Headlands Brewing in Adventure Sports Journal

Phil Cutti (on left) and Patrick Horn, co-founders of
Headlands Brewing

There aren't a lot of endurance athletes in the brewing community, but Phil Cutti, Brewmaster of Headlands Brewing is one of them. I've know Phil for nearly four years and enjoyed plenty of his beers over that time so I was glad to interview him for the latest issue of Adventure Sports Journal. You can read how has life as an outdoor endurance athlete has guided his brewery at the link below.

Headlands Brewing: Endurance Athlete Phil Cutti tinkers his way to top brew

The Rise of Craft Hard Cider in Adventure Sports Journal

The smiling faces at Red Branch's Tap Room in Sunnyvale

I've always wondered what the big deal was about cider. After expanding my horizons and exploring this world for this article in the current issue of Adventure Sports Journal, I see what the big deal is about. I enjoyed a few ciders along the way and discovered the Red Branch Tap room, a neat little Silicon Valley hang-out. Many thanks to Wildcide's Dan Gordon and Red Branch's Mike Faul for taking time out of their busy schedules for interviews. I think it turned out to be a good review article on the beverage and hope you enjoy it.

Session Beer Stories in Adventure Sports Journal

One of the things I like most about talking with brewers about is most of their beers have a good story behind them.  That was the case the article on session beer in the current version of Adventure Sports Journal that's out now.  I spoke with Anderson Valley's Fal Allen, Strike Brewing's Drew Ehrlich, and 21st Amendment's Shaun O'Sullivan about how their session beers came to be.  You can read the online version here.

Talking with three brewmasters about their Winter Brews in Adventure Sports Journal

Ah, the winter brew round-up article.  True, it's not the most original idea in beer writing. so I tried to tell a little story behind each beer's creation.  I picked three of my favorite winter beers and interviewed Gordon Biesch's Dan Gordon, 21st Amendment's Shaun O'Sullivan and Ninkasi Brewing;s Jamie Floyd their take on how these beers came about. You can read it all in the latest issue of Adventure Sports Journal.  Hope you like reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

"The Evolution of Organic Beer" in Adventure Sports Journal

Bison Brewing's Dan Del Grande

The short 15 year history of organic beer in California is an interesting one.  Bison Brewing's Daniel Del Grande was instrumental in organizing a small band of organic brewers to spark the organic hop growing industry.  I also found it rather eye-opening that a very small shift in organic beer consumption in California could remove tons of chemical fertilizers and pesticides from the eco-system.  You can read the story of organic beer for yourself in the current issue of Adventure Sports Journal by following this link.

How California's Drought is Affecting the Region's Breweries in Adventure Sports Journal

The article I wrote for Adventure Sports Journal on how California's Drought is affecting the region's breweries is out.  You can read it online on the Adventure Sports Journal website.  It's been a busy month for "real" writing, as I've finished up an article on Gordon Biersch for Edible Silicon Valley for the upcoming fall issue.  Nice to know someone besides my mom actually reads the stuff I write.

Review of Grossman's "Beyond the Pale" in Adventure Sports Journal

Back in November, I reviewed Ken Grossman's Beyond the Pale, his book about his creation of Sierra Nevada Brewing.   For the current issue of Adventure Sports Journal, I reworked it, giving it a more environmental emphasis, and you can read it here.

Winter Brews....latest article in Adventure Sports Journal

Hope you all enjoy the holidays, and are enjoying all the winter releases this season.  I did a short write-up on some of the notable winter releases you can find in Northern California and you can read it here in Adventure Sport Journal.

"The Breweries of Santa Cruz County" now in ASJ

Uncommon Brewers in Santa Cruz

The latest issue of Adventure Sports Journal has hit the streets and includes my write up of Santa Cruz Breweries.  The title "The Breweries of Santa Cruz County" is a slight play on the novel title "The Bridges of Madison County" but unlike the male lead character in that book, I didn't have an affair.  Indeed, my wife and I really enjoyed spending a couple weekend days in Santa Cruz to do research for the article, and yes, I use the term "research lightly". 

Is there a "Santa Cruz Brewing Style"? Observations on the Breweries of Santa Cruz County

Seabright Brewmaster Justin Chavez

The upcoming October-November issue of Adventure Sports Journal will include an article I've written on the Breweries of Santa Cruz County.  I've enjoyed many beers from "over the hill" from my home in South San Francisco Bay, and spent a recent Saturday visiting some of the county's breweries to do research for the article.  Yes, it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it.  A few thoughts and observations of this quietly thriving brewing region.

