'Rethinking the Draught-Bottle-Can Paradigm - August 2006
Ask anyone who has been drinking beer for a half-century or so and they'll surely tell you what all of us younger drinkers are only now finding out, namely that the popularity of different forms of beer packaging is ever-changing and evolving. Just forty or fifty years ago, for example, in many quarters, draught beer was considered suspect stuff, while drinking bottled brew at the bar was viewed as a mark of sophistication and stature.
(In England, it's worth noting, this same dynamic has much more recently raised its head in the pubs, only there it's because bottled lagers are supposed to be hipper than draught or cask-conditioned ales.)
Today, of course, the equation has been at least half reversed, with draught becoming the beer of choice in most better beer bars and bottled domestics largely left on the sidelines. Even imports, long the mainstays of the bottled beer selection at fine bars, are under significant pressure to give way to their draught versions, which is why there are now far more draught Belgians on the market than there were in the 1990's. The suspect stuff, of course, is canned beer, or then again, maybe it isn't. With craft breweries from Sly Fox in Pennsylvania to those pioneering rebels at Colorado's Oskar Blues now putting their fine ales and lagers into aluminum, even the can is undergoing a dramatic image change.
What brought all this to mind was a recently consumed half-litre tin of Fuller's London Pride, imported to Ontario from the brewery's home in London, England. I have long been a fan of the Fuller's flagship bitter, having enjoyed it on draught and in the bottle and, now, can in Ontario and elsewhere on the continent, as well as cask-conditioned in England. I've even had painfully fresh pints drawn from the brewery tap, not to mention a pint or three carried to my room at one of the brewery's excellent hotels.
This can of ale, however, was something different from what I had previously sampled in Canada. Although it was no sparkling pint of fresh cask ale, it drew closer to that taste than anything I had previously experienced on this side of the pond, better than any Fuller's bottles and superior to any Fuller's draught. The hop character was fresh and well-defined, the malt was luscious but not overbearing, and between the two was a beautiful, artfully constructed balance. And remember, this was from a can.
And so the shift is once again on, as I am forced to confront the possibility that canned ale might not only be better than bottled, but also ahead of draught, at least so far as this particular beer is concerned! And then there are those bottle-conditioned Belgians, many if not most of which I have found to be more expressive of their flavour and aroma when poured from the bottle rather than the tap. And let us not forget Pilsner Urquell, that conundrum of a lager, which is more reliably fresh in its 500 ml can than its suspect green-glass bottle, but also more notably floral in bottled form, when it's not gone skunky, at least. Later this month, I'll be visiting Romania, where my research shows me that the 2 litre PET bottle is pervasive, offering yet another format to judge.
In the end, I've can only conclude that each format can have merit, depending upon circumstances and facility and, of course, beer. And that it may be time beer aficionados everywhere admit that discrimination in favour of one format over the other could just be a show of habit, inexperience or plain old hard-headedness.
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