In the last year or so, a select crew of beer fans and brewers has begun proselytizing about what they regard as British beer’s cutting edge—craft keg. But the word keg sends shivers down the backs of members of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) who believe in traditional beer or cask-conditioned beer, which they call real ale.

Draft beer traditionally had been put into a cask with enough yeast to create a secondary fermentation and is dispensed with a hand pump. It is unpasteurized and unfiltered.

But by the early 1970s, much of the beer served in Britain was from kegs. The beer was filtered and pasteurized and carbon dioxide was used to dispense it. The advantage over the casks was that there was no sediment in the beer, but the disadvantage was that there was more gas in keg beer, which some believe diluted the natural flavour.

This is when CAMRA was created and helped partially reverse the momentum of kegs and preserve natural beers in Britain.

Nowadays, exponents of craft keg, using updated technologies, urge drinkers to forget the past and judge their new beers on taste and not on how they are dispensed. And it may be working.

Spotting a Trend

Craft beer is enjoying a healthy state of affairs in the United Kingdom. There are nearly 800 breweries, mainly micro in size, and many are showing growth. There is a multitude of beer styles available and New World hops have never been more popular.

Social media has also helped as brewers, beer journalists and beer geeks have taken to the blogosphere to discuss beer.

And 2011 saw more craft beer bars open. Then there is the influence of the North American beer scene.

Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale and Brooklyn Lager are commonly seen in bars on draft (in other words keg!), while brewers such as Odell Brewing Co., Flying Dog and Brooklyn Brewery visit from across the Atlantic and organize tastings.

And the emergence of United Kingdom craft lager brewers—see AAB, Vol 31, Number 4—has persuaded brewers that beer can be dispensed in other ways than by hand pump and still taste good.

“I find all sorts of people trying craft keg,” said Glyn Roberts, former manager of The Rake, arguably London’s first craft beer bar when it opened in 2005, “Not just young people, but older drinkers too. I have a feeling that it will keep its momentum partly because many people like drinking cold fizzy beer and partly because more craft breweries are using keg as a form of dispense.

“I believe that there are a couple of reasons for the latter. Firstly the beer keeps longer and is more robust… Secondly I think that there’s an element of emulating the U.S. where there is very little cask dispense.”

In Greenwich, Meantime Brewery’s founder and brewmaster Alastair Hook could be forgiven a slight self-congratulatory smile at craft keg’s emergence. When he began Meantime in 1999, every new brewery majored in cask beer. But Munich-trained Hook specialized in European beer styles such as helles, pilsner and Vienna.

British styles such as IPA, porter, stout and pale ale were eventually brewed, all of which are dispensed from kegs or bottle. “It’s been a tough battle,” he said, “but there have been a lot of changes in the last five years and I take a lot of pride in thinking that we have helped in many ways to inspire other brewers.”

But Hook is quick to state that Meantime is not opposed to real ale. One of the company’s best customers is the Market Porter, a South London pub noted for serving up to a dozen real ales. For Hook good beer is a simple matter of technology plus the absence of air from the beer container. “Air is bad for beer and the only people who don’t understand that are those who believe that cask is the only way,” he said.

“If cask conditioning is done properly, you have a re-conditioning in the cask, which should work really well. But if the cask is left hanging about for too long, it is not good for it. We have cask beers in our bars. We should only be talking about good beer.”

Making the Switch

One brewer inspired by Hook is Jeff Rosenmeier. He moved to Britain from the United States in the 1990s to work in software engineering but was also an avid homebrewer. He swapped bytes for beer in 2005 when he started Lovibonds in Henley (formerly home to Brakspear’s). Even though cask beer was initially brewed, he soon switched to bottles and kegs.

“All the local micros did cask beer so I thought I would have to do it as well,” he said. “I was a true nano brewery at the time, doing 100-liter batches and I bought a dozen firkins. I started selling these to my local free house and discovered that at day four in the pub the beer that I worked so hard to produce tasted flat, lifeless and was starting to sour.

Lovibonds Brewery's Jeff Rosenmeier, founder and brewmaster, has been brewing on the historic Henley-on-the-Thames since 2005.

He said he was aware of what Hook was doing and it made sense to him and gave him confidence to try something different.

Tasting through his portfolio of beers, you get a sense of his eclectic approach.

Henley Gold is a wheat beer that seemingly owes more to Flanders than Bavaria. There are bananas and cloves on the nose, along with a brittle herby/spicy background. The mouth-feel is creamy and caressing and the palate is suggestive of ripe bananas, accompanied by a medicinal aniseed-like note; the finish is dry and slightly woody.

Henley Dark has a lustrous, silky texture, reminiscent of chocolate ice cream, along with some smokiness, delicate roast notes and mocha coffee. At the back of the throat there is a hint of orange. Served cold and crisp from the keg, it has a refreshingly frisky nature. It’s a party beer, a cheerful, bright-eyed beer and I couldn’t help reflect that dark beers in the cask often seem more somber. These were good beers and if I hadn’t been told, I wouldn’t have known they were dispensed from kegs.

“It is funny to watch all of the brainpower and bytes wasted on the debate about what is ‘real’ or not,” said Rosenmeier, “and I’m as guilty as anyone. But, the fact of the matter is that 99 percent of the British beer-drinking public don’t care whether a beer is dispensed with extraneous CO2 or whether or not a cask breather (where a layer of CO2 keeps oxygen from contact with the beer) has been employed. All they care about is if the beer tastes good and they feel they are getting value for their money.

“We don’t do any filtration or pasteurisation or any other voodoo; therefore the beer that we package always contains yeast. To me it is still a live product. Where we fall down with CAMRA is with dispense, as all of our beers are pushed to the bar with CO2. The only by-product of us using CO2 is that our beer can last months in a cold cellar. Our bottled beers are also not filtered, however we keep the yeast counts low so that we don’t get the chunky style beer like most real ales.”

