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Never Say Never: Samuel Adams Boston Lager Cans

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Lots of big announcements in the beer world this week, as the Boson Beer Co. made public today their plan to release Samuel Adams Boston Lager in cans this summer. I can’t seem to find the original source this morning, but I clearly recall several years ago that Boston Beer founder Jim Koch was quoted at one time that Samuel Adams beer would never be in cans, but over time his stance began to soften, and by 2010 he was warming to the idea. At that time, he told Beer Business Daily that he did believe that someday Samuel Adams would be in cans, and was still looking at the BPA in liners as a not-quite-resolved-yet issue. Once upon a time, their 2005 “Beer Bill of Rights” included as Article VI: “Beer shall be offered in bottles, not cans, so that no brew is jeopardized with the taste of metal.”

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That issue has largely been solved with the use of an organic polymer, but Boston Beer has apparently taken it one step farther, designing their own type of can for the project, “the Sam Can.”

From the press release:

Samuel Adams announced today that for the first time it plans to offer Samuel Adams Boston Lager in a can – but not just any can. The new can design — the result of two years of ergonomic and sensory research and testing — aims to provide a drinking experience that is closer to the taste and comfort of drinking beer from a glass. The “Sam Can,” as the brewers call it, will hit shelves in early summer 2013, just in time for drinking occasions that call for the convenience of a can such as sporting events, boating or the beach.

“The debate over bottles vs. cans has been a sticking point for brewers in the craft beer community for years,” says Jim Koch, founder and brewer of Samuel Adams. “In the past, I had my doubts about putting Sam Adams in a can because I wasn’t convinced that Boston Lager would taste as good as it does from a bottle. But cans have changed. And I believe we’ve designed a can that provides a slight but noticeably better drinking experience than the standard beer can.”

Koch and the other brewers at Samuel Adams first worked with can manufacturer Ball Corporation to understand can design, technology, and how to package premium beer in cans. The brewers then worked with a design team at IDEO, a recognized global design firm, and finally enlisted the help of sensory expert, Roy Desrochers of GEI Consultants. Desrochers, a recognized beer flavor expert for the Master Brewer’s Association of the Americas (MBAA), has provided counsel to the brewing industry for almost three decades. With Desrochers’ help, Koch studied every aspect of the new can, from how it could potentially impact the flavor of Samuel Adam’s flagship Boston Lager to the ergonomics of how the beer flows from the can and hits the taste receptors on a drinker’s tongue.

“I worked with Jim and the other brewers at Sam Adams on an ergonomic and flavor study to understand the benefits of the new can,” says Desrochers. “The flared lip and wider top of the new Sam Can work in concert to deliver the beer in a way that makes the flavor closer to drinking out of a glass. Although subtle, this can delivers a more pronounced, more balanced flavor experience – something that was very important to the brewers. The extended lip of the can also creates a smoother, more comfortable overall drinking experience.”

The difference in drinking out of the new can as compared to a standard can will be modest, but drinkers should notice enhanced flavors and a more comfortable experience. The position of the can opening and wider lid, naturally opens up the mouth allowing for more air flow and positions the drinker’s nose closer to the hop aromas of the beer. A little known fact is that most of what we think we taste is actually what we smell – that’s why it’s hard to taste food with a stuffed up nose. Drinkers also noticed that the extended, curved lip of the can delivered the beer to the front of the palate to maximize the early enjoyment of the malt sweetness.

Koch’s end goal in developing a new can is to provide drinkers with the best possible Boston Lager drinking experience when they prefer the convenience of a can, like on the golf course or at the beach, without compromising the taste of his first and favorite beer, Samuel Adams Boston Lager. Celebrating the flavors and ingredients in Boston Lager is what also led to the development of the Samuel Adams Boston Lager Pint Glass in 2007, also the result of a lengthy research project to enhance the beer drinking experience.

