BOULDER, CO—Vying for attention in the international arena, 23 American craft breweries, all members of the Brewers Association’s Export Development Program, won 36 awards in 22 different categories at European Beer Star, one of the most respected and recognized beer competitions in the world. The honorees were announced on September 18 at drinktec in Munich, Germany.

The competition is limited to 51 judging categories with consideration given to types of beer which have their origins in Europe. Over 1,500 beers from 40 different countries were evaluated by 102 beer and brewery expert judges. Gold, silver and bronze medals are awarded in every category and given for authentic, distinctive beers of impressive taste and quality that best fulfill the criteria of the particular style.

American craft breweries that received gold medal honors included:

“At Deschutes Brewery, we have been participating in the European Beer Star competition for several years, with success.  When we began our brewery, over 25 years ago, our model was a European one where American beer would return to its roots in Britain and continental Europe.  To be able to compete successfully in such a prestigious event as the European Beer Star is validation that our efforts have been worth it,” said Gary Fish, president, Deschutes Brewery. “Our efforts to export beer to Europe are still in their infancy.  However, we know, through the European Beer Star and the Brewers Association Export Development program, our opportunities for success are far greater than if we attempted to develop a new market, sophisticated in beer, on our own it would be incredibly difficult.”

“What an amazing honor to receive our fourth European Beer Star Award for our Left Hand Milk Stout,” said Eric Wallace, president, Left Hand Brewing Company. “We are incredibly proud to produce such a widely acclaimed sweet stout both in the United States and in the European Union. We hold the European Beer Star competition in high regard and it is very rewarding to be recognized on the international stage for our efforts.”

“As demand for products from small and independent craft brewers continues to grow in America, we are seeing the same things in many markets around the world.  Consumers are looking for unique and distinctive products,” said Bob Pease, chief operating officer, Brewers Association. “We’re thrilled to see that the international community is simultaneously responding to the ingenuity of American craft brewers as they continue to produce innovative, flavorful, unique and high-quality beers.”

Exports of American craft beer have maintained tremendous growth over the past several years. The Brewers Association’s Export Development Program reported record exports of American craft beer in 2012, with American craft beer export volume increasing by 72 percent with an estimated value of $49.1 million. Total American craft beer exports have increased by over 500 percent since 2007.

For more information about the European Beer Star Awards and a complete list of the 2013 American craft brewery winners, visit the European Beer Star website. Learn more about the Export Development Program on the Brewers Association website.

BOSTON—Samuel Adams is partnering with The Greg Hill Foundation to host a Celebrity Stein Hoist at its annual Octoberfest event on Friday, Sept. 13 at the Park Plaza Castle.  Former players from the Boston Red Sox, Bruins, Celtics and New England Patriots will go head to head—or stein to stein—to compete in a traditional stein hoisting competition to raise money for Boston Marathon victims.

WHO

Greg Hill, founder of The Greg Hill Foundation and host of WAAF’s Hillman Morning Show

Joe Andruzzi, former New England Patriots offensive lineman

Dana Barros, former Boston Celtics point guard

Lou Merloni, radio personality and former Boston Red Sox second baseman

Bob Sweeney, former Boston Bruins Center

WHEN

Friday, September 13, 2013 at 7:30 p.m. (Doors open at 5PM)

WHERE

Park Plaza Castle, 130 Columbus Ave., Boston

WHAT

Celebrity athletes will hold a stein full of Samuel Adams OctoberFest for as long as possible with a crowd of beer lovers cheering them on. These Boston sports legends will endure the ultimate arm and shoulder strength challenge to raise money for The Greg Hill Foundation and Boston Marathon victims.

Tickets for both Friday night and Saturday’s all day Octoberfest Celebration are on sale now at beersummit.com. It’s a release party, and a celebration of all things good about beer, brewing and Octoberfest in Boston.  The event will feature over 15 specialty beer styles, stein hoisting competitions, food and beer pairings, giveaways and more!

The cover of the September 2013 issue of All About Beer Magazine.

Chief Oshkosh Red Lager was about to go national. It had found a distribution and marketing partner, and was ready to bust out of Wisconsin. Jeff Fulbright, the founder and president of the brewing company behind Chief Oshkosh, Mid-Coast Brewing, excitedly placed the beer in a spectrum that showed both his ambition and confidence.

“The West Coast has Anchor Steam beer, and the East Coast has Samuel Adams beer,” Fulbright said in a statement. “Through this union, we have created a company that has the strength to distinguish our line of beers as a dominant Midwestern representative of the rapidly growing microbeer segment.”

