Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Putting Beer in Cans: 21st Amendment Cans Their Beer

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Back in the last week of April, I visited the Ball Can Factory in Fairfield, California to watch the first beer cans for 21st Amendment Restaurant & Brewery being manufactured. Last week, I followed up on that story to watch the next part of the can’s journey to your hand. So I joined owner/brewer Shaun O’Sullivan and his assistant brewer, Mike D., early Thursday morning at the brewpub to watch as they went through the process of taking empty cans and turning them into a full six-pack of beer. I even had a chance to pitch in briefly, which was great fun. All of the equipment used for the canning came from Cask Brewing Systems of Calgary, Canada. So I’ll step you through the process in detail:


First, Shaun O’Sullivan pulls out empty cans ready to be filled. At this point they have no end on one side and are open on top.


The cans are then rinsed and sterilized.

The next step is to fill the cans using the filler pictured here being tested prior to being used.

The empty cans are then placed under the two nozzles to be filled.

Where the beer fills the can rather quickly, in no more than a few seconds.


They are slightly overfilled to insure the proper amount as the end is readied to be placed on the top of the can.


A tray full of metal ends sits in between the two machines.


The trick is to place an end on one side of the opening and then seat the end on the entire can.


The next machine in the process is the seamer.


Which rotates very fast and double seams the end to the can top.


The can is carefully placed in between the gap, which is relatively small (I knocked a couple of the ends off doing this which meant having to discard those cans).


Then a lever is pulled forward and down which closes the gap and begins rotating the can.


Which double seals the end to the can, making it airtight.


The last machine attaches the six-pack ring to create a six-pack of cans.


Red cones are set on top of six cans and a lever releases the cones, creating a gap so a plastic ring may be placed on top of the cones.


Then the lever pushes the rings over the cans and seals them in place.


Voilà, Mike D. shows off a finished six-pack!

Here’s a movie of the entire canning process that follows it from empty can to finished six-pack. But be warned, it’s a very large file (over 87 MB). You can either download the movie to your desktop or just click on the link to play it in your web browser (assuming your web browser has the quicktime plug-in installed).

21A Cans Now For Sale

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The 21st Amendment canned beer that I’ve been following are now officially for sale, according to a press release I received this morning from the brewpub.

From the press release:

Today, Monday May 8th at 11:30AM, the 21st Amendment is proud to announce the release of it’s infamous Watermelon Wheat and 21A-IPA. in cans. That’s right Cans! A better package than glass bottles, lighter and more convenient.

25 craft breweries across the country are putting their hand-crafted beer in cans and having great success. Your first beer was probably in a can. Most likely a light domestic that would of not tasted any better in a bottle. Times of changed. The technology surrounding can design and the lining within the can have created a product that surpasses the standard glass bottle. Cans are impenetrable to light, keeping the beer fresher, longer and they do not leak as they have no crown tops. An all around great package.

Whatever your perception was about cans, we challenge you to change. Just as there was a time when you switched from light-insipid domestic beer and tried your first craft beer and were blown away by the flavor, come and crack open a “cold one” of one of the 21st Amendment’s hand-crafted beers and challenge your perception.

Imagine your first sip, out of a can, of our award-winning 21A-IPA, a beer that is 7% alcohol with a huge hop aroma and over-the-top-bitterness or the infamous Watermelon Wheat brewed with fresh watermelon and perfect for hot summer days. You will be very surprised.

I helped very briefly with some of the canning last week and will have another photo report to complete this story up on the beer blog in the next day or so. Also, look for my review of the IPA in a can later this week. The IPA cans are cooling in my refrigerator as we speak but there are deadlines to meet before I can crack them open.

Boonville Beer Festival: Photo Galleries

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This weekend was the 10th annual Boonville Beer Festival in Boonville, California. I had to leave before the festival ended so I missed the Saturday night festivities, but had a great time — as usual — anyway. Thanks to Ken Allen and all the terrific people at Anderson Valley Brewing for putting on this great event and giving us a great reason to travel to such a beautiful, remote part of the world. I’ve posted a ton of photo from the festival and the links to them are listed below:
 

 
 

Mike Altman from Iron Springs models the best hat of the festival.

Rodger Davis of Drake’s Brewing taps a firkin.

Rod DeWitt also gave me a great private tour of the Anderson Valley brewhouse.

