More craft beer in a can
Santa Cruz craft brewery opts to use cans
CONTAINERS ARE RECYCLABLE, KEEP OUT OXYGEN, LIGHT
By William Brand
Bay Area News Group
SANTA CRUZ – Wonder what’s happening in the rapidly moving world of craft beer? How about craft beer in cans?
Alec Stefansky and Skot Colacicco, partners in Uncommon Brewers, a new Santa Cruz craft brewery, have made the decision to go for cans.
“We wanted to do Belgian-inspired beers and put them out Belgian-style, in corked bottles,” he said.
But they’ve gone through the trouble of getting their brewery certified organic by Santa Cruz-based California Certified Organic Farmers, and their thoughts turned to all-aluminum cans, which are 100 percent recyclable.
Cans are also a perfect container for beer, he adds. Oxygen and light are beer’s worst enemies. Beer in a can will never become light-struck, and oxygen can’t seep in like it can through a cork or crown cap.
The partners made a deal with Cask Brewing Systems, Calgary, Alberta, which has created an economical canner for small-scale craft brewers. Only problem: They had to buy a minimum of 120,000 cans.
Now the cans – labeled for their first beer, Siamese Twin Ale, a spiced, 8.5 percent alcohol by volume, Belgian-style ale – are stacked to the ceiling in their small space on Potrero Street in Santa Cruz.
It’s coming out in a few weeks, they said.
The craft beer can revolution began at Oskar Blue’s brewpub in Lyons, Colo., with canned Dale’s Pale Ale. In San Francisco, Shaun O’Sullivan and Nico Freccia began canning two beers last year, their prize-winning, 7.5 percent IPA and Watermelon Wheat, made with real watermelons.
O’Sullivan asks, why should light lagers from big brewers should be the only beer in cans? His customers agree. “The cans just walk out the door,” O’Sullivan said. “We can’t keep them in stock.”
But one note of caution about cans and ecology: Daniel Maher, director of recycling at the Berkeley Ecology Center, isn’t so sure that they’re the best green choice.
Maher says mining aluminum ore and making aluminum are heavy industrial applications. True, cans are recyclable, but so are bottles, he said.
3 Responses to “More craft beer in a can”
May 31st, 2009 at 8:34 am
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May 31st, 2009 at 10:56 am
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