“The new Sam Can required a million dollar investment in special equipment tooling along with time, research and testing. This new can will also cost more than the standard can to produce. It may seem a little crazy to make that kind of investment, but we felt the slight improvement in the drinking experience was worth the expense. We made decisions based on the beer, not on the bottom line,” Koch explains. “We’ve done tastings here at the brewery, with Sam Adams drinkers and our experts, “and now, we’re proud to launch Samuel Adams Boston Lager in cans. We have a vessel that gives our drinkers the best tasting Samuel Adams in a can.”

Among the many advantages of cans is that drinkers prefer cans in certain circumstances where bottles are often not allowed or convenient, such as beaches, parks, pools, sporting events, boats and airplanes. Samuel Adams Boston Lager in cans will be available in 12-packs nationwide beginning early summer, for a suggested retail price of $14.99-17.99 (price varies by market).

You can also read additional information about what went in to the design of the can at BostInno and also at Boston.com’s Sam Adams: Now (finally) in a can.

Of course, the fact that many other regional breweries have put their beer in cans, too — Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, Brooklyn Brewery, RedHook, etc. — has to have been a factor, too. Still, for can fans this is great news. Cans have outsold beer in bottles for the big brewers for decades, and at least as long as 1980, if not longer, so it only makes sense that as craft brewers grow larger that such a popular package would become part of their portfolios, as well, as they continue to take a bigger and bigger piece of the nationwide beer pie.

Anchor Announces Second Brewery in San Francisco

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The San Francisco Chronicle broke the news tonight that Anchor Brewing Co. will be building a second brewery near the waterfront at Pier 48, in partnership with the San Francisco Giants and their 27-acre Mission Rock development project. The Anchor Brewery space will apparently be 212,000 sq. ft., and will include “production and distribution facilities, a restaurant, museum and other public attractions.” It will also allow them to increase brewing capacity to approximately 600,000 barrels, while keeping all of their brewing operations within the city limits. The new facility is also expected to more than double the number of Anchor employees. Below is Anchor’s artist’s design for the new brewery.

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For now, you can read the story at the Chronicle’s Anchor Brewing plant on S.F. waterfront. I spoke to Anchor Brewery co-owner Keith Greggor this evening and learned that there will be an official announcement tomorrow morning around 10 a.m. where we’ll learn more details, and I also have scheduled an interview with Greggor afterwards to go over the project in more details, so stay tuned.

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And here’s what it should like inside part of the 212,000 sq. ft. building.

Celebrator 25th Anniversary Party

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The closing event for SF Beer Week was again hosted by the Celebrator Beer News, who held their 25th Anniversary Party at the Oakland Marriott Convention Center on Sunday. Over 600 people attended the festival, which had a Mardi Gras theme, and 50 breweries were pouring their beer.

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The tap handle for the beer that a group of Celebrator writer’s collaborated on to celebrate our 25th anniversary at Sierra Nevada Brewing

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Some festival attendees really got into the Mardi Gras spirit.

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Though not everybody, as evidenced by the Beer Wench, Ashley Routson, and recent husband Angelo De lseo.

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Steve Altimari, from High Water Brewing, also made a special blended beer for our 25th anniversary celebration.

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The view from the Brewing Network corner.

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Midway through the festival, all of the Celebrator writers in attendance got up on stage and we drank a toast to craft beer, the brewers and our industry, and I introduced publisher Tom Dalldorf.

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Then Tom led us in a 25th anniversary toast.

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Del Grande, Bison Brewing owner, dressed as a bison, giving high fours to anyone who would lend a paw.

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Fraggle and a bemused Jen Muehlbauer.

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Rich Norgrove, from Bear Republic and Brian Ford, from Auburn Alehouse, bookending a friend who’s name I can’t remember, another brain cell casualty of getting old.

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Terence, from Sierra Nevada, with Natalie, from Russian River.

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The long and the short of it, with Sean Paxton, Nicole Erny and some friends.

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Don Gortemiller, from Pacific Coast, and Dave Heist, formerly of Hoptown, with a friend.

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More buffalo hijinks toward the end of the evening.