Every Dog has its Day

One brewery that has certainly set up craft keg as a superior alternative to real ale is Scotland’s iconoclastic BrewDog. These self-proclaimed punks have been masters of public relations with stunts such as brewing the strongest beer in the world, encouraging fans to invest in the business and engaging in online spats with CAMRA.

However, they also have managed to produce a stunning set of beers (plus some duds as well). They initially produced their beers in bottles and casks but with the opening of their branded bars in Aberdeen and Edinburgh (with London and other cities imminent), they have become vocal champions of the craft keg.

“We always believed kegs were the future,” said James Watt, BrewDog’s co-founder. “Cask is traditional to the U.K. and does well at showcasing some pretty boring beers in a way to make them seem a little bit more interesting. However the U.K. cask scene is also traditional, stuffy and old-fashioned with CAMRA’s overbearing influence making the whole thing very strange.

“We wanted to get away from all that and get new drinkers into the craft beer category and we see kegs as the way to do this. If we look at the U.S. craft beer scene, it is kegs that are leading the way. The same thing will happen in the U.K.”

But it’s also instructive to talk to more conventional, brewers. They often see craft keg as another product in their beer arsenal. They make real ale and sell a lot of it, but craft keg’s longer shelf life gives them a chance to get into outlets where real ale might not appear.

“Keg beer opens up a whole new trade customer base,” said Bob Hogg, Commercial Manager of Scottish brewery Inveralmond. “This is particularly true in a relatively small market like Scotland. Keg beer also gives us an opportunity to reach consumers who may not necessarily choose real ale first. As for the name craft keg, I don’t really mind what it is called as long as it is good beer—good beer can be served in keg format as well as cask. We are finding pub owners quite prepared to try something new as they realize that having a point of difference can help drive footfall to their pub, whether it be cask, craft keg or a combination of both.”

Inveralmond initially began with a Czech-style svetly lezak called Sunburst, which originally had been served as a “cask-conditioned” lager. Then it was kegged and served colder with more CO2. Following this, the brewery then felt it could do the same with Lia Fail, a dark chestnut ale with mocha coffee, chocolate, vanilla and espresso notes on the palate. The beer is chill conditioned for two weeks at minus 1 degree C prior to filtration with the addition of some CO2.

There are some problems with keg beer and one is getting it to the market. More investment is needed for keg beer than for casks, for example some pubs require font and chilling equipment for the kegs.

New Craft Keg Brewery

Close to the Rake in London is an exciting new wave brewery whose approach typifies the eclectic nature of the craft keg. The Kernel Brewery is beneath a railway arch in the Bermondsey district of south London, an area that was flattened during the 1940/41 London Blitz.

Head brewer at The Kernel Brewery, Evin O'Riordain, holding court in the brewhouse.

Started by Evin O’Riordain in 2009, its beers are mainly bottled with the rest in casks and kegs for brewery open house on Saturdays.

According to O’Riordain, “We have been approached by lots of pubs for kegs, so it would seem that the demand is there. Our beer suits bottles and it may suit kegs as well, but for us keg conditioning is more difficult than bottle conditioning. It requires more equipment, and the kegs require more looking after and are harder for pubs to serve well. We reckon that certain beers, for example our IPAs, work brilliantly in keg, and not so well in cask.”

At the brewery, I try a glass of the 7.8 percent Export Stout, dispensed from a keg. It is full of espresso, roast coffee beans, milk chocolate on the nose; the mouth-feel has a rich chocolaty texture with a firm bitterness and a dry cracker-like finish that has delicate fruity notes in the background. It is magnificent.

Kernel is new but other more established breweries, known for their cask beer, are looking to include craft kegs in their portfolio. These include Titanic (whose keg stout replaced a well-known Irish brand at the bar counter in one pub I visited); Fuller’s (its keg London Porter is gorgeous); Butcombe; and cutting-edge Welsh brewery Otley.

“We are trialing three of our beers in keg,” said brewery founder Nick Otley, “The Oxymoron Black IPA, 07 Weissen and Motley Brew IPA. We’re confident that the finished keg product will also be a good match with certain food, but we are only doing it on a small scale at the moment and will not be investing too much in it. Keg will never replace cask. Cask is unique to the U.K. and should remain so. I certainly don’t want my only choice in a pub to be cold and fizzy, but there is definitely room for it as an alternative.”

As brewery lore has it, Otley Brewing Company's Nick Otley was once a fortune cookie writer.

Otley’s words are also echoed by the Stuart Howe, head brewer at Sharp’s, recently purchased by Molson-Coors.

“It is not an area I think I will be entering in the near future,” he tells me, “From a brewer’s perspective, keg is good because you can use higher levels of CO2 to provide balance for fuller beers with bigger alcoholic strengths. On the downside, unless you are filling kegs with unprocessed beers, centrifugation, filtration and/or pasteurization of beer for kegging does change beer flavour from that you can experience in the brewery. Cask ale is as close as you can get to drinking it from a tank in the brewery.”

If there was one thing that demonstrated craft keg’s arrival it was the debut appearance of the Craft Beer in Keg awards category at the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) National Beer Competition in 2011. This was groundbreaking given that the vast majority of SIBA members produce cask beer.

I judged this category and found it thoroughly intriguing. It was divided into lager styles, wheat beers, stouts and porters and a variety of ales. There were good beers, plus a few indifferent chaps.

Thornbridge’s Kipling, a self-proclaimed South Pacific Pale Ale, had a big biff of passion fruit on the nose, but little else. I love it when served on cask. While Hambleton’s Nightmare, a gorgeous stout that has won plenty of awards in cask, was all butter toffee and mocha on the nose and thin roast water on the palate.