If there is a brewery that's come a long way, it's Santa Cruz Ale Works.    About five years ago when their beers first started coming out, I found them marred by a one-note bitterness, and not a particularly interesting note, either.   That's clearly not the case any more and you'd have to figure brewmaster Marc Rosenbloom would figure things out given all his GABF medals from his days at Seabright Brewing.  The brewery sticks to traditional German and English style  and the flavors in the ones I tried clearly popped.   If I had to pick a favorite, it would be their Kolsch, with a light lemon note and refreshing mineral-like finish.  Their rich and smooth Dark Knight Oatmeal Stout is a close second.  They opened a tasting room at the brewery four months ago, serving up some pretty solid sandwiches to go with the beer.  Plenty of home brewing discussion was in the air when I stopped by the taproom.

If you want to know what's going on in Santa Cruz, talk to Seabright Brewing's Jason Chavez.  The guy's been brewing since he was seventeen and has been with Seabright since 1999, a long time in the craft beer world.  He seems quite eager to share a pint and talk beer with anyone.  A genuinely engaging guy, he provided a lot of good background information for the article.  I like his Blur IPA, a very flavorful, balanced and drinkable concoction with bright citrus and light floral notes.

Sante Adairius Lives Up to the Hype I've been dying to visit Sante Adairius after seeing plenty of internet raves like this.  The secret of Sante Adairius is definitely out as their small tap room was overflowing out of the parking lot, and everything I tried ranged from pretty good to excellent.  I caught a few words with Brewmaster Tim Clifford as he was working the sizeable crowd, his last words he to me were "I hope this works out, since I don't want to do anything else".  It seems unlikely he'll have that problem.

Is there a "Santa Cruz Brewing Style"?  I happen to think a brewing style distinct to the Santa Cruz region is emerging.  All of the counties breweries, save for Uncommon Brewers, follow rather traditional styles, but freely riff on those styles.  The region's beers fall towards the "sessionable" side of the beer/alcohol spectrum, which I think is a function of the considerable outdoor oriented community.  Who wants a barleywine after a long day on the beach or cycling in the mountains?  I'd also add that the IPA's from Santa Cruz are more balanced than one finds on the West Coast.  So if I had to describe the "Santa Cruz Beer Style", it would be traditionally driven, but undeniably creative beers of the more sessionable variety with restrained usage of hops.  Given the region's strong home brewing community and support for local breweries, it's a sure bet another brewery will pop up in Santa Cruz County within another year or two and I can't wait to see what it will be like.

The crowd at Sante Adairius

Cyclists Like Beer Too....

Cyclists posing for a group shot at Pyramid Brewpub in Berkeley
(Photon from The Grand Cru)

Yep, cyclists like their beer. Maybe even more than runners.  That's what I discovered out writing my latest contibution to Adventure Sports Journal, which you can read here.

The Can Van, and a Peter Slosberg's Latest Beer Venture

I have to thank The Can Van CEO Jenn Coyle, JE Paino of Ruhstaller Beer, and Pete Slosberg of newly formed Maverick's Beer for their time and insights for the latest article I wrote for Adventure Sports Journal.  The Can Van is a mobile cannery serving the craft brewing industry, while Slosberg is partnering with Half Moon Bay Brewing on a line of session beers gear to the the outdoor set.  You can read the article on the Adventure Sports Journal website here.

California Winter Seasonal Beer Round-up in Adventure Sports Journal

If I learned one thing from the write-up on Winter Seasonal beers from California Breweries I wrote for Adventure Sports Journal, it's that a surprisingly number of them are complex and flavorful, yet quite drinkable.  I really thought it would be difficult to find a bunch of winter seasonals that weren't heavy malt bombs or high alcohol flavor explosions that are quite frankly the last thing I'd want after a trail run.  Further proof that the vibrant California brewing community cannot be easily pigeon-holed.   You can read the round-up here.

Touring Four Innovative California Breweries

(An edited version of this post was published in the Oct/Nov 2012 issue of Adventure Sports Journal.)



