The Brewmaster takes 20 days to get the beer right, then the packaging department ruins it in 20 minutes. That's how many brewers feel about the necessary evil of beer packaging – and knowledgeable consumers often agree.

• Barrels • Better Barrels • Bottles • Pasteurization • Cans • Future Packages • Assuring Quality • The Tower of Taste • Packaging Gas

Bottles, Kegs and Cans
the Glory & Ruin of Beer

by Ray Daniels

 

mong brewers, the word “packaging” designates all of the various containers used to transport beer from the brewery to the restaurants, bars and retail stores where consumers will buy it. Thus, packaging includes not only myriad bottles and cans, but kegs of various types as well.

These packages allow consumers to enjoy beer at their convenience and they tremendously expand sales opportunities for the brewers. At the same time, they can be—and often are—the downfall of an otherwise good beer.

Packaging not only steals freshness and flavor from beer; it can also impart flavor of its own. This article and its related sidebars explore the history and practice of beer packaging in an effort to shed light on common consumer questions about these issues.

"Given how long beer has been around, perhaps it is no surprise that its most popular containers are old-timers as well."

Solid as Barrel

The earliest containers for beer included dried gourds, clay pots and bags made of skins or leather. The word “blackjack” once designated such a container: “a large leather vessel for beer, coated on the outside with tar.” But more than 1,000 years ago, these crude containers stood side by side with one still used for beer today: the wooden barrel.

A lease penned in 852 AD for lands controlled by the Abbot of Medeshampstede in Britain called for payment in the form of “tuns” or barrels of pure ale. This passage tells us not only of the commonplace use of wooden barrels but also of the long-time concern for the purity and character of beer.
Once finished, beer is subject to several influences that hasten its deterioration. As with most foods, the most dramatic decline results from the action of microbes. The chief villains are acid-producing bacteria and wild yeasts. The sour and vinegary flavors they produce were once so common that today they are considered normal in classic styles such as lambic and Berliner weiss.

Although wooden barrels often harbored the very bacteria that spoiled beer, these issues were little understood. Brewers cleaned the barrels and treated “stinkers” with chemicals such as lime and lye to “sweeten” them before refilling. Neither the persistent nature of bacterial contamination nor its effect on beer flavor would be appreciated until Louis Pasteur’s work in the late 1800s.
The utility of barrels came from their strength and their ease of use. In short, they would withstand the rough rigors of transportation while filled with large quantities of beer.

By early in the 16th century, nearly all beer and ale was sold in barrels, with prices based on volume. To ensure fair trade, brewers were forbidden to make their own barrels. Coopers who supplied them were directed “to make every barrel, which is intended to contain beer for sale, of the capacity of 36 gallons,” a measure for the British barrel that endures to this day.

For several centuries, wooden barrels prevailed as the dominant form of beer packaging throughout the world. Carbonation was developed inside the barrel from a secondary fermentation by the yeast. The degree of carbonation was probably much lower than that found today owing to the porosity of the wood and the crude nature of the closures employed.

The beer was served by driving a tap or spigot through a plugged hole in the head of the prostrate barrel. A vent hole was also opened at the top to admit air and facilitate the free flow of beer through the tap. Fans of modern cask-conditioned ale will recognize this description as being essentially identical to today’s “real ale” system. This “old fashioned” method of dispense had nearly died out in Britain by 1971, but has made a comeback since then thanks to the efforts of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). In recent years, American craft brewers have begun adopting this system and many now serve a small portion of their output this way.

Technical Improvements

Then as now, this system worked well when beer sold quickly. But when stocks languished, the unused beer in an open barrel lost its carbonation and soured from the microbes carried in with the air. As with so much in brewing, technology offered solutions. In the last few decades of the 19th century, compressed gases became available, and vent holes could be supplied with clean, pressurized carbon dioxide rather than regular room air. The result was improved carbonation throughout the life of the barrel and a tremendous reduction in soured beer. By 1900, this system was used for fully 75 percent of the beer served in the United States.

With these improvements, wooden barrels remained widely used into the middle of the 20th century, although other types were beginning to be used as well. The 1942 edition of The Practical Brewer: A Manual for the Brewing Industry lists five types of barrels then in use, including wood, laminated wood, stainless steel, steel and aluminum.

By this time, all barrels—with the exception of stainless steel—were “pitched” or lined with an organic resin or wax to isolate the beer from the container itself. This made it possible to sanitize the interior before filling and minimize the development of microbially induced off-flavors. In the case of steel and aluminum, it also prevented corrosion and metallic off-flavors.

