from flickr

Our canning line should be in the building near July 4. It will be a couple of moths to get it up and running, but should start seeing Pale Ale in cans in late 2011.

We’re on the fence about what other beers to release, but I think we’ll have a couple of different brews available.

Cans will only be a small part of our output, but we’re excited to see how they’re received.

There are so many places where you can’t or won’t bring glass…up here in the foothills it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to bring a bunch of bottles with you in your backpack! This is really the reason we’re going for this.

Southern Star Canning (flickr under a CC license)

The Houston Chronicle covers something we’ve covered many times before (and Joe wrote about just this week): microcanning.  They also note the stigma that comes with cans, which I think is the biggest drawback, though many canning breweries would disagree.

Fougeron also believes cans helped differentiate the brand when Southern Star began production two-and-a-half years ago. The brewery is on pace to double production in 2010, he said.

“I attribute some of our success to being in a can,” he said. “It really sets us apart at the retail level.”

…

Wagner said he has no intention of switching to cans because glass maintains a “psychological” edge in the pricier craft segment.

“If people are going to spend eight bucks on a six-pack, they want it in a bottle,” he said. “… We don’t want to put our product in a package that somehow conveys cheap, low-quality beer. There’s no doubt that cans still carry some of that stigma.”

I can see both arguments, and it’s entirely plausible that as canning becomes more popular, the stigma slowly disappears.  But right now, I think the fact that it conveys “cheap” is still a problem for canning, even if it’s not true.

They also provide some helpful numbers:

Cumulatively, sales of craft beer in 12-ounce cans were up 80 percent in the first half of 2010 compared with a year earlier, according to data compiled by marketing analyst SymphonyIRI Group. That compares with 11.2 percent growth in six-pack bottles of comparable size.

Cans still have a long way to go to catch up. In the first half of 2010, craft brewers sold $376.5 million worth of beer in bottles, compared with $2.3 million in cans.

Yet craft brewers — generally smaller, independently owned companies that use premium ingredients and lack the production-scale savings enjoyed by mass-market giants — have been turning to aluminum in greater numbers since Colorado-based Oskar Blues got the can rolling in 2002.

Keep in mind: if you’re reading this and understand why microcanning is, you probably don’t need to be convinced.  But for your casual craft beer fan — for the person who’s looking to try something other than Miller Lite — there’s something to a bottle that people associate with quality.  It may not be right, but for now, it’s reality.

Tuned Pale Ale

Gadget blog Gizmodo caught wind of a now-defunct Tuned Pale Ale, which came in brilliant (and likely very expensive) packaging:

The Tuned Pale Ale’s bottles show a musical scale on its label. Drink it down to the note you want, blow on it, and it will play it back. Buy a pack, and form a band with your friends.

Actually, the pack itself becomes a drumming box, and the bottles’ special washboard shape also serves as percussion source.

While the Tuned Pale Ale was manufactured in a small microbrew batch—to great success, according to designers Matt Braun and Chris Mufalli—it’s not longer in production. Too bad, because this should be the standard for all beers. We need more music in the world.

It’s a mistake to get caught up in the package if the beer is bad, but it’s still a pretty brilliant way to sell your beer. More photos below.

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Miller High Life packagine (Brand New)

Design blog Brand New has the details on a package design overhaul for Miller High Life. I love package design and branding, and the Miller High Life redesign is fantastic (even if the beer is not).

One detail I particuarly love: printing on the back of the bottle lables allows you to arrange the bottles to spell out the High Life slogan.  Design is in the details, and this is one is great:

High Life Bottles

If this kind of thing interests you, check out the post on Brand New.

Beer, served from roadkill

We’ve written about Scottish brewery BrewDog before, but they’re in the news again for these completely awesome squirrel koozies, which come as part of their $765 per bottle, 55% ABV beer, “The End of History.”

The story here should be about a 55% ABV beer.  When BrewDog released the 41% “Sink the Bismark” earlier this year, there was an incredible amount of attention paid to the beer itself, and how BrewDog was pushing the boundaries of modern brewing.  “Sink the Bismark,” and I would presume “The End of History,” were brewed by freezing the wort in order to concentrate it, leaving a much more dense, port-like beer.

With their latest release, everyone (including me) is focusing on the packaging.  I suppose the publicity stunt is the right way to do it if they wanted the attention — people are only going to write about the highest ABV beer so many times.  “Sink” came in brown paper bags decorated with a hand-drawn penguin, “History” comes in roadkill.  If I was going to drop $765 on a single beer, I’d want to save the bottle, and no standard glass beer bottle can properly display both the price tag and the uniqueness of the beer quite like one wrapped in a dead squirrel.

Flickr user Roadsidepictures has assembled a fantastic collection of “old” advertising, a lot of which contains vintage beer ads and package designs.  It’s great to look back at some of this stuff, which makes you remember just how narrow beer choices have been for decades.  Almost everything there is some type of light American lager, a history written by Pabst, Coors, and Budweiser.

I also couldn’t help but think that if I were starting a microbrewery today, I’d seriously consider reviving and old brand instead of trying to come up with a clever brewery name.  I know Buckeye Beer in Ohio has worked to do just that, but the flagship product is unfortunately sub-par and tastes like it probably did in 1972.

Below are a few of my personal favorites, but you can check out all the beer-related photos right here.

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