The idea for Fulbright’s company was born of the larger craft beer movement in the late 1980s and 1990s, right before it entered its period of greatest growth. Information still traveled primarily over the telephone or by word of mouth; and it was at a Great American Beer Festival in Denver in the late 1980s that Fulbright ran into Jim Koch of the Boston Beer Co., which itself had gone national a few years before.

Fulbright, then in his mid-30s, with bushy brown hair and a moustache to match, told Koch of his idea to revive the Chief Oshkosh brand in his native Wisconsin. He had checked on the trademark: It was available. The beer had been brewed until 1971 by the Oshkosh Brewing Co., one of many regionals that collapsed amid the post-World War II consolidation in the brewing industry.

Oshkosh Brewing itself had been formed by the 1894 consolidation of three Oshkosh-based breweries nervous about competition from Schlitz and Pabst in nearby Milwaukee, according to Lee Reiherzer of the Oshkosh Beer blog, who first tracked down Fulbright’s story.

Koch suggested that Fulbright brew Chief Oshkosh under contract at an existing brewery, which was what Koch himself was doing for his fast-selling Samuel Adams Boston Lager. Fulbright took Koch’s suggestion back to the Midwest, where he studied brewing at the Siebel Institute in Chicago and incorporated the Mid-Coast Brewing Co. in May 1991.

Its signature beer would be a red lager that Fulbright devised at Siebel and brewed at the Stevens Point Brewery, a regional 70 miles northwest of Oshkosh.

Chief Oshkosh Red Lager hit the local Milwaukee market in 1991, retailing for $3.99 a six-pack. Fulbright lined up coverage on three TV stations in Wisconsin as well as in the consumer and trade media. He reached out to legendary critic Michael Jackson personally as well as to this magazine—Jackson praised the beer for an “unapologetic, robust sweetness” and All About Beer said it was “just delightful.” Distributors signed on, and by the end of 1992, Chief Oshkosh would spread statewide, with those plans to go national following quickly after.

The craft beer was already a hit, when, on June 17, 1991, a Monday, Fulbright hosted a formal unveiling for about 45 people at the Oshkosh Hilton. He and volunteers poured the red lager from cans.

That’s right: cans.

Surprised?

You’re forgiven. The history of canning in American craft beer is drenched in myths. For instance, ask most industry experts, including the brewers themselves, and they would date the advent of craft-beer canning to late 2002, when Dale Katechis decided to can all his Oskar Blues brands, particularly his signature Dale’s Pale Ale. Oskar Blues, out of tiny Lyons, CO, is considered to be the first American craft brewery to can its own beers.

But it wasn’t the first American craft beer sold in a can. (And it wasn’t the first in North America, for that matter, to can its own beers, with that honor belonging to Yukon Gold in Canada’s Yukon Territory in 2001.) Chief Oshkosh Red Lager predates Dale’s Pale Ale by 11 years, as do at least four other domestic offerings: Pete’s Summer Brew from Pete’s Brewing, Wisconsin Amber from Capital Brewery, Brewski Brewing’s Brewski Beer and Iron Range Amber Ale from James Page Brewing—all hit shelves, either regionally or nationally, before 1999, though each was canned on contract by larger companies.

For Fulbright, the decision to can in 1991 was purely economic, and he was not aware that he was unique in craft beer. “I just saw it was the only means to an end because, well, I won’t say how little money we started with,” Fulbright told All About Beer in April. He estimates that the total was “way under $100,000.”

His decision to can might have saved him an estimated penny per ounce, according to a source familiar with beer packaging. Canning manufacturers, then and now, typically demand minimum orders of several thousand cans. Fulbright was soon producing 2,000 barrels annually—or roughly 660,000 12-ounce cans. He poured the savings from canning into marketing as well as into ingredients that were rare, even for craft beer, including Belgian Caramunich malt, which gave Chief Oshkosh its reddish hue.

Chief Oshkosh would not survive the decade, doomed by a distribution battle with Miller, which by 1993 was aggressively pushing a red lager through Leinenkugel, the Wisconsin regional it acquired five years before. Fulbright’s distribution would grow to 13 states, but it wasn’t enough: In 1994, Mid-Coast Brewing and the last cans of Chief Oshkosh disappeared from shelves. Most of the other craft beer brands in cans would also fold before or soon after the turn of the century under similar pressure brought on in large part by the national breweries (only Capital Brewery remains).