This isn't a museum.  It's Anchor's Historic Brewhouse
(Photon courtesy of Anchor Brewing)

There’s revolution going on in this country, born largely in California that has nothing to do with music, politics, or some insanely great gadget.  It’s a revolution in beer, a beverage that’s existed for over 5,000 years of human history that continues to be reinvented to this day.    Large breweries run by multinational corporations producing unoriginal light, flat tasting yellow lagers are dramatically losing market share to a growing fleet of smaller independent breweries concocting a wide variety of rich, flavorful, and unique brews.   People are enjoying the endless flavor combinations and possibilities of beer and becoming more aware about where their beer comes from.  California breweries are major pioneers of this movement.

Unlike most businesses with tightly protected company secrets, many breweries happily throw open their doors to let you experience their sights, sounds, and tastes.    You can tour four of California’s leading breweries changing the way our nation experiences beer, and here’s what you’ll find.

Anchor Brewing (SanFrancisco)

Go to Anchor Brewing and you’ll see a piece of San Francisco history.   The brewery is housed in a four story Depression-era brick building in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood.  Visitors meet in brewery’s tap room, with its classic carved wooden interior and old brewery photographs, which include Janis Joplin happily enjoying an Anchor Steam.    The brewery itself, with its old copper kettles and brick interior, looks like something out of a museum, but is where all of Anchor’s beer is brewed today.


The tour starts with recounting of the tumultuous history of Anchor Brewing.  It’s one of the oldest breweries in the United States, dating back to the Gold Rush-era in San Francisco.  It survived the 1906 Earthquake and Prohibition, but nearly went out bankrupt in 1965 before Fritz Maytag, a recent Stanford graduate from a Midwestern family of prominent dairy farmers (think “Maytag Blue Cheese”)  learned of the imminent demise of his favorite beer and purchased 51% of the business.

While saving the brewery, Maytag carefully studied brewing methods from the brewery’s earliest period, when San Francisco breweries were known for their “Steam Beer” fermented in open vats often on roof tops with the cool San Francisco climate providing natural refrigeration.  It’s a brewing practice that had long been abandoned, most likely due to the likelihood of wild yeasts and other airborne microbes ruining a batch. 

Maytag developed a system of open shallow vats in a more controlled environment to replicate brewing technique, and today every drop of Anchor Steam slowly ferments in these vats.   A highlight of the tour is catching a glimpse of these vats, which had long been a brewery secret.     As brewery spokes person Candice Uyloan describes, “These fermenters are an important part of our unique brewing history and represent a marked difference from the vertical tanks found in other breweries. Except for the occasional hot day, we still simply use the naturally cool air from San Francisco's foggy coastal climate.”

After viewing the brewing equipment and bottling line, the tour concludes back in the brewery tap room where visitor can taste between 6-8 Anchor Beers, depending on the season.   Uyloan adds “We would like visitors to leave knowing that every Anchor beer comes from the hands of people who love and are dedicated to what they do.”

Tour Information

The brewery offers two tours a day on Weekdays.  Tour reservations are taken up to six months in advance and dates fill up quickly, often weeks in advance.  Call 415-863-8350 for more information and to make reservations.  Admission is free.

 

Anderson ValleyBrewing (Booneville)

Tiny, rustic Booneville, with its 1,000 residents, looks like a typical small town, but is like no place on earth.  It’s home to an eclectic group of artists and some of the finest Pinot Noir growing land in all of California.   It’s also the source of Boontling, a quirky, folk language of the region that sprang up in the late 1800’s.  Boontling is largely defunct, save for a few dedicated local practitioners keeping the language alive.  This includes Anderson Valley Brewing, located on the Southern edge of town, which names their beers after Boontling phrases and place names. 

Don't let all those controls in the Anderson Valley Brewhouse fool you,
none of them actually work.

 Anderson Valley’s current brewery went online in 2000 after outgrowing its previous location in central Booneville.  The open 30-acre brewery grounds also include a Frisbee golf course, a tap room, a field of hops growing up a series of a vertical support lines, and eight goats used to “mow” part of the grounds.

The Anderson Valley Brewery tour meets in the tap room and proceeds into the Brew House, where the first thing you’ll see are three gleaming copper brew kettles recovered from a defunct German brewery.  There’s an equally impressive looking old world control panel that looks like something Captain Nemo used to pilot the Nautilus, but if you look carefully, a smaller, more modern electronic controller is actually used to control the brewing equipment.

