Happy Earth Day: The Case for Canning Beers

As any longtime readers will know, I’ve long sung the praises of canned craft beer here at BlogAboutBeer.com and wished for an equally long time that one of the craft breweries currently canning their beers elsewhere across the USofA would expand their distribution a tad to include the state of Maine (as of now, no one distributes canned Better Beer here). When it comes down to it, canned beer is superior to bottled beer in almost every way. Despite the fact that the myth lingers on in some uneducated pockets of the beer drinking community, long gone are the days of any sort of “metal taste” associated with canned beer. And the difference in taste between canned and bottled beer is actually really indistinguishable. Anyone who tells you that “bottled beer tastes better than canned” has merely tricked their mind into thinking there’s a difference. But what does canned beer have to do with Earth Day?

Canned Beer is Better for the Environment:

While the electricity and energy required to produce aluminum is greater than the energy needed to produce glass bottles, they require fewer resources to manufacture. Cans are much lighter to carry around, which means less gas used during shipping. And possibly most importantly, cans are more commonly recycled (the Container Recycling Institute claims that the can recycling rate is almost twice that of glass).

Other Benefits to Canned Beer:

In addition to the benefits canned beer has on the environment, cans block nearly 100% of light and oxygen, leaving your beer fresher longer. Glass, no matter the color, cannot come close to the skunk provention power of cans.

Cans can also go plenty of places that bottles cannot. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been sitting on a Maine beach wishing I had a can of beer worth drinking. Anyone who spends any time in the outdoors can appreciate the Case for Cans — you can take them to the beach, to the park, you can take cans camping, you can take them disc golfing (another HUGE pasttime around here); all places where bottles are either frowned upon or flat out not allowed. Cans simply make more sense.

So this Earth Day, as you’re celebrating the simple gifts and bounty of Mother Nature, crack open a can of your favorite craft beer (if you’re lucky enough to live in a corner of the country where you can get such a thing, that is), drink it down (and recycle afterward) and be thankful for what you’ve got. Anyone in Maine want to help me start a canning brewery?