On the other hand, Thornbridge’s Jaipur IPA on keg was a glorious explosion of tropical fruit and grapefruit on the nose, a rollercoaster of sensation that continued its ride on the palate.

Is the rise of craft kegs really a revolution? I am not sure, but it does mean that the British beer drinker is getting more choice.

The likes of BrewDog like to paint it as a battle between keg and cask, a chance to punk it up in front of their brewing elders. However, I would suspect that for most craft keg brewers, it’s about improving beer choice.

And perhaps brewers don’t need CAMRA’s guiding hand as they used to, while the organisation’s Chief Executive Mike Benner takes a phlegmatic view, while firmly stating a policy of no change: ‘CAMRA is committed to choice. We want pub-goers to have access to a range of quality and interesting real ales. Our role is to promote real ale as our national drink, but that doesn’t prevent brewers producing other beer products for their customers.’

Whatever the motivations and the reactions, craft keg has shaken up the British brewing industry and it will be interesting to see how far it goes.

Brewdog Punk IPA (5.6%)—a turbo blast of resins and grapefruit on the nose; prickly but pleasing carbonation and muscular grapefruit followed by a long dry finish.

Camden Pale Ale (5%)—sprightly and sparkling in the glass with a quenching bitter lemon note and an enticing bittersweet finish; a real handful of zesty notes.

Titanic Stout (4.5%)—a cool draft of dark malt aromas (toffee, a hint of tobacco box), while the palate delivers more toffee, creamy mocha and a flurry of roast grain notes at the end.

Meantime IPA (7.5%)—perfumed citrusy nose with the spritzy palate featuring a harmonious balance of Seville orange and spicy peppery hop underpinned by a stern, biscuity base.

Reach in the fridge—or visit nearly any commercial building—and you find milk, juice, water and soda all tasting just the way their producers intended.

As consumers, we Americans (and our many peers in the developed world) have got it pretty good when it comes to the quality and consistency of what we consume. This occurs not just because it is good business, but because many of these products have the potential to cause serious harm through food poisoning or disease transmission. As a result, government regulations and oversight play a major role in determining the packaging and handling of products like water and milk.

Beer is different. And draft beer even more different. It has long been accepted that beer—even bad beer—won’t kill you or make you seriously ill. The unique process and ingredients of brewing delivers a liquid that has been well sanitized and loaded with mild natural preservatives in the form of hops and alcohol. Because of this, the vast body of regulation concerned with beer focuses on government tax revenues and public access to alcohol. Very little regulation at any level of government deals with the safe handling and serving of beer.

Yet despite its apparent hardiness, beer has a vulnerable side. Like milk, bread and hundreds of other grocery items, beer flavor can be greatly changed even while it remains safe to drink. That’s pretty huge when you think about it. Most people consider flavor a key benefit of beer, yet given the susceptibility to taint, beer may be the dietary staple most likely to suffer from off-flavors when consumed.

This article traces draft beer’s journey from the fresh, safe confines of a brewery fermenter to the consumer’s glass in a bar or restaurant. Come along for the ride and see how the beer trade keeps a good pale ale from being transformed into a buttery-sour, hazy goblet of grossness.

From Your Seat…

at the bar, you see the very end of the process: the bartender picks up a glass, opens the tap and fills your beer. If all works well, you receive an attractive, tasty pint.

What should a freshly poured pint of beer look like? For starters it should be topped with foam. And below the head, the glass should be filled entirely with liquid beer. No bubbles should stick to side of the glass below the head. The head should persist as you drink and it should leave lines of collapsed foam on the side of the glass as it empties, forming what we call “lace.”

Many attributes of a well-poured beer depend on draft system maintenance and operation. But to pour great draft beer a bar must begin with a “beer-clean” glass. When cleaned properly, a glass has no soil left adhering to the surface—and no oils left behind from the cleaning process. To achieve this, bars must isolate beer glasses from food dishes and milk glasses and wash them with special low-sud detergents. A cold-water rinse before filling helps too. A beer-clean glass provides the perfect vessel for beer and facilitates head formation and retention while eliminating the potential for unsightly glass-clinging bubbles. Beer drunk from a beer-clean glass will leave the telltale lace of a well-poured beer.

Now, about those bubbles.

In order to form, tiny pinpoints of CO2 must meet, coalesce and combine into a sphere big enough to be seen. When this happens naturally in the beer, bubbles rise quickly to the top of the glass to form the foam or head. But bubbles can also form around fixed meeting points called “nucleation sites.” Clean glass is so smooth it offers no nucleation sites—no place for bubbles to form and stick. Bubbles can only adhere to glass if food, dried beer or other contaminants are left behind after cleaning. Thus bubbles on your glass in the liquid beer flag a poorly cleaned glass. Point them out to your server as soon as you see them and explain that you’d really like your beer in a clean glass.

As for the foam at the top of the beer, it can be a contentious issue between pubs and patrons. Brewers call for up to an inch of foam atop their beers, but consumers—knowing that foam is mostly air—often want that minimized. In Europe, you find beer served in lined glasses. A line, labeled with a liquid volume such as “0.5 Liter,” appears an inch or so below the top of the glass. When presented, your glass should contain liquid beer to that line. The space above that (and often above the top of the glass as well) should be filled with foam.

Behind the Faucet

Draft systems range from simple to complex. But regardless of structure or design, every draft system should deliver cold, carbonated beer. When a server opens the tap or draft faucet, beer should come out as a completely liquid steam that pours at a rate of about 2 ounces per second. In short, pouring a glass of draft beer should be no more difficult or time consuming than pouring beer from a bottle.

New draft systems typically achieve this ideal. But without proper maintenance, the carefully tuned beauty of properly poured draft slips away. In its place, we all too often find out-of-control draft systems that give consumers poor quality beer while also reducing retailer profits.

Draft problems run a range from mild to malodorous based on the consequences faced by both consumer and retailer. Let’s start with the least offensive maladies and work our way up to the truly awful.