Boont Tidrik Pike to Harp, Hoot and Especially Horn Steinber

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The above title translates roughly as “Boonville Party Trip to talk, laugh and especially drink beer.” The language is Boontling, that peculiar dialect in the remote area of Boonville, the home of Anderson Valley Brewing. This weekend is the 10th annual Boonville Beer Festival and I’ll be leaving for the fest this morning. Posts will likely resume on Sunday.

Watermelon Wheat in Cans

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I stopped by 21st Amendment yesterday to pick up a six-pack of their Watermelon Wheat in cans for a tasting later tonight. I had some on draft first and then had one out of the can. I couldn’t really detect any difference in flavor apart from the cans having more carbonation. It’s possible that’s because they were only filled a few days before and will settle down some but the cans I watched popped open all had a tendency to foam up out of the can. But that’s the only negative thing I can say, and that’s not much. But out of the can the beer was every bit as flavorful as on draft and I could detect no metallic flavors whatsoever. That evening, my wife and I each had a can with dinner — homemade chicken corn chowder that was a little spicy — and it worked quite well with our meal. My wife commented that since she’d been “trained to drink beer out of a glass” she was having a hard time drinking it straight from the can and she also noted the carbonation. Of course, I swelled with pride since I was the one who taught her that from before we even started dating. So just to see the difference, we poured about half of the beer from our cans into a glass. It produced an excellent pillowy white head and smoothed out nicely once the carbonation dissipated. The color was a clear light golden hue. Light and flavorful, it had that signature subtle but omnipresent watermelon character that defines this unique beer and which has led to its popularity. It’s an excellent thirst-quenching beer, a fruit beer for people who don’t think they like fruit beers. And it has a wonderful ability to cut through spicy food.

If people can get over the hurdle of the bias against beer in cans, they have a sure winner on their hands, I think. But since I share that bias against canned beer myself, I can’t see it happening overnight. I think part of the full drinking experience includes seeing the beer, watching it pour into the glass as the head rises up like a volcano threatening to escape the confines of the glass. Seeing the lace stick to the insides as the carbonation races into the air leaving the head to sink back down like a falling cake is almost magical. So I know I’ve romanticized drinking beer but it’s hard to shake such a potent image, even if I created it myself. But I’m also keenly aware that there are plenty of times when good beer in a can would be a godsend and I’d happily quaff one out of the can on those occasions. Hopefully, enough people will be curious enough about the novelty of it to give it a try. And I think if they do, they’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that beer out of a modern can manages to taste quite delicious and all our prejudice is rooted in remembrance of things past rather than on today’s reality. The technology is pretty amazing, that’s for sure. It’s gotten to the point where the only real criteria is how good is the stuff in the can. And in this case, the beer is quite delicious.

A Quick Trip to 21A

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I made a quick trip into San Francisco’s 21st Amendment brewpub yesterday to pick up their new canned beer for a tasting this evening at the Celebrator offices. I met brewer/ower Shaun O’Sullivan after the Giants game, during which Barry Bonds hit #712, at the brewpub and we sat with some friends for a quick drink.

21A brewer Shaun, Joe, from Eldo’s Brewery, and Jen, from Magnolia Pub & Brewery.

Brewers Shaun and Joe.

Shaun, Joe and Jen drink a toast to the new cans.

The Watermelon Wheat, now in cans.

Lagunitas in Egg & Butter Parade

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Today I took my kids, Porter and Alice, to the Butter & Eggs Day Parade in Petaluma, California. My son has been going through a farm animal phase and we though he would get to see a lot of horses and other animals in the parade. What we didn’t count on seeing was a float from Lagunitas Brewing Co. of Petaluma, though I suppose we should have. They had a flatbed truck with a band playing and all sorts of merriment going on. When the parade ended they kept on driving down the street, not stopping until they reached the Buckhorn Saloon, where I finally caught up with them for a drink.

The Lagunitas Float.

Pat Mace, a salesman for Lagunitas at the Buckhorn Saloon after the parade.

21st Amendment Preparing to Can Their Beer

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Shaun O’Sullivan, the brewmaster at 21st Amendment brewpub in San Francisco, has been extolling the virtues of canned beer for many months now, maybe longer. He’s been researching the improved technology for a while now, convinced that craft beer in cans is the wave of the future. But all that planning is going to begin paying off any time now. Shaun and his business partner Nico Freccia invited me to join them at the Ball Plant in Fairfield, California to watch the first cans of 21st Amendment beer manufactured. I’ve seen literally hundreds and hundreds of bottling lines, glass plants and even watched hand blown glass being made in Jamestown, Virginia but I’ve never seen beer cans being made. So I jumped at the chance to visit a can factory.