That left Oskar Blues, starting in 2002, to loose the ongoing trend of craft brewers, small and large, canning their beers. The number of craft breweries canning at least some of their beers has increased at least 28,400 percent in the last decade. The biggest addition to this canning roster came in February, when Boston Beer Co. announced it would begin canning its iconic Samuel Adams Boston Lager.

The announcement, however, by chairman Jim Koch, Jeff Fulbright’s informal adviser all those years ago, only added to the myths about craft beer in cans.

The Big Line

Koch’s announcement was front-page news in The Boston Globe. The Feb. 17 article began by framing the decision to can in revolutionary terms—with a capital R: “The project’s code name—Bunker Hill—hinted at the formidable challenge Boston Beer Co. faced: could the craft brewery that revolutionized American beer put its Sam Adams lager in a can without sacrificing the taste millions of consumers expect with every sip?”

Koch’s main concern about canning, according to the article, was that the metal might ruin the taste of his beer, never mind harm consumers’ health. It’s a concern that has dogged canned beer for decades. Fulbright confronted it from retailers and consumers in the early 1990s, and Katechis faced the same questions a decade later.

While some consumers say they taste a difference between canned and bottled beers, the science suggests any difference is in their heads.

Aluminum cans, for one, have been lined for decades with a coating between the metal and liquid. Ball Corp., the nation’s largest can manufacturer and Boston Beer’s partner on its new can, said through a spokesman that it and other manufacturers have been lining since “at least back to 1970 or so for aluminum cans when they were introduced, and even earlier for steel beverage cans.”

Had aluminum cans lacked such lining, it’s unlikely canned beer—canned anything, really—would have taken hold in the marketplace: Over time, the aluminum would have poisoned one consumer after another. As it stands, hundreds of millions have consumed beer from aluminum cans and lived to tell about it.

“The mythology is that cans used to suck because they didn’t have lining and now cans are lined,” said Jaime Gordon, technical sales representative for canning-machine manufacturer Cask Brewing Systems. “It’s a misperception—cans have always been lined. If they weren’t lined you wouldn’t be able to drink out of them.”

Controlled studies have further shown the lack of aluminum seepage into beer. In March 2008, the Health Ministry of Canada, where canned craft beer was born, examined the presence of bisphenol A (BPA) in different canned beers, including Stella Artois and Heineken (though no American craft-beer brands). BPA is an industrial chemical often used in the lining of metal cans as well as plastic containers like water bottles. Too much BPA can be unhealthy, especially for infants.

The Canadian study concluded that aluminum cans allowed minuscule amounts of BPA to seep into beer, not enough to be unhealthy, suggesting that modern cans keep aluminum out of beer but that the lining keeping it out stays away, too. In fact, the same study showed higher amounts of BPA in some canned soft drinks like Diet 7Up and Mountain Dew than in the canned beers.

Still, the myth persists that aluminum affects the beer—and that the single biggest technical, never mind mental, leap for any craft brewer wishing to can remains separating metal from beer.

“A lot of times people say, ‘Oh, yeah, they’ve got these new cans, with new lining,’” said Brian O’Reilly, brewmaster at Sly Fox Brewery in Pottstown, PA, which in April became the first craft brewery to sell beer in cans with completely removal tops, a technology from Crown Holdings Inc. “It’s not like craft breweries jumped on canning just because the lining was good; it’s always been good.”

Green and Green

To hear an early pioneer like Katechis tell it, or a relative latecomer like Koch, the decision to can for a craft brewer arises largely with two goals in mind.

The first is consumer mobility. That is, craft brewers want their customers to be able to cart their brands to the softball diamond, the campground, the shore and other places where glass can be problematic. Here was then-Oskar Blues brewmaster Brian Lutz in a Modern Brewery Age Q-and-A shortly after the 2002 launch of canned Dale’s Pale Ale: Cans “make it easier for outdoor enthusiasts to take great beer into the back country, in the canoe, the ski pack, anywhere they want to.” And here was The Boston Globe in 2013 on Koch’s announcement: “[T]he plans are to roll out cans of Sam’s Boston Lager and Summer Ale in time for beach-cooler weather.”

However concerned craft brewers might be for consumers’ beer mobility, the single greatest driver of the canning trend has been what drove Jeff Fulbright’s decision more than 20 years ago: economics. Once the right equipment came along, it proved a lot cheaper for craft brewers to can than to bottle.

