The beer can has had one of the great comeback arcs in American consumer product history. For decades it carried a reputation as the vessel of cheap, mass-market lager — the domain of tailgates and fishing trips, not serious beer. Now it holds some of the most coveted craft releases in the country. The turnaround has been total and, in retrospect, inevitable.
The first commercially canned beer appeared in 1935, produced by the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company in Richmond, Virginia, under license from the American Can Company. It was an immediate success — cans were lighter, easier to ship, and didn’t require a deposit like returnable bottles. By the end of that year, more than 200 million cans had been sold. The format seemed poised to dominate.
The craft beer movement of the 1980s and 1990s largely turned its back on cans. The association with mass-market beer was a liability for breweries trying to signal quality and seriousness, and the lining technology of the era could sometimes impart a metallic flavor. Bottles — especially the brown glass pints and bombers that became the visual language of early craft beer — felt more appropriate to the category’s aspirations.
The rehabilitation started around 2002, when Oskar Blues began canning Dale’s Pale Ale in Colorado — a legitimately excellent beer in a format that the craft world had written off. The reception was skeptical, then curious, then enthusiastic. Modern can lining technology had eliminated the metallic flavor issue. The practical advantages of cans — lighter, unbreakable, completely light-proof, infinitely recyclable — were real and meaningful. Other breweries followed. Then many more. By the 2010s, the can had become not just acceptable in craft beer circles but actively preferred.
Today, the limited-release can drop is a core ritual of craft beer culture. Hazy IPAs, barrel-aged stouts, and sour ales that would have been unthinkable in a can twenty years ago now routinely sell out within minutes of going on sale. The humble aluminum can, it turns out, is a nearly perfect beer container — and it took the industry fifty years longer than it should have to figure that out.
First Canned Beer: Gottfried Krueger Brewing Co., Richmond, Virginia — January 24, 1935
Craft Beer Pioneer: Oskar Blues began canning Dale’s Pale Ale in 2002, breaking the format’s stigma
Why Cans Win: Light-proof, airtight, lighter than glass, fully recyclable, and better for carbonation preservation
Next time you crack a can of something excellent, pour it into a glass and take a moment to appreciate the journey that container took to get there.
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