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Don Ericson and Tom Dalldorf raise a toast to our 25th anniversary. See you next year.

Another New Oakland Brewer

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Just got some more great news. Steve McDaniel, co-founder of the hopefully soon to be open Oakland Brewing, and his lovely wife Justine Nguyen, had their second child last week. Justine gave birth to Chabot just after 3:00 p.m. on February 6. They also had another son, Merritt, in late 2010. I had heard rumblings about the new baby at the Double IPA Festival, but just got confirmation and the details this morning. Justine and Chabot are home and both doing great, with Merritt adjusting to having a brother. Join me in wishing the happy couple all the best on their birth of their new son. Congratulations Steve and Justine!

Particulars:

Original Gravity: 7 pounds, 9 ounces
IBUs: 20 in.
Style: Boy
Release Date: February 6, 2013
Label: Chabot Yggdrasil Duong McDaniel

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Steve McDaniel and Justine Nguyen’s new son Chabot.

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A sleeping Chabot Yggdrasil Duong McDaniel.

Russian River Brewing Honored By California State Legislature

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California State Senator Noreen Evans, from District 2, honored Russian River Brewing Co. with a Resolution from the California Legislature. The resolution was also signed by Assemblyman Wesley Chesbro, who joined me and the crew from the Celebrator Beer News, at Beer Camp #93 at Sierra Nevada. Evans was also joined on stage by State Senator Alex Padilla, from District 20 (the San Fernando Valley) so that both the southern and northern parts of the state were represented.

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Senator Padilla, Natalie and Vinnie Cilurzo and Senator Evans presenting a joint legislative resolution from the State of California yesterday.

The joint legislative resolution “recognizes RRBC’s outstanding community and customer service, exemplary business ethics and liquid craftsmanship that have provided the county with huge local economic benefits through jobs, sales and distinction.”

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Senators Alex Padilla and Noreen Evans, Tom McCormick, Executive Director of the CCBA, and Natalie and Vinnie Cilurzo yesterday at the Russian River brewpub.

Congratulations to Vinnie and Natalie, and all of the Russian River Brewing employees, for this great honor.

Below is a short video I shot of the ceremony (using Sean Paxton‘s camera because mine was unwell, and who also shot the above photos for me — thanks Sean).

UPDATE: Here’s the actual resolution:

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More Evidence of the Myth of the Beer Belly

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I’ve been saying this for years, that the beer belly is a myth and that drinking low-calorie diet light beer is a foolish decision, especially since it’s a sacrifice of too much flavor for too little discernible positives for your health or your waistline. Here’s the nutshell overview, the first paragraph from the UK Telegraph’s coverage — sure to make the head of the average neo-prohibitionist uncontrollably spin with rage — “The ‘beer belly’ is a myth as there is no scientific evidence to suggest that the beverage causes weight gain, a new report has claimed.”

In fact beer, the country’s national drink, has nutritional and wellbeing benefits similar to wine when consumed in moderation, it is claimed.

Nutritionist Dr Kathryn O’Sullivan, who carried out the review of the scientific review, believes that swapping beverages for beer may actually be a sensible way to diet.

Although the industry-sponsored research may seem incredible to some it in fact adds to an emerging body of thought that the beer belly is a myth.

Beer has fewer calories per 100ml than wine, spirits, and even orange juice, it is claimed.

“Unfortunately beer has this image as a high-calorie, high-fat drink,” Dr O’Sullivan told The Times. “It is very unfair.”

The study itself is called “Beer & calories; a scientific review” and I’d love to read the whole thing, but so far it doesn’t appear to be available online.

And an Irish report, “Study: ‘Beer belly’ is a myth” adds the following:

The study does note that if you drink vast amounts of beer (or pretty much anything for that matter) you will gain weight, and Dr O’Sullivan also does not dispute the evidence that drinking too much can lead to an early death.

However, Dr O’Sullivan said that swapping two large glasses of wine a day with two bottles of lager could save 58,240 calories a year (that equates to roughly 106 Big Mac’s a year).

