By Greg B.    I know I’ve already written about this beer, a little less than a year ago, but I thought it was time to write a quick blurb about it again.  Not to review it again (though I will have a little of that, of course) but because I saw it in a store… in a can!  I’m happy to see more craft beer expanding into the can domain.  It costs a bit up front for the brewery to invest in a canning machine (the bottling lines themselves are quite impressive), but canned beer has some advantages (and a negative stigma that needs to be shaken).  Canned beer is easier to transport, quicker to cool (metal conducts heat faster than glass), lighter to carry, easier to package and ship/stack and easier to open (if you don’t have an opener, of course).  It’s also slightly cheaper and though aluminum is more difficult to recycle (not to mention, useless to a home brewer from the ‘re-usable’ standpoint), I do support craft beer using cans.

One of the reasons I support canned beer is the lack of, basically ‘bottle shock’.  No harmful UV radiation can penetrate the dark aluminum can, allowing you to drink with reasonable assurance that your beer has not been light-struck.   If you think this isn’t a problem, run a test in your house.  Same beer in the dark vs the same beer in a bottle experiencing sunlight periodically.  Do it for 30 days, then chill and compare the beers side-by-side.  You’ll know which one was the light-struck beer.  However, while the aluminum can will ensure a decrease in light-struck beer, it will not protect against temperature changes that can also ‘skunk’ a brew while sitting on a shelf of a store.  This only helps or breaks even, the chances of protecting the beer and assuring that you, the beer consumer, will get a better product when you purchase it.

Here in the USA, beer in a can has been associated with bad beer.  Cheap swill booze that you can buy for $15 a 30 pack and that needs to be ice cold before you can ingest it without your body shuddering and trying to immediately remove it like bad tequila.  However, for just as long a time there has been good beer in the can.  Guinness, Boddingtons, Red Speckled Hen, these have all been produced and sold in cans .  Now, while I may not be the world’s greatest lover of English beer, I will use it as an example for good beer sold in a can.  We in the US need to move beyond the decades old stereotype of Natty Boh, Bud lite and Busch in the can, and move into the world that breweries like Oskar Blues, producing fine craft beer available in the can.  And I for one, am very pleased to see Brooklyn lager being canned.  While it is my favorite general lager, the availability of the canned beer pleases me, for future boat rides, hikes and trips.  As for a review of the Brooklyn lager, I felt it had lost a step from last year, with more of a mashy/grainy flavor than that crisp but flavorful lager of last year.  This will require more research into the topic though, so stay tuned!