxygen getting trapped in the empty space above the liquid. And that’s not good, because it kick starts oxidation, and that harms especially hoppy beers.
It diminishes hop aromatics and brings some nasty off-flavours (paper, cardboard, sherry). Not good. It’s also gonna darken your nice golden pale ale.
You can avoid that by capping directly on foam. We couldn’t do that all the time before because we were bottling manually, but this new semi-automatic canning machine is designed to keep oxygen away by all possible means. So, one of the big problems - solved.
Secondly
Light in general has a pretty solid beef with hops. That’s how you get skunked beer. Using dark-coloured bottles helps a bit, but guess what’s even better?
The almighty can. Nothing gets through. Happy hops for happy drinkers.
Thirdly
Recycle or die! We stole this from The Veil Brewing Co., but it’s a great, powerful reality check.
We did the math. Roughly 800 liters of beer (one HH fermentation tank) puts out 1600 bottles. That’s 480 kilos of glass. Do you actually recycle that? Do you? We can only hope so but... let's get real.
800 liters of beer in cans = 25.6 kilos of aluminum. Much better. Not to mention that aluminum is infinitely recyclable.
Also
Cans don’t bring any metallic taste to the beer.
If you get that, there’s a problem with the said liquid. They’re especially designed for that not to happen.
You might be smelling the actual can exterior. It’s common etiquette to use a glass anyway, be it a fancy snifter or a plastic one, so please do so. For your precious, precious palate.
Some mixed facts
- Cans are easy to carry. Grab a whole case and don’t break a sweat on your way to a barbecue/wedding/divorce party/etc.
- Cans are easier to chill. Just don’t keep them in the freezer for too long, obviously.
- You can shotgun a beer can, if you’re into that sort of thing. Just be polite and let people around you know beforehand.
- They take up less space and they’re safer to travel with. So that holiday stash gets home intact, even if the guys at the airport play football with your luggage.
- Empty can bugging you? Stomp it with you foot and now you have just a small aluminum disk to recycle!
- They’re really, really pretty. Not only because we’re having Diana Barbu Illustration making us look good.
We busted our asses to buy a canning line from Microcan, UK
Because quality comes first.
We did this so next time that you’ll pop open a Crowd Control it would be as close to freshness as it would be straight from the brewery, straight from the stainless tank. Cheers to you!