“Beer drinking has become regarded by many as a vice and not a component of a healthy balanced lifestyle. But this is contrary to the latest scientific evidence,” she said.

“Enjoyed in moderation, beer, like wine, can provide many essential vitamins and minerals and moderate consumption may also protect against many conditions such as heart disease, osteoporosis and diabetes.”

This new study also is consistent with an earlier study in Denmark, where Professor Arne Astrup, who’s at the Department of Human Nutrition at The University of Copenhagen, found “that there is no concrete scientific evidence to support the idea of the ‘beer belly.'”

US News & World Report on the Hopslam Between Big & Small Breweries

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If you haven’t seen it yet, U.S. News & World Reports had an interesting read entitled Hopslam: How Big Beer Is Trying to Stop a Craft Beer Revolution, and subtitled “The blocked merger between Modelo and Anheuser-Busch shines a light on the long-brewing fight between big beer and craft brewers.” It’s a long piece, but worth it for pulling together a number of threads that have been pulling together lately.

Another kind of Hopslam.
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Bistro Double IPA Winners 2013

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Societe‘s The Roustabout was chosen best in show at the 13th annual Double IPA Festival today at the Bistro in Hayward, California. The full winner’s list is below.

And for the second year, Triple IPAs were judged this year.

And for the third straight year:

Congratulations to all the winners.

X-ray Crystallography Figures Out Structure Of Hops

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Here’s an interesting scientific development, where a team of scientists “used a process called X-ray crystallography to figure out the exact structure of [hop] acids, humulone molecules, and some of their derivatives, produced from hops in the brewing process.” According to the story in Futurity, they already knew that “beer and its bittering acids, in moderation, have beneficial effects on diabetes, some forms of cancer, inflammation, and perhaps even weight loss.”

The story comes from the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition and a recent article Absolute Configuration of Beer′s Bitter Compounds. Here’s the opening part of the article.

The science and art of making beer, likely the oldest liquid fermented by humans, stretches over millennia. Production typically involves boiling beer wort together with hops, which acts as a natural preservative, but the generated iso-α-acids are known to be prone to decomposition, and consequently, more stable reduced hops extracts, such as the tetrahydro-iso-α-acids, have been developed. These latter compounds are separately produced and frequently added to beer to achieve a consistent level of bitter taste. Scheme 1 gives an overview of the iso-α-acids formed by heat-induced isomerization.

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The rest of the story talks about how they isolated the hops in such a way that they might be able to be extracted to use in medicine to take advantage of their healthful properties, that you couldn’t really get just by drinking beer because the amounts in beer were too small to be effective.

The press release from the University of Washington, where the study was conducted, explains the study in layman’s terms.

Humulone molecules are rearranged during the brewing process to contain a ring with five carbon atoms instead of six. At the end of the process two side groups are formed that can be configured in four different ways—both groups can be above the ring or below, or they can be on opposite sides.

Which of the forms the molecule takes determines its “handedness,” Kaminsky says, and that is important for understanding how a particular humulone will react with another substance. If they are paired correctly, they will fit together like a nut and bolt.

If paired incorrectly, they might not fit together at all or it could be like placing a right hand into a left-handed glove. That could produce disastrous results in pharmaceuticals.

Kaminsky cites thalidomide, which has a number of safe uses but was famously used to treat morning sickness in pregnant women in the late 1950s and early 1960s before it was discovered to cause birth defects. Molecule “handedness” in one form of the drug was responsible for the birth defects, while the orientation of molecules in another form did not appear to have the negative effects.

To determine the configuration of humulones formed in the brewing process, coauthors from KinDex Therapeutics, a Seattle pharmaceutical firm that funded the research, recovered acids from the brewing process and purified them.

They converted the humulones to salt crystals and sent them to Kaminsky, who used X-ray crystallography to determine the exact configuration of the molecules.