In 1999, Calgary, Alberta-based Cask Brewing Systems introduced a small, manual machine that could can two 12-ounce beers; it cost no more than $10,000 at a time when even used canning machines routinely sold in the six figures. The machine was originally aimed at brew-on-premises retailers; when that trend fizzled, Cask turned to craft brewers. Oskar Blues was its first American client.

The brewery’s success in cans was undeniable. Its Dale’s Pale Ale bested 23 other pale ales in a blind taste test run by New York Times critic Eric Asimov in 2005; and three years before that, Oskar Blues signed a deal with Denver-based Frontier Airlines to carry Dale’s on all fights—a decision, Frontier noted, based in part on the lighter packaging. (Lest another myth arise, Oskar Blues was not the first canned craft beer carried on a domestic airline: In the late 1990s, Continental carried Pete’s Summer Brew and Northwest carried James Page.)

Consumer mobility aside, canning can affect the mobility of a distributor, which can, in turn, affect the bottom line of brewers. According to a source familiar with beer distribution, the typical truckload of 20 pallets of 12-ounce bottles translates roughly to 54 to 60 cases; 20 pallets of 12-ounce cans, however, can total 72 to 84 cases.

The second goal driving craft-canning decisions, to hear most brewers tell it, arises from environmental concerns. Cans, simply put, are easier and cheaper to recycle than bottles. And the fact that distributors are able to ship more cans at a time than bottles can cut the amount of carbon emissions associated with transporting beer.

Canning, though, does have its dark side environmentally: namely, bauxite mining to get at the mineral precursor to aluminum called alumina. Bauxite mining entails leveling large areas of land and then drilling down (or detonating down, as the surface demands) to get at the alumina.

The process is akin to strip-mining for coal. As the New Belgium Brewing Co., which began canning popular brands like Fat Tire Pale Ale in 2008, advises on its website, consumers interested in having the lowest environmental impact should “drink draft beer out of a reusable cup.”

The Greatest Myth

As of May, 2013, 285 craft brewers were canning 956 beers covering 80 styles, according to CraftCans.com, a site that tracks the trend. Lagunitas Brewing Co. was not one of them.

In an email to All About Beer, the brewery’s founder, Tony Magee, said that concerns over the environmental impact of canning—including what happens to the can linings when recycled—had contributed to his decision to not follow the trend. (He also questioned the emphasis on canning as an environmental fix when few breweries try to curb the effects of that most prevalent of greenhouse gases, which is that most copious byproduct of fermentation: carbon dioxide.)

“It’s like if someone made a blanket statement that only lager beers were truly pure,” Magee said of the cans vs. bottles environmental debate. “There’s an implication that there were impurities in ales. It’s the things that didn’t get said that were the most important elements in evaluation.”

Perhaps this is the biggest myth, then, in craft-beer canning: that the trend’s upward arc is an inevitable one. There are major holdouts—Lagunitas is the sixth-biggest craft brewery by sales volume, according to the latest Brewers Association figures. And bottling seems to be inescapably entwined with American craft beer. Two cases in point: Jeff Fulbright began bottling Chief Oshkosh Red Lager as soon as he could, in June 1992; and the man who inspired him to start his own beer line, Jim Koch, allowed Whitbread, under license, to can his cream ale sold in the United Kingdom from 1996 to 1999.

Production was “modest,” according to Boston Beer.

Philadelphia

When the sold-out National Homebrewers Conference hits the City of Brotherly Love in June, it’ll do so in the city where Benjamin Franklin and William Penn dabbled in a little homebrewing long before the advent of the American Homebrewers Association. So if you’re a homebrewer, you’re in great company, and this annual event is immensely fun and educational regardless of your skill level.

After all, we can’t all be pioneering professionals the way braumeister John Wagner was. He’s commemorated by a historic marker on North American Street at the corner of Poplar for having brewed “America’s first lager” here. It’s situated just down the block from Standard Tap (901 N. 2nd St.; StandardTap.com) in the Northern Liberties neighborhood. Among its two dozen taps, you’ll always find offerings from the Keystone State’s finest, from America’s oldest brewery, Yuengling & Sons, located in Pottsville, to Sly Fox Brewing located in Pottstown, whose Pikeland Pils would likely have done braumeister Wagner proud. You’ll also have the chance to try one of my favorite IPAs, Double Simcoe from Weyerbacher’s in Easton. The brewery’s over an hour’s drive north, so just get a pint here.