StarTing in the late-1800s, another factor in the fight against tiny invaders was the widespread use of refrigeration in the transport and dispense of draft beer. Brewers had learned that most beer spoilers thrive at warmer temperatures. Since the complete elimination of bacteria and wild yeast from beer was impossible, brewers relied on cooler temperatures to help keep undesirable effects in check.

Today, nearly all beer barrels or kegs are made of stainless steel. Still, the product they contain is a fragile one. Once filled, kegs must remain refrigerated to help preserve the integrity of the beer. In addition to promoting microbial growth, increased temperatures accelerate oxidation and other chemical staling reactions.

You may wonder why kegged draft beer requires careful handling when beer in cans and bottles doesn’t. In truth, most keg products forego the life-prolonging processing used on bottles and cans. As a result, the flavor of draft beer is fresher and more natural, but the shelf life is dramatically shorter—about four to six weeks according to most authorities. Thus, in most cases, a cold draft is the closest thing to brewery fresh beer that the consumer can buy.

Bottled Beer Appears

While the brewing literature scarcely mentions bottled beer before the 20th century, we have ample evidence that bottles have extended consumer enjoyment of beer for more than 300 years.

The earliest mention comes in a tale told of Dr. Alexander Nowell, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral from 1560 to 1602. Reports indicate that he left a corked bottle of beer by the river one day while fishing. When he returned several days later and opened the bottle, he found “no bottle, but a gun, so great was the sound.”

This illustrates a chief characteristic of bottled beer that was appreciated even from its earliest days—namely, that it could develop and sustain a significant level of carbonation. The 1615 text of The English Housewife describes the making of bottled ale, warning that “the corks be tied fast with strong pack-thread, for fear of rising out, or taking vent, which is the utter spoil of the ale.”

As a result of carbonation and convenient size, bottles evolved as a favored package “for beer which was not to be drunk at once.” This included beer for personal consumption beyond the pub and, to a certain extent, beer for export. One source reports that “3 million glass bottles were made in England in 1695 and bottled beer seems to have remained popular during the 18th century.”

During the 1700s, bottle shapes changed from the old bulbous flask to a long cylindrical form still used for Bordeaux wine, but bottle manufacture was still rather crude. They were hand blown with the assistance of rough molds made of soapstone, wood or brass. The actual dimensions of each bottle varied slightly. Cork stoppers were especially useful in this regard. Once compressed and inserted, they would expand to close the bottle opening no matter what its shape or dimensions.

Just a decade or so after the American Revolution, beer bottles were considered an important commodity for a young country. So much so, in fact, that a Maryland bottler ruined by fire applied for and received a loan of $8,000 from the US Congress to help in rebuilding.

Here, as in England, export was a primary use for the bottles. From 1801 through 1810, the American states exported just over 1 million gallons of beer, 15 percent of it in bottled form.
Prior to the 20th century, bottling relied on handwork and one or two rudimentary devices for filling and corking. On the whole, such operations must have been quite similar to those used by today’s home wine and beer makers.

The mechanization of bottling began with improved molds and innovations such as the use of compressed air, introduced during the mid-19th century. In 1866, chilled iron molds were introduced and a long stream of patents for bottle-making machines followed. With the advent of uniform bottles, a more practical closure was needed and in 1892, the familiar crimped metal “crown” was invented. Developments in refrigeration and liquefied gas also helped to promote bottling by allowing the beer to be artificially carbonated before filling, eliminating the reliance on fermentation in the bottle.

Pasteur Heats Things Up

As bottling increased in popularity, efforts to ensure the purity and quality of packaged beer also accelerated. In 1882, the German brewer Thausing mentioned the skunky aroma developed by beers stored in clear glass bottles. This sort of observation led many brewers to adopt brown bottles that protect against this effect.

Louis Pasteur’s pioneering microbiology work in the mid- to late-1800s finally revealed to brewers the nature of the fermentation upon which their products depended. But an equally important development came from his efforts to stop the spoilage of French wine. It was here that the now well-known process of heating was first used to disable spoilage organisms inside a sealed bottle.

By 1903, pasteurization was a routine part of automated bottled beer production. Vast machines for cleaning, filling and sterilizing occupied tracts of space in most breweries. And, while the machines themselves would evolve, the basic materials and processes of bottling would change little through the remainder of the 20th century.

When beer production resumed after Prohibition, draft beer accounted for 70 percent of sales. Today, draft has dwindled to little more than 10 percent of all beer sales in the United States. As a result of this trend, even most small breweries now bottle a portion of their production.

Unfortunately, bottling is an expensive proposition. Large breweries dedicate 60 percent of their capital expenditures to packaging. In the average six-pack, the beer itself accounts for less than 20 percent of the total cost of production.