Left: The first Krueger can as shown in The Brewer’s News. Right: A digital recreation of the same can.

You know what they say. “Everything old is new again.” Beer cans debuted in 1935 when a now obscure New Jersey brewery, Gottfried Krueger, introduced their Krueger Cream Ale in cans in Richmond, Virginia. The advantage in those days was to protect the beer from becoming lightstruck. According to the BCCA account, “[b]ut the beer can really made its debut some 14 months earlier — just before the repeal of Prohibition. American Can Company had engineered a workable beer can. All that was needed was a brewer willing to take the pioneering plunge.” It tested very well and the rest is, as they say, history. Cans were very popular from the beginning but still did not outsell bottles until around 1969. That trend reversed itself again sometime in the 1980s or early 1990s when bottles again were the most popular package. While canned beer has been stigmatized as inferior to glass, the technology to make the cans, by coating each can with a protective internal coating so that the beer never comes in contact with the metal, has removed the issues that led to the tinny, metallic flavor that often leached into canned beer.

And slowly but surely, craft breweries have started canning their beer. Ed McNally’s Big Rock Brewery of Canada was probably the first craft beer I can recall in cans and Portland Brewing canned their McTarnhan’s Ale for sale on airplanes almost a decade ago. But Oskar Blues of Lyons, Colorado, with the help of Marty Jones, my friend and colleague — he also writes for the Celebrator — was the real pioneer of good beer in cans with their Dale’s Pale Ale leading the way. Since then several other craft breweries have begun canning their beers. Now 21st Amendment’s name can be added to the list. They’re going to put two of their beers in cans, the Watermelon Wheat and their IPA. And I believe they may be the first craft brewery in the Bay Area to can their beer. Ukiah Brewing was first in California when they came out with their Ukiah Pilsner last January. Today I watched the Watermelon Wheat cans being run and had an extensive tour, which was great fun.

Shaun O’Sullivan and Nico Freccia examine the first test cans to insure the colors and everything else are correct before commencing the full run.

Nico and the can’s designer sign off on the can proofs.

Large rolls of aluminum are used to create each can.

The rolls first run through a large machine that stamps out the initial shape of the can.

They look like small ashtrays and at this point the metal is still pretty thick.

It is then stretched in stages until it’s in the familiar can shape and much thinner.

And then receives an internal coating so that the beer never actually touches metal.

The cans are then washed and oven dried in preparation for printing.

Then the blank cans are printed using a a four-color process.

Here the plant was running some Pepsi cans through the line after being printed.

Here’s a Quicktime movie of the Pepsi cans moving swiftly on the line. You can either download the movie to your desktop or just click on the link to play it in your web browser (assuming your web browser has the quicktime plug-in installed).

The first 21st Amendment cans running on the can line.

Here’s two more Quicktime movies of the 21st Amendment cans on the line and then a closeup of them moving tha almost resembles an optical illusion. You can either download the movie to your desktop or just click on the link to play it in your web browser (assuming your web browser has the quicktime plug-in installed).

The cans on the conveyor belt before being palletized.

A full pallet, 21 rows high, of 21st Amendment beer cans.

A close up of the pallet of beer cans.

Nico and Shaun in front of the first pallets of 21st Amendment cans.

The full first run of 21st Amendment beer cans for Watermelon Wheat in the warehouse.

Shaun and Nico in front of the warehoused cans. Now the next step is to fill the cans, which should begin next week.

UPDATE: Part 2 of this story, how the cans are filled and sealed.

UPDATE: My review of the Watermelon Wheat in a can.

Green Valley Brewing: Origin of the Name?

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I ran into a friend of mine last week who’s a sales director for a Bay Area brewery who’d been following the Wild Hop Lager story. He mentioned something I hadn’t realized. Since he travels extensively throughout the greater Bay Area and beyond, he frequently is driving up Interstate 80, which runs past Anheuser-Busch’s Fairfield Plant, which is located at 3101 Busch Drive in Fairfield, California. I’d wondered how much time and money A-B had spent coming up with the perfect name that evoked just the right image for their organic stealth micro. Turns out it may not have been that difficult to come up with, after all. According to my friend, the exit on I-80 just before the Bud Plant in Fairfield is Green Valley Road. That’s pretty funny. While it doesn’t prove they got the name from a nearby road that most of the employees probably drove by twice a day, it certainly is an amazing coincidence. Too coincidental, I’d say.