Our beer docent is Bryan Kolesar, who’s been blogging at BrewLounge.com since 2005 and also covers the local beer scene for the Communities section of The Washington Times. He starts with Yards Brewing (901 N. Delaware Ave.; YardsBrewing.com), established in 1994. Kolesar points to this brewery’s “cult favorite ESA” (Extra Special Ale, medal winner at last year’s Great American Beer Festival), though the brewers have expanded beyond their original British-style ales. The tasting room is open daily with tours offered weekends from noon to 4 p.m. Having said that, one of the best places to enjoy the ESA is from the gravity tap found at Bridgid’s (726 N. 24th St.; Bridgids.com), a Eurocentric tavern that serves the ale from a cask located a floor above the bar.

If you’re venturing out to Bridgid’s, cross the Schuylkill River and hit Dock Street Brewing (701 S. 50th St.; DockStreetBeer.com) in West Philly. It’s easily reachable by hopping on SEPTA’s trolley route 34. Kolesar conducts an annual beer run during Philly Beer Week (early June) in conjunction with the brewery, in case that inspires you to run there (3.5 miles each way from Center City. Speaking of which, locals absolutely do not refer to this district as “city center”). At Dock Street, don’t miss Illuminator Dopplebock, hailed by the legendary Michael Jackson as an “enlightening example” of the style.

Another brewery to make sure to check out, although it’s nearly five miles from Center City, is Philadelphia Brewing (2439 Amber St.; PhiladelphiaBrewing.com), itself only a dozen years old though housed in a beautifully restored 19^th-century brewhouse offering free tours Saturdays from noon to 3 p.m. Afterward, amble a couple of blocks into the heart of the Kensington neighborhood to the Memphis Taproom (2331 E. Cumberland St.; MemphisTaproom.com), where you’ll find a great beer garden, several locals on draft, including offerings from Victory Brewing and tasty vittles.

Of course, one need not venture far from Center City to visit a local brewery. Walk through Penn Square and then upstairs to Nodding Head Brewery (1516 Sansom St., 2nd floor, NoddingHead.com). It has racked up several awards, including a three-year run of GABF medals for Ich Bin Ein Berliner Weisse. While this summer seasonal is refreshing and delicious on its own, Kolesar says, “Owner Curt Decker has mentioned that no one takes more delivery of woodruff syrup outside of Germany than do they.” Food-menuwise, you’ll find a range from Belgian mussels and frites to Southern chicken and waffles.

If it’s Belgian you’re craving, continue on a few blocks farther for Philly’s highly esteemed Monk’s Café (264 S. 16th St.; MonksCafe.com), whose private-label oud bruin, a Flemish brown ale, is always one of the 20 taps among an impressive list of Belgian beers as well as a few American-brewed ones, typically in various Belgian styles. The bottle list is even more ridiculously drool-inducing.

As for area breweries, Kolesar also encourages hopping the Chestnut Hill East train toward Northwest Philly so as to check out Earth Bread + Brewery (7136 Germantown Ave.; EarthBreadBrewery.com), where husband-wife team of Tom Baker and Peggy Zwerver wield grains into delectable edibles and libations. Nearby is the Philly outpost of Iron Hill Brewery (8400 Germantown Ave.; IronHillBrewery.com/chestnuthill). “With their thirty-plus GABF and WBC awards over the past decade or so,” their beers are on the money.

If you’re attending the NHC (or just doing a beercation to Philadelphia), the host hotel, the Marriott Downtown, is already sold out, but the Hilton Garden Inn-Center City (1100 Arch St.) offers an NHC discount rate.

Finally, a word about eating. Kolesar offered a deluge of great cheesesteak and hoagie spots  (Jim’s, John’s, Chubby’s, Dalessandro’s) and acknowledged that the two primary traps—Pat’s and Geno’s—“are good for people-watching at 3 a.m., but nearby in Old City is Campo’s (214 Market St.; CamposDeli.com), where you can find a great hoagie.” Better still, advises Kolesar, head to the historic Reading Terminal Market (51 N. 12^th St. at Arch Street; ReadingTerminalMarket.org) for a collection of restaurants that proffer history, a variety of smells and visuals, and great sandwiches and beers. His top choice? “DiNic’s (TommyDiNics.com), period.” Be sure to order the roast pork sandwich with broccoli rabe and aged provolone, which he points out won best sandwich in the country (on the Travel Channel). “The Market is a local treasure … for produce, fish, meat, coffee, ice cream and a decent beer bar named Molly Malloy’s.”