“Now that we know which hand belongs to which molecule, we can determine which molecule goes to which bitterness taste in beer,” Kaminsky says.

The authors point out that while “excessive beer consumption cannot be recommended to propagate good health, isolated humulones and their derivatives can be prescribed with documented health benefits.”

Some of the compounds have been shown to affect specific illnesses, Kaminsky says, while some with a slight difference in the arrangement of carbon atoms have been ineffective.

The new research sets the stage for finding which of those humulones might be useful in new compounds to be used as medical treatments.

Anybody seeing a new kind of hop pellet? One you take every day with your vitamins, perhaps.
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Anchor Releases California Lager

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Last night I atended a special release party at Anchor Brewery for their newest Beer, Anchor California Lager. It’s the same beer that was the first in their Zymaster series. According to Anchor co-owner Keith Greggor, the reaction to the beer was overwhelmingly positive, especially from distributors, and that persuaded the brewery to release it as a year-round beer in 12-oz. bottles. The release also coincides with a new partnership between Anchor and the California State Parks Foundation, where a portion of the proceeds from the beer will be donated to the parks foundation, a very worthy cause in my opinion. For now, the beer will only be available in California.

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From the press release:

Today, Anchor Brewing announces that Anchor California Lager®, California’s first genuine lager reborn, is being added to our core lineup of distinctive beers with case sales supporting the California State Parks Foundation. This new release is currently available in California only.

Anchor California Lager was the first beer in our Zymaster® Series, originally released as a limited draught beer in early 2012.

“Our first release of this historical brew was immensely popular with the public and also with our Anchor employees,” said Keith Greggor, CEO of Anchor Brewing Company. “From day one, Anchor California Lager resonated with us not only because of its distinctive flavor, but also because of the rich brewing history that it celebrates.”

Anchor Steam’s® roots go back to the Gold Rush, long before icehouses and modern refrigeration made traditional lagers a viable option. In 1876—thanks to an ice pond in the mountains and a belief that anything is possible in the Golden State—a little brewery named Boca created California’s first genuine lager. Anchor California Lager is our re-creation of this historic beer.

Made in San Francisco with two-row California barley, Cluster hops (the premier hop in 19th-century California), and our own lager yeast, Anchor California Lager is kräusened and lagered in our cellars. This all-malt brew is a delicious celebration of California’s unique brewing heritage.

The California grizzly bear on our Anchor California Lager label is from a woodcut by Durbin Van Vleck (1833–1898), courtesy of The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley. First published in 1856 in San Francisco, it is a superbly crafted rendering of an original illustration by Charles Christian Nahl (1818–1878), who had painted both eastbound and westbound versions of this bear. Nearly a century later, Nahl’s bear served as inspiration for the design of the bear on California’s modern state flag. Although that bear is heading west, our bear—like the bear on Boca Brewing’s historic lager label—is heading east.

Anchor California Lager (4.9% ABV) is unique. Crisp, clean, and refreshing, its rich golden color, distinctive aroma, lingering creamy head, balanced depth of flavor, and incredibly smooth finish are like no other lager today.

Anchor California Lager is now available year-round in 6-packs, 12-packs, 22-ounce bottles, as well as on draught at select bars, restaurants and retailers throughout California.

Anchor’s history, California’s first genuine lager beer, and our state parks were all born in the second half of the 19th Century. To celebrate California’s unique heritage, we are proud to announce that a portion of the proceeds from Anchor California Lager case sales will support a new partnership with the California State Parks Foundation. As a tribute to our shared history and traditions, we’re forming an Anchor California Lager Grant, to be awarded by the California State Parks Foundation as a part of their Discretionary Grants program to benefit state parks.

California State Parks Foundation is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting, enhancing and advocating for California’s 280 state parks – the largest state parks system in the United States. California State Parks Foundation’s work revolves around the belief that all Californians deserve access to excellent state parks – from beaches to mountain ranges, deserts to redwood forests, and everything in between.

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From last night’s release party:

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And finally, here’s a new video about the beer: