Bottles VS Cans
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I found this interesting...
https://thirstybastards.com/cans-vs-bottles/
This never happens, but say it did: You are shopping for your favorite beer or one you are on the lookout for. There it is, on the shelf, but, to your surprise, it’s available in both bottle and can format. Which would you choose? Why would you choose one over the other? What do you do? What helps you decide? Most importantly – are you making the right choice?
Honestly – there’s really no question of what the better choice is when it comes to choosing beer cans vs bottles – cans prevail! But not everyone agrees with that. So why are cans a better choice? Is it true that beer tastes better in a bottle? Let’s explore some of the Truths and Myths that exist in the ol’ beer cans vs bottles debate.
Beer Tastes Better in a Bottle
Myth!
Breweries put the same exact beer into bottles that they put into cans, yet many people think that the beer in the bottle tastes better. This is old school (or as I’d say – your dad’s way of thinking). In 2002 Dale’s Pale Ale broke the mold as the first craft brewery to put beer in a can. Until then, craft brewers were only using bottles and if you were drinking beer back then, you probably remember what a big deal this was at the time. People went crazy: How can it be? Good beer in a can?! These days most craft breweries have caught on, thank goodness. In fact, many newer breweries don’t even bother with bottles at all. If people think that beer tastes better in a bottle it’s all in their heads. In blind taste tests, beer that’s poured from a bottle or can into a glass is indistinguishable.Beer Is Fresher In A Can
Truth.
When it comes to freshness, cans dominate bottles because of [lack of] light and oxygen. Just think about it – zero sunlight gets into a can. Light damages beer, giving it that skunky flavor (you’re familiar with that flavor if you drink those beers that come in green and clear glass) known by expert tasters as “lightstruck.”
If you want to get really geeky about it – certain hops are light sensitive and when they are exposed to light (through glass!) photo-oxidation takes place creating that skunky compound, known as 3-methyl-3-butene-1-thiol (MBT). You might even notice this flavor if you’re drinking beer out of a pint glass while sitting out on a sunny patio in the summer.
The moral of the story is: If you’re going to drink beer from a bottle, please-oh-please make sure the bottle is brown. Brown glass will protect the beer from the sun better than green or clear. If you’re outside and drinking out of a glass – try and keep it in the shade. But you know what’s even better? Cans!
When you drink out of a beer cans vs bottles, it’s bound to taste more like the brewer intended it to.
Now let’s talk oxygen. The seal of a bottle cap on a bottle is airtight, however, over time there can be a slow leak of oxygen into the bottle which affects the flavor of the beer. If the beer is consumed within the first few months following bottling this isn’t usually an issue, but with older beers it can be.
The exception is for certain beers that are meant to be cellared, or aged, in bottles for 6 months – 6 years. This a technique used for styles like big Belgian beers, sours, and barleywines. For bottle-aged cellared beers there’s not a specific timeline for when they’ll taste best – this is up to the brewer and sampler of the beer at various stages of cellaring.
On the flip side, beer cans vs bottles have a better seal. In fact, there’s a double seal on the lid of a can after it gets filled with beer, providing double the protection from oxygen getting in. This preserves the flavor and freshness of the beer.
Cans Are More Fun!
Truth.
What do you do while you are drinking beer? Perhaps you’re going for a ten-mile hike in the heat of summer or hopping on a raft for a river trip. Maybe you’re filling up your pockets with road sodas before getting on the ski lift or packing your backpack with a few cold ones to celebrate the end of a mountain bike ride. Maybe you’re heading to the beach to chill under an umbrella or play a game of volleyball.
For all of the fun activities, beer cans vs bottles are the obvious choice – not only because they are lighter in weight (think about your backpack!) but because they are crushable and unbreakable.
Cans are simply more portable.
To play the devil’s advocate…if your normal beer-drinking routine is sitting in a dark bar in the dead of cold-ass winter in middle America – bottles probably have a better chance of being your go-to. You can change your habits though – start ordering your beer out of a can!
Cans Are Better For The Environment
Truth.
Protect your Mother! Earth, that is. If you’re not thinking of your carbon footprint when debating whether to buy beer cans vs bottles, you’re missing out on one of the most important reasons that cans trump bottles. Bottles have been around longer so for breweries that are 10+ years old, they’re likely the preferred vessel. But are they the superior vessel?