In the United States, we measure carbonation levels in “volumes of CO2.” A common level of carbonation for a beer would be 2.5 volumes of CO2. That means that if we took all of the CO2 out of a keg of beer and put it into unpressurized containers the size of kegs, the CO2 alone would fill up two and a half kegs of space.

So how dowe  put a keg full of beer plus 2.5 kegs of CO2 into one actual keg? Pressure, of course. Beer is kept under pressure and that both compresses the gas so that it takes up less room and dissolves the CO2 into the beer.

While most American-made beers contain 2.3 to 2.8 volumes of CO2, in most good beer bars you’ll find examples that are both lower and higher. At the low end are so called “nitro” beers like draft Guinness Stout. They are typically carbonated to as low as 1.0 to 1.5 volumes of CO2.  At the high end, you’ll find both Belgian styles like Trippel and the German wheat beers called hefeweizens. These can be carbonated to at levels of 4.0 to 5.0 volumes of CO2.

As you can see, carbonation levels vary widely. The difference changes what you taste and it also dramatically changes how the bar serves the beer on draft. If the pressure applied to the keg doesn’t match the carbonation of the beer, flat or foaming beer can easily result.

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) is the federal agency that regulates alcoholic beverage labeling. Title 27 of the Code of Federal Regulations spells out, in sometimes nitpicking detail, what you may print on a beer label, what you may not print and what you must print (and in what typeface, print size and color).

The Devil is in the Details

Uncle Sam frowns on even the slightest deviations. Epic Ales, a microbrewery in Seattle, WA, had a label disallowed because the mandatory warning statement (the one about alcohol impairing your ability to drive or operate heavy machinery) lacked a period.

In grammar school, a mispunctuated sentence might get you a rap on the knuckles from your teacher. But for a recent start-up trying to get its products on the market, far worse is a delay of weeks (or months) until a revised label can be submitted.

There are certain statements that the TTB clearly and unequivocally forbids. You can’t say that beer has any health benefits. Stating that your beer contains vitamins or minerals (even if backed up by laboratory analysis) is considered a de facto health claim and not allowed. (But the TTB will permit you to list the protein, carbohydrate and fat content.)

Terms that bespeak of high alcohol content, like “strong” or “high test,” are also verboten. The original label for Tuppers’ Hop Pocket Ale was disallowed because it contained the phrase “powerfully hopped.” Apparently, the feds neither knew nor cared that hops have no influence on the alcoholic content of a beer.

What vexes brewers, however, are arbitrary decisions over matters not mentioned in the regs. “They don’t always set out their expectations in clear terms,” says Cody Morris, brewer/manager of Epic Ales, which in its brief lifetime (construction began in December 2008) has already accumulated a stack of rejections. His label for Terra-saurus was shot down because of the description “a meaty ale.” Notes Morris: “They rejected it because they thought ‘meaty’ implied I put meat in my beers.” (His Terra-saurus does contain one unusual ingredient—shiitake mushrooms—but no meat.) Morris changed “meaty” to “toothy” and the TTB nixed that adjective as well as a “non-accepted term.”

A second label, for a spiced ale called Solar Trans-amplifier, was rejected because of the phrase “an invigorating ale.” The TTB gave the thumbs down on a third label, for a coffee and cardamom-flavored brew called OTTO-Optimizer, because the label described it as “swarthy.”

Finally, a frustrated Morris submitted paperwork for a product called Simple Ale, whose label is printed in a generic black and white with simple block lettering and no extraneous designs. That one sailed through.

The whole thing makes you want to crawl up in a fetal position on a sack of malt,” sighs Morris.

Mind Your Design

The TTB’s labeling code also specifies what designs you can and can’t display on the label. Anything obscene is forbidden. You’re also not allowed to print a crest, coat-of-arms or insignia if it might falsely imply an endorsement from an individual or group using that symbol.

Brian Owens, brewer for O’Fallon Brewery in O’Fallon, MO, recently had a label for his Hemp Hop Rye beer rejected because it had a picture of a spiky-leaved hemp plant. “They said you can’t advertise a controlled substance,” he says  of the TTB’s response. Although it’s legal to import sterilized hempseed (as long as contains no more than traces of the psychoactive chemical THC), you can’t grow hemp in any form. “Oddly enough, we had to take the picture of the healthiest ingredient off the label,” commented Owens.

You’d think that it would be safe to display the American flag on your label.

And you’d be wrong.

In the early 1990s, Jack Joyce of Rogue Ales in Newport, OR, submitted his American Amber Ale for label approval. The government rejected the label, which showed an Uncle Sam-like figure hoisting a beer with the American flag fluttering in the background. Rogue, it seems, had run afoul of U.S. Code Title 4, Chapter 8, Item 1: “The U.S. flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever.” So Joyce redesigned the label to portray a generic pattern of red and white stripes with a single row of stars as a border.

However, he continued to use the flag design for glasses, T-shirts, tap handles, etc. until 2005, when a TTB agent, vacationing in Oregon, spotted a Rogue truck painted with the original logo. Ordered to cease and desist, Joyce repainted his trucks and destroyed or gave away between $15,000 and $25,000 worth of promotional items. He was able to salvage his tap handles by painting out the stars. “We solved that by basically desecrating the flag,” he observed ironically.

The prohibition against the flag’s use in ads is meant to keep consumers from thinking that the government endorses products. At least, that’s what the U.S. Department of the Treasury said at the time of the controversy. But the national code for displaying the flag, in effect since 1923, cites another reason for not depicting the Stars and Stripes on a beer label: The flag’s image should never be used on items that are customarily used once and tossed into the garbage, like napkins or candy wrappers. Trashing even a picture of the flag is considered an insult to Old Glory. Technically, postage stamps that portray the flag are also a violation.

But even though the United States Postal Service gets a free pass, Joyce declined to protest the TTB’s decision. “Ours is not to reason why, ours is to comply,” he says, noting gratefully that the government did not exercise its option to fine him $70 for every item that violated the code.

Just because the TTB grants you its approval, that doesn’t mean you’re cleared to sell your beer from coast to coast. “We’ve had more trouble with the states than with the federal government,” grouses Dan Shelton of Shelton Brothers importers in Belchertown, MA. One of the Shelton’s celebrated tussles involved Les Sans Culottes, a bière de garde from the French brewery Les Choulette. The label features a scene from the Eugène Delacroix painting Liberty Leading the People, which commemorates the July 1830 revolution that overthrew King Charles X of France. In the center of the painting is a bare-breasted representation of Miss Liberty holding aloft the French tri-colored flag. Although the original hangs in the Louvre and Miss Liberty’s pose is suppose to have inspired our Statue of Liberty, Maine was one of several states to ban the label, alleging that it contained “an undignified or improper illustration.”

Maine also refused to approve another Shelton product: Santa’s Butt Winter Porter, one of a series of irreverent yuletide beers from the Ridgeway Brewing in Oxfordshire, England. The label portrays Santa squatting on an immense barrel of beer, holding his nice-and-naughty list in his left hand and a foaming mug in his right. The name, notes Dan Shelton, is a pun: “butt” can mean one’s posterior or a barrel containing 108 gallons. “That was the one that caused the real stir,” Shelton says. Maine authorities objected because the image of Santa might appeal to children. “We said that made no sense. A 5- or 6-year-old is not going to be able to purchase a bottle of beer.”

Maine eventually backed down after Shelton, a graduate of Yale Law School, filed a suit with the help of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, attracting national media attention. “We got a lot of hostile mail from people all over the place saying we were going to rot in hell for doing that to Santa Claus,” he says.

However, he adds, “There is such a thing as freedom of commercial speech. We do have rights under the First Amendment.”

A bonanza for beer connoisseurs?

There’s a catch: ask for a beer and you’ll get handed a can wearing a plastic cup. The Red Derby offers no draft or bottled beer: it’s strictly aluminum.

Should you feel deprived? Not all. If you’re in the mood for big, citrusy Pacific Northwest hops, try Dale’s Pale Ale from Oskar Blues in Longmont, CO, or Sea Hag IPA from New England Brewing Co. in Woodbridge, CT. If you prefer a drink that’s malty and rich and smooth, pop open an Oskar Blues’ Old Chub, a first-class Scotch ale. Moo Thunder, from Butternuts Beer and Ale in Garrattsville, NY, is a dry stout that delivers everything you like about Guinness and more. For fans of imports, the menu includes Wittekerke, a Belgian white ale, and Baltik 5, a golden lager from Russia.

Increasingly, any type of beer you can get in a bottle you can get in a can as well. “We’re constantly hounding our reps for anything new in cans,” says Red Derby owner Dave Leventry. “They load so much easier than bottles,” he comments. “And draft beer? You don’t realize how much space you need to run a draft system!”

Cans tend to be cheaper than other packages, he adds, enabling him to offer 12 ounce pours of many better beers for $4, quite cheap by the standards of this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

Marty Jones also sings the praises of canned beer… literally. The self-described “lead singer and idea man” for Oskar Blues and Brian O’Reilly of the Sly Fox (another canning microbrewery) performed a duet during Philly Beer Week to the tune of “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing”:

Cans are a many splendored thing

‘Cause they keep beer fresh the very best from bad, bad things

No UV light can touch it, no oxygen can stale it

A double seam no bottle cap can match…

Getting Canned

It’s been seven years since Oskar Blues became the first U.S. microbrewery to operate a canning line, and the taboos against packaging better beer in cans have fallen fast and hard. Oskar Blues followed up its initial efforts with even bigger beers, including an imperial IPA dubbed Gordon (Jones describes it as a “double red,” but that’s a minor stylistic quibble) and an imperial stout named Ten Fidy, perhaps the strongest (10 percent alcohol by volume) and darkest beer ever packaged in aluminum containers.

For its latest effort, Oskar Blues has gone in the opposite direction, releasing a quaffable Czech-style pilsner under the brand name Mama’s Little Yella Pils. The introduction was delayed, reports Jones, because of a labeling tussle with the federal Tax and Trade Bureau. Regulators disallowed the statement “Take two and call us in the morning” as well as the admonition “Pop this!” Reflects Jones: “They stripped the can of all its fun! We need more humor at the federal level.”

Sly Fox, which operates a brewpub/canning facility in Royersford, PA, has also been breaking new ground. The brewery’s Pikeland Pils won a gold medal in the German-style Pilsner category at the 2007 Great American Beer Festival in Denver. “We didn’t do anything special with it, we just sent along a six-pack of cans,” says manager of brewery operations Tim Ohst.

Sly Fox is currently hatching plans to become the first American brewery to package beer (its O’Reilly’s Stout) in 16-ounce “widget” cans. This type of package, introduced to the United States by Guinness in 1991, contains a plastic cartridge into which some beer and nitrogen gas is forced under pressure. When the top is punched in and the pressure released, the gas streams out rapidly, roiling the beer and creating the rich, creamy head of foam typical of a draft stout.

“It’ll be quite an undertaking,” promises Ohst. The brewery will have to order the cans from a European manufacturer who sells them in minimum lots of around 500,000. The brew crew also will have to rig up a liquid nitrogen drip to inject the gas into the can. But if all goes well, Ohst hopes to have the cans on the market by St. Patrick’s Day 2010.