Even when a brewery invests heavily in equipment and spends big bucks for attractive packaging, poor-quality bottled beer may result. Whether through improper operation, poor maintenance or inattention to sanitation, even well-equipped breweries can fall short. The resulting beers may not taste right or they may be so fragile that they deteriorate rapidly within a few weeks of leaving the brewery. (See sidebar on Assuring Quality.)

To minimize the cost associated with bottling, many small brewers have reverted to older methods of production. They forego the costly pasteurization step, instead filling their bottles with “live” beer that contains yeast and a small portion of unfermented sugar. This promotes a brief secondary fermentation in the bottle that generates carbonation and fights oxidation. These products can offer fresh, natural flavor, but they carry the risk of rapid deterioration if poorly handled.

The Can is King

Because of their use for mass-market brands, cans package more beer than any other container. In total, approximately 60 percent of the beer sold in America leaves the brewery in cans.

Despite its dominance today, the can is clearly the youngest of the three common packages for beer. The first canned beers did not appear in the United States until 1935 and cans did not outsell bottles until 1969. Despite this recent ascendancy, the basic technology of canning has been known for more than 200 years.

In the 1790s, French confectioner Nicholas Appert discovered that food cooked inside a sealed bottle would not deteriorate. The French Navy tested this principle in 1806 on a wide variety of foods including meat, vegetables, fruit and even milk. Shortly thereafter, Englishman Peter Durand received a patent using this same method in tin-coated steel containers. Yet, while the process was known, the technology for its widespread application did not exist. Durand’s output was reported to be just 10 containers per day.

In 1900, a German immigrant to America named Max Am developed and patented a complete system for automated canning. Starting with a fully open tin can, it allowed rapid filling and quick sealing with a crimp-on gasket-type lid. This system rapidly replaced other food packaging and is essentially the process used today for most canned foods.

No record now exists of any beer canning that may have occurred before Prohibition began in 1920, but afterwards, brewers quickly adopted the technology. The first canned beer was reportedly produced on June 24, 1935, by the Krueger Brewing Co. of Newark, NJ. That same year, Schlitz introduced a “cone top” can, a short-lived but notable variation on the traditional can design.

In 1959, Coors introduced the first all-aluminum can. Pittsburgh Brewing Co. introduced the tab-top can in 1962. The popular ring pull introduced in 1965 appears to be the feature that propelled cans into the lead among beer packages—a position that it assumed just a few years later and has yet to yield. The only major change since that time was the switch to an attached tab to reduce the litter generated by discarded ring pulls.

From a quality point of view, cans are much like bottles. Since the package is pasteurized after filling, the chief concern comes in minimizing the amount of oxygen in order to reduce the flavor impact of pasteurization and retard natural staling reactions.

Cans do offer some unique pitfalls that may affect beer flavor. The various lubricants, coatings and paints used to produce and seal the can are potential sources of off-flavor. While these elements rarely impact canned beer, they require careful monitoring and quality control on the part of the brewer. Consumers who find odd flavors in their favorite canned product may be well advised to share their opinions with the maker.

Technology Marches On

The latter part of the 20th century has generated an incredible array of new packages for consumer foods and beverages. Using space-age plastics, papers and foils, industry now offers up containers to meet needs both real and imagined. Still, few of the new containers meet the needs of beer.

Those aseptic packages popular here for juice have gained acceptance in other parts of the world for packaging perishable beverages such as milk, wine and even lightly carbonated African sorghum beer. But they just can’t handle the pressure—literally—for European and American beers. Although beer is packaged under less pressure than most carbonated soft drinks, beer containers must sustain 15 to 20 pounds per square inch of internal pressure—far more than the practical limit with aseptic containers.

Given that, plastic soft drink bottles would seem practical. But, while capable of handling the pressure, most plastic bottles fall short when it comes to protecting the beer from light and oxygen.

Nevertheless, Miller Brewing Co. has recently become the first American brewer to distribute beer in plastic bottles. The company is able to do so for two reasons. First, its beers are made with a special hop extract that renders them immune to the “skunking” effects of light, allowing them to be sold in clear, colorless containers that would ruin other beers. Second, Miller has worked with a plastic bottle maker to create a special five-layer plastic that protects the beer from oxygen. Still, Miller is using the plastic bottles in a limited way: for three brands in six markets and only for 20-ounce and 1-liter bottles.

The tried and true containers continue to dominate the beer scene simply because they do less damage than the other possible alternatives. Given how long beer has been around, perhaps it is no surprise that its most popular containers are old-timers as well.