Most of the big breweries – even craft breweries – end up shipping pallets and pallets of beer all over the country on semi-trucks and this has a huge impact on greenhouse gas emissions. The approximate weight of a 6pk of cans is 5lbs and 6pk of bottles is 7.5lbs. When you think about those numbers in terms of pallets, cans are a heck of a lot lighter. Not only are cans lighter, but the shape of a case of cans is also smaller than a case of bottles, which saves space on the trucks.
Shipping beer cans vs bottles cuts down on fuel use significantly.
If you need another reason to believe cans are better for the environment, the EPA reports that only 26.4% of recycled glass actually gets reused, while 54.9% of all aluminum cans get successfully repurposed after recycling. It’s kind of a no-brainer.
I'll say this, personally I prefer canned beer if I am pouring into a glass, but bottled beer if drinking from the container. Unless it's cheap beer. There is something to drinking a cold Schlitz in a can...
The Brad
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@Mik said in Bottles VS Cans:
Draft beer FTW. Comes in a big freaking can.
Yeah - for the really good stuff stuff, it's not the material that matters, but the fact that it needs to be fermented for the second time in the actual cask, rather than artificially carbonated.
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I found this interesting...
https://thirstybastards.com/cans-vs-bottles/
This never happens, but say it did: You are shopping for your favorite beer or one you are on the lookout for. There it is, on the shelf, but, to your surprise, it’s available in both bottle and can format. Which would you choose? Why would you choose one over the other? What do you do? What helps you decide? Most importantly – are you making the right choice?
Honestly – there’s really no question of what the better choice is when it comes to choosing beer cans vs bottles – cans prevail! But not everyone agrees with that. So why are cans a better choice? Is it true that beer tastes better in a bottle? Let’s explore some of the Truths and Myths that exist in the ol’ beer cans vs bottles debate.
Beer Tastes Better in a Bottle
Myth!
Breweries put the same exact beer into bottles that they put into cans, yet many people think that the beer in the bottle tastes better. This is old school (or as I’d say – your dad’s way of thinking). In 2002 Dale’s Pale Ale broke the mold as the first craft brewery to put beer in a can. Until then, craft brewers were only using bottles and if you were drinking beer back then, you probably remember what a big deal this was at the time. People went crazy: How can it be? Good beer in a can?! These days most craft breweries have caught on, thank goodness. In fact, many newer breweries don’t even bother with bottles at all. If people think that beer tastes better in a bottle it’s all in their heads. In blind taste tests, beer that’s poured from a bottle or can into a glass is indistinguishable.Beer Is Fresher In A Can
Truth.
When it comes to freshness, cans dominate bottles because of [lack of] light and oxygen. Just think about it – zero sunlight gets into a can. Light damages beer, giving it that skunky flavor (you’re familiar with that flavor if you drink those beers that come in green and clear glass) known by expert tasters as “lightstruck.”
If you want to get really geeky about it – certain hops are light sensitive and when they are exposed to light (through glass!) photo-oxidation takes place creating that skunky compound, known as 3-methyl-3-butene-1-thiol (MBT). You might even notice this flavor if you’re drinking beer out of a pint glass while sitting out on a sunny patio in the summer.
The moral of the story is: If you’re going to drink beer from a bottle, please-oh-please make sure the bottle is brown. Brown glass will protect the beer from the sun better than green or clear. If you’re outside and drinking out of a glass – try and keep it in the shade. But you know what’s even better? Cans!
When you drink out of a beer cans vs bottles, it’s bound to taste more like the brewer intended it to.
Now let’s talk oxygen. The seal of a bottle cap on a bottle is airtight, however, over time there can be a slow leak of oxygen into the bottle which affects the flavor of the beer. If the beer is consumed within the first few months following bottling this isn’t usually an issue, but with older beers it can be.
The exception is for certain beers that are meant to be cellared, or aged, in bottles for 6 months – 6 years. This a technique used for styles like big Belgian beers, sours, and barleywines. For bottle-aged cellared beers there’s not a specific timeline for when they’ll taste best – this is up to the brewer and sampler of the beer at various stages of cellaring.
On the flip side, beer cans vs bottles have a better seal. In fact, there’s a double seal on the lid of a can after it gets filled with beer, providing double the protection from oxygen getting in. This preserves the flavor and freshness of the beer.
Cans Are More Fun!
Truth.
What do you do while you are drinking beer? Perhaps you’re going for a ten-mile hike in the heat of summer or hopping on a raft for a river trip. Maybe you’re filling up your pockets with road sodas before getting on the ski lift or packing your backpack with a few cold ones to celebrate the end of a mountain bike ride. Maybe you’re heading to the beach to chill under an umbrella or play a game of volleyball.
For all of the fun activities, beer cans vs bottles are the obvious choice – not only because they are lighter in weight (think about your backpack!) but because they are crushable and unbreakable.
Cans are simply more portable.
To play the devil’s advocate…if your normal beer-drinking routine is sitting in a dark bar in the dead of cold-ass winter in middle America – bottles probably have a better chance of being your go-to. You can change your habits though – start ordering your beer out of a can!
Cans Are Better For The Environment
Truth.
Protect your Mother! Earth, that is. If you’re not thinking of your carbon footprint when debating whether to buy beer cans vs bottles, you’re missing out on one of the most important reasons that cans trump bottles. Bottles have been around longer so for breweries that are 10+ years old, they’re likely the preferred vessel. But are they the superior vessel?
Most of the big breweries – even craft breweries – end up shipping pallets and pallets of beer all over the country on semi-trucks and this has a huge impact on greenhouse gas emissions. The approximate weight of a 6pk of cans is 5lbs and 6pk of bottles is 7.5lbs. When you think about those numbers in terms of pallets, cans are a heck of a lot lighter. Not only are cans lighter, but the shape of a case of cans is also smaller than a case of bottles, which saves space on the trucks.
Shipping beer cans vs bottles cuts down on fuel use significantly.
If you need another reason to believe cans are better for the environment, the EPA reports that only 26.4% of recycled glass actually gets reused, while 54.9% of all aluminum cans get successfully repurposed after recycling. It’s kind of a no-brainer.
I'll say this, personally I prefer canned beer if I am pouring into a glass, but bottled beer if drinking from the container. Unless it's cheap beer. There is something to drinking a cold Schlitz in a can...
@LuFins-Dad said in Bottles VS Cans:
Beer Tastes Better in a Bottle
Myth!No, that's not a myth.
Cans are for hobos. Real men drink from a bottle.
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No, beer is best from a glass, and I agree with Mik about Draft first…
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No, beer is best from a glass, and I agree with Mik about Draft first…
@LuFins-Dad said in Bottles VS Cans:
No, beer is best from a glass, and I agree with Mik about Draft first…
Sounds like it's time for a double-blind controlled, peer-reviewed study.
I suspect that the results would be similar to digital vs analog sound recordings. One would be able to tell the difference, but I doubt that one would be able to discern which is which.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@LuFins-Dad said in Bottles VS Cans:
No, beer is best from a glass, and I agree with Mik about Draft first…
Sounds like it's time for a double-blind controlled, peer-reviewed study.
I suspect that the results would be similar to digital vs analog sound recordings. One would be able to tell the difference, but I doubt that one would be able to discern which is which.
@George-K said in Bottles VS Cans:
@LuFins-Dad said in Bottles VS Cans:
No, beer is best from a glass, and I agree with Mik about Draft first…
Sounds like it's time for a double-blind controlled, peer-reviewed study.
I suspect that the results would be similar to digital vs analog sound recordings. One would be able to tell the difference, but I doubt that one would be able to discern which is which.
I can't tell the difference between bottled beer and canned beer, but draft real cask ale from a good pub is almost a different drink entirely.
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Cans are always better but I agree that sometimes you just need to drink it out of a bottle.
Now let’s talk about coke. Plastic bottle is the worst. Cans are better. McD’s fountain is better than that. But glass bottles from Mexico are top seed.
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Cans are always better but I agree that sometimes you just need to drink it out of a bottle.
Now let’s talk about coke. Plastic bottle is the worst. Cans are better. McD’s fountain is better than that. But glass bottles from Mexico are top seed.
@89th said in Bottles VS Cans:
But glass bottles from Mexico are top seed.
I'm not sure the difference in taste with Mexican
CokeCoca-Cola is attributable to the bottle, but rather the formulation."Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@89th said in Bottles VS Cans:
But glass bottles from Mexico are top seed.
I'm not sure the difference in taste with Mexican
CokeCoca-Cola is attributable to the bottle, but rather the formulation.@George-K said in Bottles VS Cans:
@89th said in Bottles VS Cans:
But glass bottles from Mexico are top seed.
I'm not sure the difference in taste with Mexican
CokeCoca-Cola is attributable to the bottle, but rather the formulation.Azucar, baby!
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@89th said in Bottles VS Cans:
But glass bottles from Mexico are top seed.