Meanwhile, in Santa Cruz, CA, a microbrewery called Uncommon Brewers is living up to its name by marketing the first Belgian-style abbey ale in a can. This quirky little operation is one of numerous startups that have elected to sidestep bottling and proceed directly to canning. Brewery president Alec Stefansky has jerry-rigged a mash tun from an old industrial butter churn and uses a two-head manual canner mounted to a surplus schoolteacher’s desk. “We’re operating without a glycol system,” he relates. “Everything’s fermenting at whatever temperature it wants to ferment at.”

Uncommon Brewers’ first canned release is Siamese Twin Ale, which Stefansky describes as a dubbel spiced with coriander, lemongrass and kaffir lime… a classic Belgian style with traditional Thai seasonings. He hopes to follow that up with Golden State Ale, a strong golden ale flavored with poppy seeds, and a Baltic porter brewed with star anise and licorice.

Other microbrewers are canning similarly uncategorical beers. Surly Brewing Co. in Brooklyn Center, MN, recently debuted 16-ounce cans of Coffee Bender, an American brown ale/porter hybrid dosed with locally roasted Guatemalan coffee. The 21st Amendment Brewery in San Francisco offers 12-ounce cans of its watermelon wheat ale.

One wonders what else American craft brewers will introduce to the market by the time the 75th anniversary of the beer can rolls around on January 24, 2010.

No Respect

It was in 1935, less than two years after the end of Prohibition, that the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Co. in Newark, NJ. became the first brewery to offer beer—specifically its Krueger Cream Ale—in cans. The original beer cans, manufactured by the American Can Co. in Greenwich, CT, were made of steel and weighed nearly four ounces. They had a flat metal top that had to be perforated with an unwieldy can opener called a “church key” because it resembled the oversized keys that sextants would carry. (The easy-open cans we know today were nearly 40 years in the future. Not until 1962 did the Pittsburgh Brewing Co. release Iron City cans with a pull tab that could be easily peeled off.)

To prevent the beer from reacting with the steel to form foul-tasting metallic salts, the American Can Co, coated the insides of the cans with a plastic lining it trademarked as “vinyllite.” Krueger apparently had some trepidation, as they chose to debut the new package in Richmond, VA, a minor beer market on the fringe of its territory. But the public embraced the beer can, and by the end of 1935, nearly two dozen American brewers (including some sizable companies like Schlitz) were marketing some type of can.

It wasn’t until 1969, however, the year of the moon landing and Woodstock, that cans surpassed bottles in popularity. That year more than 18 billion beer cans rolled off packaging lines. By that point, the pull tap had become an industry standard and Coors had switched to aluminum, a lighter, less reactive metal that would eventually replace steel as the preferred material for cans.

And yet this workhorse of a container still got little respect. It was associated with bulk commodities like tomato paste and baked beans, not connoisseurs’ beverages.

By the mid-1990s a few craft brewers were contract-canning some of their beer at older regional breweries with canning lines. Generally, however, they only packaged more mass-market styles, like amber lager and golden ale, in cans, and limited sales to venues like golf courses and sports stadiums that prohibited glass.

Boston Beer Co. briefly marketed a Samuel Adams Cream Ale in cans in Great Britain, but company founder Jim Koch has resisted canning his beers for the American market, asserting that even minor breaks in the can’s lining can result in the beer acquiring an unpleasant metallic twang. Other brewers, while not impugning the quality of canned beer, felt that it just didn’t fit the image they wanted to project.

But there was an element of sour grapes in their putdowns. Canning lines were expensive, high maintenance pieces of equipment. Cans were sold in bulk, several million units at a time. Canning was simply beyond the means of most craft breweries.

Yes You Can

A Calgary-based company called Cask Brewing Systems leveled the playing field in 1999 by introducing a manually operated canner with a two-head filler and single-head seamer that was small enough to fit on a tabletop. It cost under $10,000, compared to the quarter of a million that a high-speed canning line might set you back. “When we first started displaying it at trade shows, people thought we were nuts,” recalls company president Peter Love.

Oskar Blues, a Lyons, CO, brewpub, agreed to become the first U.S. customer in 2002. In the intervening years, the company has seen its output increase from about 700 barrels annually to nearly 20,000 barrels in 2008. Last year, Oskar Blues inaugurated a brand new 35,000 square-foot production facility in Longmont, CO. You can buy their beers in 23 states. And they’ve graduated from that labor-intensive early model to a Chinese machine that can fill 150 cans a minute. “We’ve increased our canning speed 500 percent,” notes Jones.

Cask Brewing’s clients now number about 40 U.S. breweries, from Sleeping Lady Brewing Co. in Alaska to Maui Brewing Co. in Hawaii, from Caldera Brewing Co. in Oregon to Coastal Extreme Brewing Co. in Rhode Island. One of their most recent customers is Anderson Valley Brewing Co. in Boonville, CA. The brewery, well-known for brands like Poleeko Gold, Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout and Hop Ottin IPA, was in the process of deciding which of its beers to can as we went to press.

Breweries cite different reasons for getting into cans. Some appreciate the fact that the can is opaque to all light, and won’t admit UV rays that would break down hop compounds and give the beer an unpleasant “skunky” aroma. Others are won over by the can’s compactness and lightness. Bjorn Nabozney, cofounder of Big Sky Brewing Co. in Missoula, MT, notes that a case of cans weighs only about 20 pounds, compared to 35 pounds for a case of glass bottles. Breweries with a strong green ethic will cite the recyclability of cans. According to the Can Manufacturers Institute, more than half of all aluminum cans are recycled, and recycling saves 95 percent of the energy used to manufacture the cans from raw ore.

Still another major reason is the sheer novelty of better beer in cans. With about 1,400 craft breweries operating in the United States, and probably not many more than 50 canning, a lot of markets are under-served… or not served at all.

“We were getting calls from all over the state,” says assistant brewer George Dusek of Top of the Hill Restaurant and Brewery in Chapel Hill, NC, in regard to cans of their Leaderboard Trophy Lager and Rams Head IPA. “At one point a guy from Knoxville, TN, said our beer was there. We have no idea how it got there!”