“We like to educate people on the brewing process,” explains Rebecah Toohey, Anderson Valley’s Tap Room Manager.  “During the tour, we go over the history of the brewery, as well of each step we take to brew our beer.”   This includes a trip to the hop freezer.   There’s nothing more stimulating the walking into the cold air of the hop freezer and deeply inhaling all the fresh, piny hops Anderson Valley uses for beers such as their Hop Ottin’ IPA and Poleeko Pale Ale.  Visitors also get to go up on the brewery roof and see the solar panels which generate about 40% of the breweries electricity, while learning about the many other environmental initiatives that are part of Anderson Valley’s commitment to its unique region.

 Tour Information

Tours start Daily at 1:30 and 3:00 pm, except between January and March, when they only run Thursday-Monday.    The tour costs $5, and include two beer samples from the tap room, and a $5 coupon for any purchase over $10 in the brewery gift shop.  Call (707) 895-BEER for more information.

 Lagunitas Brewing(Petaluma)

Lagunitas is first and foremost about having a good time.  And everyone working at Lagunitas seems to be having one, as all the staff at the Lagunitas Tap Room and Beer Sanctuary has an genuine, infectious  enthusiasm for the place.  The Tap Room and Beer Sanctuary serves food and often features live music.  Tours guides announce the start of each tour by clanging a bell and waving a small, crudely written card board sign above their head.  Anyone who wants to join simply follows them out into the brewery.

Ryan Tamborski discussing Lagunitas's Barrel-aged Brews

Brewery tours typically have the aura of a high school science field trip, but as tour guide Ryan Tamborski tells the story of Lagunitas founder Tony Magee, he works the room like a stand-up comic.  “In the early days, there was a problem when Tony Magee flushed yeast into the community septic tank.  Does anyone know what you get when you flush yeast into septic tank?  Coors Light!”  Indeed, there’s plenty of entertaining stories behind many Lagunitas beers, and most involve either marijuana or owner Tony Magee thumbing his nose at various authorities.   The tour guides are master story tellers, and the Lagunitas Brewery tour is the most entertaining hour I’ve ever spent at a brewery.

But behind the goofy humor, one also witnesses a relentless capitalism. Lagunitas is one of the fastest growing breweries in the United States, available all over the country, and commanding high prices on the black market overseas.   Ryan happily showed off the shiny state-of-the-art equipment Lagunitas recently invested in to meet this exploding demand, and well as telling us Lagunitas’s plans to open a second brewery in Chicago at the end of this year.    Sure, Lagunitas is a place to have a good time, but touring the place also reveals how much hard work and commitment must go into creating the good times.

Tour Information

Mondays-Tuesdays 3:00 pm, Wednesday at 3:00 and 5:00 pm, Saturdays 1:00, 3:00 and 5:00 pm 

Call 707-778-8776 for more information

Sierra Nevada (Chico)

Sierra Nevada is where to go to learn a lot about beer. 

“We have a very technical tour, “explains Marie Gray, Tour Coordinator for Sierra Nevada.  “We get a lot of questions from beer craft drinkers who really want to know more about beer, so we do our best to answer them.  It’s a lot of fun, and we meet a lot of great people out there.”

The dignified splendor of Sierra Nevada's Brewhouse

The tour takes over an hour and carefully goes over every step of the brewing process.  It starts in the mill room, which prepares the malted barley for brewing.  Next in the Brew House,  large room with impressive copper brewing kettles, visitors can peer into to see the mash through glass windows.  You can actually sample a taste of wort, the liquid full of extracted sugars from malted barley, used in Sierra Nevada Pale Ale to understand how the hops and fermentation transforms the sweet liquid into beer.  There is also an invigorating trip to the Sierra Nevada hop freezer room as well as overhead views of the bottling and canning lines.

 In addition to brewing, visitors learn plenty about Sierra Nevada’s legion of environmental practices.  Climbing up to a catwalk above the brewery, you’ll look down on no fewer than 10,763 solar panels adorning the roof.    Guests also discover that hydrogen fuel cells provide approximately 50% of the brewery’s electricity needs and that Sierra Nevada actually paid to extend a railroad line a few miles to so that rail cars could roll right up to the brewery, eliminating the CO2 emissions from trucks transporting supplies those last few miles.

At the end, there’s a tasting of eight samples of different Sierra Nevada beers at the brewery tap room, and even this is used as an opportunity to educate.  “We try to make it an educational tasting, where people learn to enjoy the different aromas and flavors of beer,” explains Marie.  “In the end, our guests walk away with a really good experience.”  