I'm not sure the difference in taste with Mexican
CokeCoca-Cola is attributable to the bottle, but rather the formulation.@George-K said in Bottles VS Cans:
@89th said in Bottles VS Cans:
But glass bottles from Mexico are top seed.
I'm not sure the difference in taste with Mexican
CokeCoca-Cola is attributable to the bottle, but rather the formulation.Mexican Cokes are made with cane sugar. Most of the taste difference is the formulation.
I mentioned the small bottles. IIRC, those were 7 ounces. Much like a little Miller, the small Cokes are meant to be consumed straight from the bottle and the smaller volume means it's usually still cold by the time you take the last swig.
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ "due process". — Buck Sexton
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Cans are always better but I agree that sometimes you just need to drink it out of a bottle.
Now let’s talk about coke. Plastic bottle is the worst. Cans are better. McD’s fountain is better than that. But glass bottles from Mexico are top seed.
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@George-K said in Bottles VS Cans:
@89th said in Bottles VS Cans:
But glass bottles from Mexico are top seed.
I'm not sure the difference in taste with Mexican
CokeCoca-Cola is attributable to the bottle, but rather the formulation.Mexican Cokes are made with cane sugar. Most of the taste difference is the formulation.
I mentioned the small bottles. IIRC, those were 7 ounces. Much like a little Miller, the small Cokes are meant to be consumed straight from the bottle and the smaller volume means it's usually still cold by the time you take the last swig.
@Jolly said in Bottles VS Cans:
@George-K said in Bottles VS Cans:
@89th said in Bottles VS Cans:
But glass bottles from Mexico are top seed.
I'm not sure the difference in taste with Mexican
CokeCoca-Cola is attributable to the bottle, but rather the formulation.Mexican Cokes are made with cane sugar. Most of the taste difference is the formulation.
I mentioned the small bottles. IIRC, those were 7 ounces. Much like a little Miller, the small Cokes are meant to be consumed straight from the bottle and the smaller volume means it's usually still cold by the time you take the last swig.
The Cane Sugar thing appears to be in doubt… https://healthland.time.com/2010/10/28/study-hey-hipsters-mexican-coke-might-be-a-myth/
I’ll say this, there is something to the way the bottle fits the hand, the cold glass, the little vapor when you pop the top off… It’s probably mostly nostalgia, but yeah, there’s something to the bottle…
The Brad
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@Jolly said in Bottles VS Cans:
@George-K said in Bottles VS Cans:
@89th said in Bottles VS Cans:
But glass bottles from Mexico are top seed.
I'm not sure the difference in taste with Mexican
CokeCoca-Cola is attributable to the bottle, but rather the formulation.Mexican Cokes are made with cane sugar. Most of the taste difference is the formulation.
I mentioned the small bottles. IIRC, those were 7 ounces. Much like a little Miller, the small Cokes are meant to be consumed straight from the bottle and the smaller volume means it's usually still cold by the time you take the last swig.
The Cane Sugar thing appears to be in doubt… https://healthland.time.com/2010/10/28/study-hey-hipsters-mexican-coke-might-be-a-myth/
I’ll say this, there is something to the way the bottle fits the hand, the cold glass, the little vapor when you pop the top off… It’s probably mostly nostalgia, but yeah, there’s something to the bottle…
@LuFins-Dad said in Bottles VS Cans:
@Jolly said in Bottles VS Cans:
@George-K said in Bottles VS Cans:
@89th said in Bottles VS Cans:
But glass bottles from Mexico are top seed.
I'm not sure the difference in taste with Mexican
CokeCoca-Cola is attributable to the bottle, but rather the formulation.Mexican Cokes are made with cane sugar. Most of the taste difference is the formulation.
I mentioned the small bottles. IIRC, those were 7 ounces. Much like a little Miller, the small Cokes are meant to be consumed straight from the bottle and the smaller volume means it's usually still cold by the time you take the last swig.
The Cane Sugar thing appears to be in doubt… https://healthland.time.com/2010/10/28/study-hey-hipsters-mexican-coke-might-be-a-myth/
I’ll say this, there is something to the way the bottle fits the hand, the cold glass, the little vapor when you pop the top off… It’s probably mostly nostalgia, but yeah, there’s something to the bottle…
TBH, I couldn't tell much difference when I tried a Mexican Coke.
Then again, it's only freaking Coke....'Ah yes, I can sense the notes of plastic that enhance the underlying tone of phosporic acid and caramel colouring....'
I was only joking
