Beer In A Can

The discovery of penicillin and the polio vaccine both have to take a backseat to another innovation, one that made its debut on this date in 1935.

Beer in a can.

Canned beer.

What was once in a bottle—now, in a can. And the world has never been the same.
Forget about pop-tops or their primitive predecessor, the ring-top. These advances would happen years later. We’re talking about carrying around a can opener, the proverbial “church key” to get at your beer.

The Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company delivered 2,000 cans of their fine brew to faithful and enthusiastic customers in Richmond, Virginia. Of course, canning wasn’t new, but Prohibition put a bit of a delay into the idea—and then someone had to develop a pressurized can—AND a special coating so that the beer would not chemically react with the tin.

Yes, tin. Aluminum was quite a ways off.

Ninety one percent of those Richmond beer drinkers approved of that first batch---or after consuming enough beer, ninety one percent forget what they were being asked to rate in the first place. Either way, Gottfried had the green light to make more beer—and that’s all that’s important here.

The development of canned beer led to an EXPLOSION in consumption. With that increase in beer drinking, the market grew, the competition and subsequently, the marketing.

The beer commercial deserves its own blog, but they happen to be an advertising genre that has consistently delivered great spots! Humor as the cornerstone of the decision-making process has served most beer producers well, especially Anheuser Busch, the makers of Bud Light. Here’s a threesome of ads from their hilarious “Real Men Of Genius” campaign:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETrWZsYYJOQ

Personally, I prefer my beer in the good old-fashioned bottle. With all the advances, I still think that beer in a can tastes metallic. Shaping the can to look like a bottle does little to dispel that notion. I am, apparently, in the minority, since roughly half of the $20 billion dollar a year beer industry ships their product in cans.

Gotta go. All this blogging is making me thirsty.

If you’d like my blog in your daily e-mail box, just let me know: tim.moore@citcomm.com