Dusek said Top of the Hill has had to cut back drastically on canning in order to have enough beer to sell over the bar. They’ve dropped their outside accounts, but you can still buy six-packs at the brewpub. “I think the demand is there,” he adds. “It’d be super to build a whole new brewery to satisfy that demand, but you can’t justify it in this economy.”

Who’s Next?

Until recently, most canning was done either by the megabreweries or tiny brewpubs and microbreweries. There didn’t seem to be much interest among mid-sized operations. That changed dramatically in 2008 when New Belgium Brewing Co. in Fort Collins, CO, began packaging its flagship Fat Tire Amber Ale in 12-ounce aluminum cans.

According to media relations director Bryan Simpson, New Belgium is using a German machine capable of filling 60 cans per minute. By contrast, the brewery’s bottling line does 700 containers a minute. “It’s almost cozy to see the canning line operate!” he laughs. Simpson doesn’t see cans—a second beer, Sunshine Wheat, was set to join Fat Tire in aluminum this spring—accounting for more than 2-3 percent of New Belgium’s volume anywhere in the near future.

Interestingly, the canned version of Fat Tire is not identical to the bottled version. New Belgium was worried about the oxygen pickup of the cans, Simpson explains, so the brewery adds a dollop of yeast slurry to the cans before they’re sealed. The idea is that the yeast cells will consume the oxygen in the head of the can, preventing it from reacting with the beer and giving it a stale, cardboardy flavor. This is not done with the bottled Fat Tire.

An expert panel of tasters, insists Bryan, sampled both versions and could detect no discernible difference. But a minority opinion, he admits, holds that the canned version of Fat Tire has a slightly richer mouthfeel.

Earlier this spring, another sizable microbrewery, Boulevard Brewing Co. in Kansas City, MO, announced that as of April 1 it would release its best-selling Unfiltered Wheat Beer in 16-ounce aluminum bottles from the EXAL Corporation in Youngstown, OH. These containers resemble the old “conetop” cans, which were in use from 1935 through the late 1950s and which are highly prized by can collectors today. But they’re sleeker, lighter, and fabricated out of a single piece of metal, so that the spout doesn’t have to be welded to the body of the can.

Boulevard’s director of marketing Jerry Ragonese said that the aluminum bottles will open up new markets such as golf courses, parks, outdoor concerts and other venues where fear of broken glass makes standard bottles unwelcome. Also, the new containers can be filled on a standard bottling line with minor adjustments. “They’re expensive, but they’re worth it,” maintains Ragonese.

If the can is the new frontier for craft brewing, there’s still a lot of unstaked territory. Who will be the first to market a barley wine in cans? A Belgian-style framboise? An American wild ale?

The bottleneck is demand. Cask Brewing Systems acts as a broker between its clients and the Ball Corporation, the country’s largest manufacturer of cans. It’s whittled down the minimum order to 25 pallets, or 155,000 cans. But that’s still a big investment to sit on if your beer is going to sell in dribs and drabs.

What’s more, the cans arrive pre-painted, so you can only use them for a single brand. Theoretically, it’s possible to buy unpainted cans and slap adhesive labels on them. That’s what Oskar Blues did with its first run of Gordon. But it’s tedious grunt work, advises Marty Jones, and is best avoided.

While we wait for barley wine in cans, another barrier is being leveled. According to Jones, elegant restaurants are considering the merits of beer in cans. He cites Duo Restaurant, a Denver bistro offering seasonal American cuisine whose pastry chef was recently named a semi-finalist for a prestigious James Beard Foundation award.

“Many people feel it’s the best restaurant in Denver, and they carry three or four of our beers,” comments Jones. “Some restaurants think cans are gauche, they want tap handles. But these guys have no reservations about putting our cans down on a white tablecloth aside world-class food.”

We’re mounting a campaign against the frosted glass: the chill drops the temperature of your beer another five degrees and robs you of flavor. But this is a simple shaker pint with a lightly sand-blasted exterior. That’s a frosted glass we can welcome. $4.00 each, Pub Glasses, www.pubglasses.com

Double-Walled Wonder Glass

This insulated beer glass by Bodum promises to be lightweight, scratch resistant, dishwasher- and microwave-safe, heat or cold-retaining and condensation-free. $19.95 and up for two, Bodum Drinkware, www.bodumusa.com

Beer Boots

This high quality half-liter Austrian glass beer boot gives you all of the benefits of drinking beer from a boot—without the odor. The beer boot, or stiefel, is Germany’s answer to the English yard of ale, and presents the same drinking challenges and potential for amusement. $16.95 each, TrueBeer, www.truebeer.com

Belgian Specialty Beer Glasses

A selection of the boggling array of Belgian glassware, whether you’re looking for a Piraat tulip, a Deus flute or a Westmalle chalice. $8.95 and up, www.truebeer.com or www.johnsgrocery.com

Windham Beer Mug

This full lead crystal, 16-ounce beer mug is an impressive gift, for another or for yourself. $35.00 each, Tiffany & Co. www.tiffany.com

Hofbrauhaus Stoneware Mug

At the famous biergarten in downtown Munich, regulars earn the right to keep rustic stoneware mugs like these in locked personal cubbies—a very exclusive mug club. $15.00 each, Straubs Inc., www.straubs.net

Viking Drinking Horns

Plain or pewter and leather-trimmed cow horns are among the items available for Viking re-enactors at these two English sites: www.jelldragon.com and also at www.esford.com.

