Yesterday in History: Canned Beer Debuts in 1935
Via the History Channel’s This Day in History. Be sure to click through for the video.
Old Beer Cans
Credit: Flickr User ElvissaCanned beer makes its debut on this day in 1935. In partnership with the American Can Company, the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company delivered 2,000 cans of Krueger’s Finest Beer and Krueger’s Cream Ale to faithful Krueger drinkers in Richmond, Virginia. Ninety-one percent of the drinkers approved of the canned beer, driving Krueger to give the green light to further production.
By the late 19th century, cans were instrumental in the mass distribution of foodstuffs, but it wasn’t until 1909 that the American Can Company made its first attempt to can beer. This was unsuccessful, and the American Can Company would have to wait for the end of Prohibition in the United States before it tried again. Finally in 1933, after two years of research, American Can developed a can that was pressurized and had a special coating to prevent the fizzy beer from chemically reacting with the tin.
The concept of canned beer proved to be a hard sell, but Krueger’s overcame its initial reservations and became the first brewer to sell canned beer in the United States. The response was overwhelming. Within three months, over 80 percent of distributors were handling Krueger’s canned beer, and Krueger’s was eating into the market share of the “big three” national brewers–Anheuser-Busch, Pabst and Schlitz. Competitors soon followed suit, and by the end of 1935, over 200 million cans had been produced and sold.
The purchase of cans, unlike bottles, did not require the consumer to pay a deposit. Cans were also easier to stack, more durable and took less time to chill. As a result, their popularity continued to grow throughout the 1930s, and then exploded during World War II, when U.S. brewers shipped millions of cans of beer to soldiers overseas. After the war, national brewing companies began to take advantage of the mass distribution that cans made possible, and were able to consolidate their power over the once-dominant local breweries, which could not control costs and operations as efficiently as their national counterparts.
Today, canned beer accounts for approximately half of the $20 billion U.S. beer industry. Not all of this comes from the big national brewers: Recently, there has been renewed interest in canning from microbrewers and high-end beer-sellers, who are realizing that cans guarantee purity and taste by preventing light damage and oxidation.
January 25th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
I seem to remember reading/hearing somewhere that Pittsburgh Brewing claimed to have been the first to have beer in cans (I believe it was those old cone-top types).
I was always skeptical of this though…it seemed like they were just saying that to trade in on Pittsburgh’s steel and aluminum manufacturing heritage.
January 25th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Beer in glass bottles tastes better than beer in metal cans.
But maybe if you are drinking Bud or Coors or Miller, it does not really matter.
If you are drinking a handcrafted microbrew, it does make a difference.
January 26th, 2007 at 8:42 am
> I seem to remember reading/hearing somewhere that Pittsburgh
> Brewing claimed to have been the first to have beer in cans
Pittsburgh Brewing (and Alcoa) owned the patent to the first pop top, in 1963.
January 26th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Fred will only drink from a bottle, unless
only cans are available, in which case he might have one or two.
plus, i don’t think maudite comes in cans anyway. but cans come
in handy sometimes, since they don’t clink in the trash bag the way
bottles do.
January 26th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Pittsburgh Brewing company didn’t claim to have the first beer in cans. They claimed to have the first pull-top cans. It was a collaboration with Alcoa, that produced the cans.
January 26th, 2007 at 11:51 am
fred knows cans are a great container but only for soup…
January 26th, 2007 at 11:58 am
yes it is true cans are better but they too make noise in the trash. i have never strayed from the wonderful flavor and complexity of hand crafted brews that can only come in bottles. at the risk of offending some beer drinkers, if it comes in a can its not really beer just yellow fizz. yeehaa