Canning beer was a tricky and revolutionary development in packaging. The very first beer sold in a can was Krueger’s Finest Beer, brewed by the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company of Newark, New Jersey, which was founded in 1899 by Gottfried Krueger, a German immigrant. It was a shipment of only 2,000 cans that left the brewery in 1933, shortly after the ratification of the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which repealed the 18th Amendment and thus ended Prohibition. The beer went on sale not in Newark, but in faraway Richmond, Virginia. That first beer can was a flat-top, welded-seam, heavy-gauge tin can, coated on the inside and made by the American Can Company (CanCo) of Pacific Grove, California, which was founded in 1901. To open the can, the consumer had to punch a hole in the top with a sharp implement like a church-key style opener. The development of this first can, however, was quite a feat. CanCo had started experimenting with beer cans in 1909, but abandoned the effort soon thereafter, because beer in a can is capable of generating in excess of 80 pounds per square inch (psi) of pressure, which can cause the container to leak or even burst. The cans manufactured at the time could not even take 40 lb psi of pressure, let alone 80 psi. Just as troubling, the cans had no lining, and beer is acidic; the reaction between the beer and the tin left the beer with an awful metallic tang. Finally, cans had to be inexpensive enough to be attractive compared with established glass bottles, especially those that could be refilled as returnables. Despite these obstacles, CanCo made another attempt in 1921, although Prohibition was still in force, and the potential market was still limited. CanCo managed to solve both the pressure and the inner coating problems in 2 years. When Prohibition was finally lifted, the Krueger Brewery became CanCo’s first customer, on a trial basis.

CanCo may have solved some of the can’s technical problems, but there was still the issue of consumer acceptance. The Krueger Brewing Company, therefore, decided to test market this revolutionary beer in a can in a distant location, just in case the new container flopped. Gottfried Krueger did not want to risk his brewery’s reputation in his home market along the Northeastern seaboard. Subsequent market surveys, however, revealed that 91% of consumers who had tried the test cans approved of the new packaging, and 85% even claimed that the beer tasted more like draught than did bottled beer. As a result, on January 24, 1935, the brewery packaged its other beer, Krueger’s 3.2% ABV Cream Ale, in cans, too, and introduced both beers in its entire sales area. See cream ale.

The first release of beer in a can was so successful that soon thereafter it was imitated by other breweries, first in the United States, then around the globe, and events accelerated. By July 1934, Krueger’s production had increased fivefold compared with its pre-can days. In September 1934, CanCo patented its vinyl-type lining under the trademark of “Keglined.” In August 1935, Pabst became the first major brewery to offer its beers in cans, followed by Schlitz a month later. By the end of 1935, 37 American breweries canned their beers. On December 3, 1935, the first canned beer outside the United States was released by the small Felinfoel Brewery Company of Llanelli in Wales, UK. Over the years, beer cans not only gained in popularity but also became better. In 1937, the Crown Cork & Seal Company, the inventor of the crown cap, perfected an electrolytic tin-plating process, which allowed it to introduce a two-piece, drawn, necked-in steel can that was sealed with a crown cap. See crown cap. The new can was given the branding of “the Crowntainer” and was made to hold a US quart of beer (slightly less than a liter). In 1958, the Hawaii Brewing Company moved beyond tin, introducing its Primo brand in the first aluminum beer can. In 1965, ring-top cans hit the market; these had a metal tab with a finger loop—a tug removed a tab from the lid, opening the can. By 1969, canned beers outsold bottled beers for the first time in the United States.

Proponents of canned beer point out that the can has several advantages over glass bottles. Importantly, they are cheaper to transport, because they are lighter and stack better than bottles. At one time, canned beer was prone to excessive oxidation, but that is largely a problem of the past. Any metallic flavors would now likely be a figment of the consumer’s imagination, although anyone drinking beer directly from a can might be thought to deserve whatever he gets. Cans have the advantage of being impermeable to light and thus can give beer a longer shelf life, especially if the beer is to be stored in a well-lit environment. See lightstruck. Paradoxically, however, as the can improved in quality, it also declined in respectability, because as more and more mass-market beers were canned, cans became increasingly associated with cheap, not premium, beers. As the craft brewing movement got underway in the early 1980s, early microbreweries ignored the can, looking upon it as a plebian package. Even if they’d wanted to use cans, most could probably not have afforded the expensive equipment needed. The can remains popular; today, Anheuser Busch packages about 10% of its volume in kegs, splitting the rest almost evenly between cans and bottles. It seems that the can has finally arrived on the craft beer scene as well. Smaller, less expensive canning lines are now available, and small breweries are jumping onto the can bandwagon, some with both feet. One of the pioneers of this development is the Oskar Blues Brewery of Lyons, Colorado, which canned its first pale ale in 2002, using a recently developed small canning line. Bucking the previous low-rent image, canned craft beer appears to be developing a sort of retro-chic, especially as consumers decide that they want flavorful beer in the fishing boat as well as on the dinner table. As of 2011, there are almost 50 small canning breweries in the United States and Canada, and that number is rising. Cans are highly recyclable. Anheuser-Busch, for instance, claims that it has recycled 460 billion aluminum cans since it started its recycling operation in 1978. There clearly still is a future for the beer can.