Talking Beer Mug

This mug will gently remind you to refill your beer when running dangerously low. $28, www.gadgetfind.com

Flashing Beer Glass

Whether you’re looking to get some attention or throwing a sweet blacklight party, this flashing beer glass will do the trick. $3.99 each, www.bachelorette.com

German Oddities

The kölsch beers of Cologne, Düsseldorf’s altbier, and the salty gose of Leipzig all require unique and hard-to-find cylindrical glasses known as stange. From $8.00, Straubs Inc. www.straubs.net

Orval Goblet

The architectural beauty of the Art Deco Orval goblet—a design unchanged since the 1920s—makes this chunky glass as appealing as the Trappist brewery’s beer. $14.00 each, Belgian Shop, shopbelgianshop.com

Archangel Michael Beer Stein

A vessel fit for the nectar of the gods: this cast pewter and gold leaf half liter stein depicts Archangel Michael and Seraphim angels in all their heavenly glory. $143.50, Sam’s Steins & Collectibles, Inc., www.samssteins.com

Oktoberfest Beer Wagon Stein

A traditional relief of the Oktoberfest beer wagon is hand painted on this pewter-topped stein. $86.99, www.beersteinsandmugs.com

My Goodness, My Guinness!

Guinness pints decorated with the traditional trademark, or John Gilroy’s memorable advertising images. TrueBeer, www.truebeer.com

American Micro Pint Glasses

Celebrate life with Rogue Dead Guy, humbly toast with Arrogant Bastard or admire your reflections in a glass of Mirror Pond Pale Ale. $5.75 each, JCD Enterprises, www.beercollections.com

Glass 60-ounce Pitcher

For six great glass pitchers, this is the right price. Give them as gifts or keep them around for a big party. $30.95, Chef2Chef.com, foodservice.chef2chef.net

Classic Nonics

Pint glasses that proclaim your love for Harp, Fuller’s and other classic brews from across the Pond. $4.95 each, Johns Grocery, www.johnsgrocery.com

Engravable Stainless Beer Tankard

This engravable tankard is ready for personalization … and then, beer! $27.95, American Bridal, www.americanbridal.com/ggr166.html

Annapolis Beer Tankard

Drink a stately brew from an ornate lead crystal tankard. Six different designs. $99.00 each, NovaScotiaCrystal.com

Nuremburg Bridal Cup

A pewter figure of a bride in traditional German dress holds a cup aloft, designed so the bride and groom can drink at the same time without spilling a drop. $79.95, www.alilbitoeurope.com

Hunter NASCAR Flared Pilsner

For the sophisticated race fan: a pilsner glass with NASCAR pride (cans are overrated, anyway). $19.99 for two, NASCAR.com

Direction Pilsner

This shapely and elegant pilsner will impress your buddies and the ladies. Hand-blown signature base comes with a neat little bubble, too. $7.95 each, Crate & Barrel, www.crateandbarrel.com

English Pub Gift Set

Get your home bar off to a great start with great English pub gift set, complete with Imperial, nonic and shaker pints as well as coasters, towels and a brass bottle opener. $30.99, John’s Grocery, www.johnsgrocery.com

Big Box Glass

Your local Target won’t necessarily stock them, but online you can find an attractive pilsner set, monogrammed. $27.99 for four, Target, www.target.com

As a whole, these replica glasses are beautifully made, reasonably priced, paper thin and a joy to drink from. The amazing variations in form and especially in whimsical decoration will make you rethink your image of medieval folks as self-flagellating witch-burners. As is apparent from the glasses, there were some very fun folks among them.

The most accessible sites for non-Czech speakers are Bohemart, www.bohemart.com, which carries a range of hand-blown and hand-engraves replica glasses; and Royal Glassworks, www.royal-glassworks.cz, a medium-size glassworks company with situated in north Bohemia.

Based in Sweden, The Northerner (www.northerner.com) carries all things Scandinavian, including repro glasses and Viking supplies. Navigate to the “historical.”

By the way, if you want genuine 17th century glass to touch (but not to drink out of) check out the eBay store of The Crazy Compulsive Collector. He and his pals fish these out of canals in the Netherlands.

A brewer since 1984, Randy Mosher is a nationally recognized writer and authority on brewing and beer styles.

If you really love this form of decorative arts, you might want to head to the Rijksmuesum in Amsterdam to drool over the fine collection of glass and ceramic vessels. While you’re there, enjoy the paintings. One out of three has somebody drinking beer in it. My kind of museum! In London, the Victoria and Albert museum showcases all manner of decorative art, including fine glass. The beer’s pretty good in that neighborhood, too.

Fine antique glass is out there for purchase, but it’s going to cost you. There are genuine 100-250 year-old glasses available if you know where to look. For a start, here’s a dealer that stocks a nice selection of Georgian table glass: www.antique-glass.co.uk

A hundred bucks is not exactly pocket change, but it is the going rate for this delicate little drinking glass engraved with hops on one side and crossed heads of barley on the other. These crystal “dwarf ale” glasses ring like a tiny bells when tapped, and were used by the lord of the manor to drink his strong, house-brewed “October” ale. Plain, fluted, and twisted versions are also available, but the particular conical taper identifies it as an ale glass.

A brewer since 1984, Randy Mosher is a nationally recognized writer and authority on brewing and beer styles.

So what makes a stein, a stein? The lid. Necessity was the mother of this invention: Europe was repeatedly ravaged by reported swarms of flies. This problem led some German principalities to pass sanitary laws requiring all food and beverage containers to be covered. Since many early beer enthusiasts couldn’t devote two hands to removing a lid for each sip, a convenient hinge appeared to facilitate enjoyment of the beloved beverage with one hand. Perfect for pre-Renaissance darts!

Many antique steins, including the sought-after German Mettlach creations, are very collectible, fetching thousands of dollars from devoted enthusiasts. A mother-of-pearl-decorated stein recently sold for over $100,000. Other steins enjoy semi-celebrity status, like the fun and whimsical F.X. Matt/South End Brewing Company’s Utica Club Schultz and Dooley classic collection of characters, available at www.schultzanddooleyonline.com.