For those more interested in Sierra Nevada’s environmentally sustainable practices, the brewery hosts Sustainable Tours on Fridays, Saturday, and Sunday the focus on Sierra Nevada’s environmental initiatives.  There is also beer tasting at the end of this tour, but is held in an outside garden, weather permitting, and consists of four samples.

Tour Information

Tour Hours:
Monday – Thursday: 11:00am 12:00 pm, 1:00 pm, 2:00 pm 3:00pm & 4:00 pm
Friday and Saturday: 11:00am 12:00 pm, 12:30pm, 1:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:30pm 3:00 pm, 4:00 pm, 4:30pm & 5:00 pm
Sunday: 11:00am 12:00 pm, 12:30pm, 1:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:30pm 3:00 pm, 4:00 pm
Phone:  530-899-4776

 

 

 

California Trails Article in Adventure Sports Journal

The lastest issue of Adventure Sports Journal is out, and I have a small contribution with a write up on trail running and hiking on three South Bay trails.  You can read it here.

Beer for Hydration article in Adventure Sports Journal

I've done it again and conned Adventure Sports Journal to publish another article I wrote.  Elaborating on a reader question about the satisfaction one gets drinking a beer after running, I delved into the science of hydration, debunking an internet myth along the way.  You can read the article here.

Numerous Raffle Prizes Await Beer Runners at the 3rd Annual SF Beer Week Beer Run



Photo used by permission of Bryan Kolesar of www.brewlounge.com

As if going for a run in Golden Gate Park and then enjoying a great beer at a dollar discount from Social Kitchen and Brewery wasn't enough, they'll be plenty of prizes to win in the 3rd Annual SF Beer Week Beer Run post-run charity raffle to benefit  Autism Speaks and the Contra Costa Food Bank in honor of beer writer Bill Brand.   The run starts February 12th, 2012 at 11:00 am, beginning and ending at Social Kitchen and Brewery, 1326 9th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94122. Click here for location.

The generous response from both the brewing and running community has been overwhelming, and we're pleased to announce the following prizes they've made available to several lucky participants.

Social Kitchen and Brewery, which is hosting this official SF Beer Week event will provide a $50 gift certificate to a lucky winner.

On the Run Shoes, located just down the street from Social Kitchen, will provide a pair of Brooks running shoes.

Adventure Sports Journal will provide "Earn Your Beer" t-shirts and other swag.

Additional running gear prizes will be provided by Nike.

Beer run co-founders Bryan Kolesar and Brian Yeager were able to scare up prizes from breweries from their respective cities of Philadelphia and Portland, with the following breweries have denoted prizes in the form of glassware, clothing, trinkets, and yes, beer.

Participating East Coast Breweries
Harpoon (Boston)
Ommegang/Duvel (Upstate NY /  Belgium)
Philadelphia Brewing Co. (Philly)
Dock Street (Philly)
Sly Fox (Philly 'burbs):
Troegs (Pa.)
Iron Hill (Pa. NJ, Del.)
Victory (Philly 'burbs)
Participating Portland Area Breweries
BridgePort
Laurelwood
Migration
Widmer Bros.

And Trumer Brauerei of Berkeley, CA will be throwing in some Frisbees.

Raffle ticket are a dollar each, five dollars will get you 6 tickets, and $20 will get you 25 tickets.

In the words of the late Bill Brand, "I'll see you there."

Back in Adventure Sports Journal

I would like to think Adventure Sports Journal rejected the last couple articles I submitted to them due to artistic differences.  But the unfortunate truth is these last couple articles, to put it into literary terms, sucked.

Of course, the editor of Adventure Sports Journal was way to kind to tell me my articles sucked.  Instead responding with comments like "doesn't hang together" or "reads like a Wikipedia article" or the ultimate kiss of death "I'm sure there's a few people who would find this interesting".  I suppose real writers actually use a more descriptive vocabulary to describe bad writing simply responding "this sucks".

But I appreciated the continued encouragement from the folks at Adventure Sports Journal, and published some short beer reviews of mine in the back of the magazine.   I kept plugging away.  And they liked my interview with Sean Turner of Mammoth Brewing posted earlier on this blog and decided to run it, which you can read it here.

Yes We Can!

This article, co-written with Pete Gauvin originally appeared in Adventure Sports Journal.

Something new is showing up in backpacks, in mountain streams, on rafts, and even on the beach. It’s beer in cans brewed by local and regional craft breweries.

The great outdoors is often enjoyed with beer in a can, since cans are lighter than bottles, shattered glass is not a hazard, and empties can be crushed for easy transport out of the woods. Moreover, bottles are often prohibited at many outdoor locations. Plus, canned beer submerged in a cold mountain stream cools down much faster than bottles.

So craft beer in cans is good news for outdoor enthusiasts, an independent-minded crowd that generally appreciates quality local and regional brews with character over the mass-market swill from corporate breweries that sink more of their budgets into advertising than their product.

Craft brewers themselves are also enthusiastic about cans. Check out their websites and you’ll find plenty of feel-good statements about how cans are better for both the beer and the environment. Cans protect beer from oxygen and sunlight better than bottles, and are a more earth-friendly package because they are significantly lighter than glass (35% of the weight of a bottle of beer is the bottle itself), stack easily with less packaging, require less energy to transport, and are more efficiently recycled.

“I absolutely love the package. They’re like mini-kegs,“ gushes Sean Turner, owner of Mammoth Brewing Company in the resort town of Mammoth Lakes. The Eastern Sierra brewery, founded in 1995, started selling beer in cans four years ago, one of the first craft breweries to do so. “Everything out here is so outdoor oriented. We sell beer in cans to hikers, fishermen, boaters, and golfers,” says Turner, whose brewery cans three of its brews to satisfy a wide range of taste buds: Epic IPA, Golden Trout Pilsner, and Real McCoy Amber Ale.

North of San Francisco in Mendocino County there’s a similar new-found enthusiasm for aluminum pop-tops at Anderson Valley Brewing Company in Boonville. Brewmaster Fal Allen is encouraged by the new sales growth spurred by last year’s decision to release three of Anderson Valley’s more popular beers in cans: Boont Amber, Hop Ottin’ IPA and Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema.

“Canned beer is about 8% of our business and growing fast,” says Allen. “It used to be our canning line would run once or twice a week. Now it runs pretty much every day.”
While it turned out to be a good business decision, Anderson Valley Brewing, which generates 40% of its electricity from solar panels atop its brewery, was also highly motivated by the environmental benefits of cans. Cans are nearly 40% lighter to ship than bottles, greatly reducing fuel costs and their carbon footprint.

It’s been less than 10 years since Colorado’s Oskar Blues Brewery became the first U.S. craft brewery to can its product when it started hand-canning its Dale’s Pale Ale in 2002 — a hoppy, strong (6.5% ABV) and critically- acclaimed brew that no doubt shocked a few unsuspecting palates weaned on limp, watered-down, mass-market lagers.

Today, there are 117 craft breweries in the U.S. offering premium beer in cans, according to the Canned Beer Database at CraftCans.com. And more are hopping on the can wagon every month.

The First Canned-Beer Revolution

Of course, canned beer has been around for decades. The first canned beer was sold in 1935 by the Krueger Brewing Company of New Jersey, which canned Krueger’s Cream Ale and Krueger’s Finest Beer for distribution in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. By the end of 1935, 36 breweries were using cans — which, interestingly, included Pabst Brewing, whose “PBR” in recent years has established itself as the unofficial value beer among the outdoor set.

The first cans were made from heavy- gauge steel. Aluminum cans didn’t debut until 1958.
Sounds pretty good. But such regional breweries like Krueger’s (sold in 1961) wouldn’t last in the face of competition from national breweries like Schlitz and Anheuser- Busch.

In following decades, corporate breweries with high-speed canning machines began to dominate the American beer market. Creativity, quality and distinctiveness suffered in the battle for market share and profits. In most cases, the resulting product from these corporate breweries was a thin, fizzy, watery brew with a slightly metallic taste.

As tastes evolved with the resurgence of American craft breweries in the ‘80s and ‘90s, canned beer was derided by beer enthusiasts as cheap, tasteless and decidedly low-brow. But for cans, it was guilt by association. They were unfairly judged for the character of their contents, rather than the quality of the container. And such perceptions die hard.

Indeed, for the craft-brewing community devoted to flavorful hand-crafted beers brewed in small batches, canned beer epitomized everything that was wrong with American brewing. Even when an inert water-based lining for aluminum cans was developed in the 1980s to help protect the contents from ever touching metal, canned beer could not shed its cheap and inferior reputation. The stigma persisted and was only enhanced as “micro-brewed beer” became widely available, all in bottles, initially.

Clearing the Bottleneck

So how did canned beer mature to become the new darling of craft brewers?
The unlikely transition was spurred by a micro brewery in Canada’s Yukon Territory and a small Canadian manufacturing company which stumbled onto canning beer like a bear on a backcountry campsite.

Virtually all beer in cans sold by craft breweries in North America is canned by equipment manufactured by Cask Brewing Systems out of Calgary. The company got its start selling on-premise brewing systems to small brew-it-yourself operations that allowed home brewers to come in and use the facilities to brew their own beer.

Problem was, these brewing hobbyists often poured their beer into used and poorly cleaned bottles, with the beer degrading quickly thereafter. So in 1999, Cask developed a simple manual canning system so all that homebrew didn’t get poured down the drain.

Shortly thereafter, the owners of Yukon Brewing, a craft brewery in Whitehorse, Yukon’s capital and largest city (pop. 20,500) …… a brewery “conceived like many Yukon babies — around a campfire on a canoe trip” …… recognized that about 60% of beer in the Yukon was sold in cans and wondered how they might be able to squeeze into that market.

As they looked around for canning equipment, everything they found was for large scale brewing operations dealing with far greater volumes than they could possibly brew and priced far higher than they could afford. Then they tripped upon Cask Brewing’s manual canning equipment and gave them a call.

“That’s when all the light bulbs went on around here,” recalls Jamie Gordon, a technical sales rep for Cask who’s been with the company for over 25 years. In 2001, Yukon Brewing bought Cask’s manual canning system and became the first North American small-scale brewery to sell beer in cans.

Seeing a market for small canning systems for the hundreds of small breweries then in existence, Cask Brewing Systems decided to market their system at the 2002 Craft Brewing Conference in Cleveland, hoping to make a big splash. The response went over like warm beer on a summer day.

“Everyone looked at us like we were crazy,” remembers Gordon, as negative perceptions of canned beer remained high. “One guy walked up, shook his head, and told us it was the stupidest thing he’d ever seen …… I’d like to know where that guy is now.” As the saying goes, all it takes is one — and others will follow. Perhaps no one knows this better than beer drinkers.

In this case, Oskar Blues from tiny Lyons, Colo., was looking for a way to distinguish itself from the numerous craft breweries dotting the Rocky Mountain landscape like 14,000-foot peaks, and was willing to make the leap. “We thought the idea of our big, luscious pale ale in a can was hilarious,” recalls founder Dale Katechis on the Oskar Blues website. “And it made our beer immensely portable for outdoor enjoyment.”

Only later would he and his crew discover the benefits of cans — such as better beer preservation, a lighter environmental footprint and lower shipping costs. Already a successful brewpub, Oskar Blues was mainly looking for a way to sell some extra beer. But so many campers bought Dale’s Pale Ale on their way to nearby Rocky Mountain National Park they soon automated their canning system to keep up with the unexpected demand.

Colorado’s dynamic craft brewing scene couldn’t help notice Oskar Blues’ success.
The market for canned beer for the active, outdoor-oriented consumer was no longer a secret. Coors Light wasn’t going to be the first option any more.

Fermenting Acceptance

Yet negative perceptions of canned beer continued to be hard to settle, even as more and more small breweries started selling beer in cans. In 2005 when San Francisco’s 21st Amendment Brewery decided to start selling beer to take home from their brewpub, Shaun O’Sullivan suggested to co-founder Nico Freccia to package it in cans.

“It seemed like the stupidest thing I ever heard of,” remembers Freccia, “until Shaun started explaining all the benefits of canning, and then it seemed like a no-brainer.”
Another regional brewery that rolled straight into cans is Reno’s Buckbean Brewing Company, started in 2008, which cans its Black Noddy Lager, Orange Blossom Ale and Tule Duck Red Ale.
Things really started to change when the major craft breweries got into the canning act.

In 2008, New Belgium Brewing released their nationally popular Fat Tire Amber Ale in cans. “Fat Tire in a can really validated everything we were doing,” says Mammoth Brewing’s Turner. “The negative perceptions are no longer an issue,” agrees 21st Amendment’s Freccia.

And if that validation isn’t enough to pop your bottle cap, word comes down the canning line that the most prominent and influential craft brewery in California, if not the nation, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company of Chico, plans to release its iconic Pale Ale and Torpedo India Pale Ale in cans by the end of the year.

“The number one reason we decided to do this was cans go where bottles can’t, especially on hiking trails, rafting, and other places people want to take them outdoors,” explains Bill Manley, Sierra Nevada’s spokesperson. “I’m really excited our beers are coming out in cans this year.”

One of the reasons Sierra Nevada — which founder Ken Grossman named after his favorite hiking destination — hasn’t joined the canned beer frenzy sooner is that they’ve been searching for a plastic lining for their cans that won’t absorb hop compounds over time, says Manley, which they believe they’ve now found.

For “malt forward” beers such as Fat Tire Amber Ale, which generates most of its flavor from roasted malts, absorption of hop compounds has little consequence. For Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale and Torpedo IPA, with their distinctive hop flavors and aromas, preservation of the beer’s hop character is more essential.

Though it is now the sixth largest brewing company of any stripe in the U.S., Sierra Nevada remains an environmentally conscious, independently owned business. The brewery is powered by solar energy, operates its own water treatment plant, and is the largest buyer of organic hops in the U.S. For these reasons and others, it won the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “Green Business of the Year” award in 2010. But it wasn’t going to jump into the canned beer fray just because cans are an arguably greener option without first assuring that its first priority, the quality of its beer, would not be compromised.

Just as with bottles, craft brewers realize that canned beers are only as good as the beer inside. The last thing they want is someone carrying a couple cans 10 miles into the backcountry only to be disappointed. For one, that person could be Ken Grossman.

Secondly, how far behind can freeze-dried beer be? Just tear open the foil pouch and add water. Suddenly hiking the PCT for weeks on end would appeal to a much wider audience, I’m guessing. Or perhaps not.

For the foreseeable future, though, it appears craft brewers will no longer be kicking the can down the road.

Is Greed Environmentally Good and Other Questions from "Yes We Can!"

The history and business stories of canned beer discovered while writing Yes We Can! pretty fascinating, and raise a number of interesting questions. Here are few that came to my mind as I wrote it.

Can greed be environmentally good?
I couldn't help notice that every brewery I talked with distributed their beer into cans primarily as a business decision to expand their markets. Reducing their environmental impact was a secondary motivation. I believe each brewery's management genuinely cared about the environmental consequences of their operations, and certainly many of these business are quite "green" but at the end of the day, the old business objectives of increasing revenue and cutting costs drove the decisions. Maybe if environmental awareness becomes part of a business's DNA, good business decisions are by extension, good environmental decisions.

Is "The Innovator's Dilemma" alive and well in canned craft beer?
I absolutely love the story of Cask Brewing Systems stumbling into a successful business by developing a small, manual canning system that was originally designed to serve an extremely limited market. Today, they can't build their canning equipment fast enough for all the small breweries looking to get into canned beer. These simple, cheap canning systems that seemingly had no market, yet became a lucrative business recalls the idea of "disruptive technologies" as described by Harvard business Professor Clayton Christensen in his ground breaking book, The Innovator's Dilemma. Christensen noted that many disruptive business technologies take root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves ‘up market’, eventually displacing established competitors. Craft beer itself can be considered a "disruptive technology" an idea I outlined in an earlier post, and this certainly sounds a lot like what is going on with Cask Brewing Systems.

Cask Brewing's small manual canning systems would seem to have a very limited market 10 years ago that no larger manufacturer of brewing equipment would likely have any interest in. But now, their small scale approach seems well positioned to grow in a North American brewing industry where most of the growth is in small craft breweries which looks at bottled beer increasingly less favorably. Perhaps the fact that Sierra Nevada will be using a European competitor that manufactures smaller scale canning systems in European breweries suggests a certain limitations to Cask Brewing System's growth.

Did Dale Katechis bet his company putting beer into cans?
I unfortunately never got to speak with Dale Katechis for this article, and my questions were referred to his marketing person instead. I really want to know what drove his seemingly risky decision in 2002 to put Oskar Blues Pale Ale in a can. Given the highly negative perceptions of canned beer at the time coupled with what had to be a serious investment of time and money for a brewpub to install the first automated small scale canning line, it certainly seems like a "bet the company" move. The was actually no guarantee that Cask Brewing Systems could pull off an automation line in the first place, since they had no prior experience with volume manufacturing equipment. Of course, it's quite possible Katechis simply predicted the future a lot better than everyone else, but its hard not to conclude it was a big gamble. There seems to be a lot more to the story than just the "Dale likes to go against the grain" statements plastered all over the Oskar Blues website that his marketing guy answered repeatedly to virtually every question asked. Maybe someday we'll find out something more.