The red star toward the right is the Anheuser-Busch Fairfield Plant located at 3101 Busch Drive, Fairfield, California. The green arrow toward the left shows Green Valley Road just down the street from the plant. If it’s hard to see, click on the map above for a larger view.

UPDATE: I drove by this exit sign just before passing thre Fairfield Bud Plant on my way to tour the Ball Can Factory, where 21st Amendmet is having their new beer cans made.

California Wins Big at World Beer Cup

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California came up big at the World Beer Cup this year, winning 25 of the 159 medals awarded to American breweries. The next closest state — Wisconsin — won 14. Held every two years, the World beer Cup is becoming one of the world’s most prestigious worldwide competitions. Personally, I’d like to see more breweries from abroad competing but that will likely take a little more time. For now, smost likely because it’s judged in the United States, the majority of entries — a healthy 64% — were from American breweries. But the 36% of overseas breweries also nabbed 36% of the medals so there’s no reason more shouldn’t be entering. There were 2,221 beers entered from 540 breweries in 56 countries. And while that’s impressive, I imagine there are many, many more who did not enter. So it would be great to see this event grow into an event that almost every brewery in the world entered. That would, I think, make it even more meaningful, not to take one iota away from any of the winners because certainly a representative sampling of brewing countries did participate. Happily, it does seem to be going in that direction.

Here is a list of the winners from California breweries:

  • Pure Hoppiness, Alpine Beer Co., Silver, Imperial or Double India Pale Ale
  • Dorado Double IPA, Ballast Point Brewing Co., Bronze, Imperial or Double India Pale Ale
  • Nit Wit, BJ’s Restaurant & Brewery – Chandler, Silver, Belgian-Style White (or Wit) / Belgian-Style Wheat
  • Old Grind Porter, Etna Brewing Co., Gold, Brown Porter
  • Firestone Pale Ale, Firestone Walker Brewing Co., Gold, American-Style Pale Ale
  • IPA Nectar, Firestone Walker Brewing Co., Gold, American-Style Strong Pale Ale
  • Firestone IPA, Firestone Walker Brewing Co., Silver, American-Style Extra Special Bitter or Strong Bitter
  • Mission Street Pale Ale, Firestone Walker Brewing Co., Silver, American-Style Pale Ale
  • Hemp Ale, Firestone Walker Brewing Co., Bronze, American-Style Brown Ale
  • Green Flash Extra Pale Ale, Green Flash Brewing Co., Silver, English-Style Summer Ale
  • Green Flash Nut Brown Ale, Green Flash Brewing Co., Silver, English-Style Brown Ale
  • Epiphany, Iron Springs Pub & Brewery, Bronze, American-Style Amber / Red Ale
  • Centennial Ale, Lengthwise Brewing Co., Silver, English-Style India Pale Ale
  • Sharkbite Red Ale, Pizza Port Carlsbad, Gold, American-Style Amber / Red Ale
  • Night Rider Imperial Stout, Pizza Port Carlsbad, Silver, Imperial Stout
  • Dawn Patrol Dark, Pizza Port San Clemente, Silver, English-Style Mild Ale
  • Shark Attack, Pizza Port Solana Beach, Gold, Imperial or Double Red Ale
  • Bottom’s Up Kolsch, Rock Bottom Brewery – Campbell, Gold, German-Style Kölsch / Köln-Style Kölsch
  • Blind Pig IPA, Russian River Brewing Co., Gold, American-Style India Pale Ale
  • Pliny the Elder, Russian River Brewing Co., Gold, Imperial or Double India Pale Ale
  • Temptation, Russian River Brewing Co., Gold, Other Belgian-Style Ale
  • Old Woody, Schooner’s Grille & Brewery, Silver, Wood- and Barrel-aged Beer
  • Stone Ruination IPA, Stone Brewing Co., Bronze, American-Style India Pale Ale
  • TAPS Irish Red, TAPS Fish House & Brewery, Gold, Irish-Style Red Ale
  • Trumer Pils, Trumer Brauerei Berkeley, Gold, German-Style Pilsener

Congratulations to all of the California winners.

For a full list of all the winners, see the Brewers Association.