The Greatest Crime in Craft Beer

With a title that makes a claim such as this, the mind races through probably dozens of possible offenses perpetrated against or even by the craft beer industry itself. Any of these offenses may qualify, depending on your personal drinking preferences and level of passion for today’s craft beer movement. Could it be the bland light lagers forced upon us by the major commercial breweries, whom we all know to be evil incarnate? Could it be the radical and experimental (and often mediocre) brews put out by craft breweries in an attempt to recapture their bleeding edge? Could it even be the overzealous online fans of craft beer themselves?

In fact, the greatest crime in the craft beer world today is something so innocuous and subtle that it most likely has escaped notice by most craft beer consumers. It has crept upon us silently over the past few years and has spread now widely in some areas, especially with the advent of the more upscale drinking establishments and fashionable gastropubs. It is not something new that has been added but instead something that has gone missing: the simple
16-ounce pint glass.

The pint glass has been the standard of goods exchange for draft beer retailers for generations of beer drinkers. A  U.S. liquid pint is a volume of measure defined as 16 ounces, or around 473 milliliters. (The British went so far as to regulate the servings of beer by law centuries ago, hence their 20-ounce imperial pint.) The name pint has its roots in the Old French and ultimately in the Latin picta, meaning “painted,” referring to the serving line painted on an ale vessel. The very definition of this word has historical origins tied to the selling, serving and consumption of beer – but all that may have now come to an end.

This crime is not one committed by the craft beer brewers themselves but by on-premise retailers, who have quietly started to replace their standard pint glasses with either similar-looking 14-ounce glasses of the same shaker pint design or stylized glasses of 12 or even 10 fluid ounces in volume. This is ostensibly a cost-cutting measure – one often accompanied by a price increase as well, so the consumer sometimes now pays more and receives less beer pulled from the tap. Understandably, a business must cover its expenses and ultimately make a profit but the consumer’s salary is not rocketing skyward, either.

This is the greatest craft beer crime because it has broken the standard metric of exchange between craft beer consumers and the retailers they support. No longer can we compare one establishment to another on the basis of price as their serving sizes cannot be relied upon to be equivalent, and some retailers are unjustly accused of being more expensive when they are actually the same or cheaper on a per-ounce basis. The consumer metric between the ultimate purchaser and the brewery, the 12-ounce bottle, still stands but for how long? Will brewers begin to adopt a 10-ounce bottle size or 8-ounce can for the same purpose?

(Actually, this trend has already started, albeit on a very isolated scale. Some breweries use the "stubby" bottles for their product, a throwback design from decades ago. This bottle style does have some distinct and practical functional advantages for brewers but it holds only 11.2 ounces in volume instead of the standard 12 ounces. Fortunately, the ubiquity of the iconic longneck brown bottle is a difficult tradition and marketing package from which to deviate.)

Nor are craft breweries entirely innocent in this practice. Customized brewery glassware is often provided to retailers, specialized glasses etched with the company logo that are meant to be the ideal serving vessel and volume for perhaps a boozy barleywine or pungent sour ale. For high-gravity products or limited-edition exceptions such as these, smaller portion sizes are understandable and acceptable but too often a simple sessionable amber or wheat ale is served in the same glass. Breweries do not object because they are eager for the logo to be displayed and happy for the free promotion.

As consumers, the only force we have is the budget we choose to spend on purchasing such products and supporting these retailers. Watch for the serving size you are offered next time you enjoy a craft beer from a fresh tap, and verify its volume if necessary. Challenge retailers that do not use the 16-ounce pint as their serving standard, and patronize those that still adhere to a reliable and universally accepted metric of sale.

Can Do

Aluminum cans have long been the domain of the macro brewers, who tend to experiment with every form of packaging and marketing concept to gain a competitive edge. The brown glass bottle has become so iconic within the craft beer industry that the very idea of canned craft beer gains instant attention. Because so few craft brewers have opted for a canning operation, the association between an aluminum can and a macro product is difficult to break. Hopefully, this association can be changed.

For a small craft brewer, canning equipment and product has long been beyond their financial reach. Purchasing the printed aluminum stock alone is a hurdle most cannot overcome, as they often cannot be obtained in anything less than tens of thousands of units. But as their popularity grows, a few daring craft brewers have chosen the can route over bottles, and it is now up to us, the consumers, to support this far superior choice.

Aluminum cans impart no taste to the beverage. Unlike cans of many decades past, today’s cans have an interior that is lined with a thin, nonreactive plastic laminate. In fact, the beer inside never touches metal, only this plastic coating. The tinny, metallic taste that was once a deterrent for beer consumers is an attribute of your father’s beer, not current packaging.

Aluminum is an excellent thermal conductor. This substance is so great at heat conduction that we fill our kitchens with aluminum pots and pans. What this means for the beer consumer is that cans cool down much faster than bottles, whereas glass is an insulator. If you worry that cans may warm faster than a bottle while you drink it, you should already be pouring a craft beer into a serving glass instead of swigging it from a bottle.

Cans offer 100% light protection. One of the greatest enemies of beer is strong visible light, which contains photons energetic enough to react and break down complex hop oil molecules within the beer. Thus, brewers have favored brown bottles over clear glass to cut down on the amount of light transferred. But not a single photon gets into a sealed can.

Aluminum cans favor an active lifestyle. Many beaches, park areas, lakes and outdoor entertainment venues prohibit glass of any product, as a dropped glass container can result in thousands of dangerous shards spread over the grounds. Cans present no such hazard, and with an empty can weighing less than an ounce while an empty bottle weighs 6 oz, cans are also significantly lighter than bottles in backpacks and coolers.

Cans have a greater packing factor. Packing factor is a concept used in fields as diverse as manufacturing efficiency to atomic structure. Simplified, it is the ratio of how many uniform items can be packed into similar areas, whether those items are widgets or bottles or atoms. With their long and asymmetrical shapes, bottles have a low packing factor; however, with their clever stacking design on both top and bottom, cans have a relatively large packing factor, meaning they are easier and more efficient to transport.

Aluminum is the green choice. Certainly, both glass and aluminum are recyclable materials, with both offering advantages as post-consumer products. But whereas aluminum may be more costly to manufacture from raw materials, it is far more cost-effective to recycle. Recycling glass saves about 26% of the energy over manufacturing new glass, but recycling aluminum reclaims a whopping 96% of that same energy. Colored glass must also be separated manually, adding to its cost, as it takes more energy to rid the glass of the metals used to impart the tint.

There is also the consumer participation aspect, with about 45% of aluminum cans being recycled compared to around 25% of glass bottles. Likewise, much more paper and packaging is used for a six-pack of bottles at retail when compared to a simple plastic six-ring can holder. Add to this the weight factor of shipping thousands of units of product and you consume far more fuel trucking glass around over aluminum.

One young local start-up, Southern Star Brewing, decided to go with a canning operation from the beginning with their first beers, with no plans for a traditional bottling line. Break your association that canned beer must be inferior or compromised, or that fine barleywines or IPAs cannot come from an aluminum container. Support craft brewers that choose a canning operation over bottles, as it is obviously the superior choice.