Summer is the peak season for drinking beer. Whether it’s drinking on a back porch, trying your latest varietal in your taproom, or toasting at the top of Mount Evans, your customers want to enjoy a cold one almost anywhere. Unfortunately, not every container can be brought to all the places your customers might want to drink.
Cans are the most versatile, portable, and durable option for distributing your prized beers to as many people as possible, especially in the summertime. Here’s why.
Glass vs. Aluminum in Outdoor Spaces
There are hundreds of places that your customers love to spend their summer where glass containers simply aren’t allowed.
- Concert venues: the vast majority of concert venues like Red Rocks Amphitheater ban glass containers entirely, while aluminum containers are usually allowed.
- Sports stadiums: most stadiums don’t allow outside drinks at all, but they’ll still distribute cans and aluminum bottles inside the stands. If you want your beer to be sold inside the stadium, it’ll have to be through kegs or cans.
- Camping areas: all of Colorado’s wilderness areas prohibit glass containers of any kind, and most private campgrounds have the same rule.
- Swimming pools: everyone loves to knock back a cold one by the pool, but virtually all pool areas prohibit glass containers.
The fact is, if you’re only distributing your beer in your taproom and in glass growlers, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.
Cans vs. Growlers
It’s true that glass growlers have some advantages over canning lines — they’re easy to fill up at the tap with no additional training or equipment and you can buy them for a few dollars each in bulk. Unfortunately, they’re also bulky, heavy, and fragile, and they don’t keep beer fizzy or fresh for very long. The best use of a glass growler is to bring it home, keep it in the fridge, and drink it within a day or two.
Aluminum growlers are an option, but they’re much more expensive, costing anywhere from $20 to $50 apiece. They’re also very heavy and cumbersome and suffer from the same freshness issues as glass growlers, making them difficult to bring anywhere remote.
Cans, or crowlers, are the best of all worlds. They have a tighter seal than glass bottles or growlers, keeping them fresh longer and through a wider range of temperatures. They’re relatively light and portable, allowing your customers to take them anywhere. Best of all, they’re inexpensive both for canners and customers alike, making them the most accessible option to bring beer to as wide an audience as possible.
Getting Started With a Canning Line
Two of the most common objections to starting your own canning line are space and cost — most brewers are concerned that they don’t have room for canning equipment in their commercial space, nor can they afford the equipment necessary.
Luckily, a canning line is more affordable than you think. Compact machines like the Mancos can fill 10-15 cans per minute in a footprint the size of a large tabletop, and more versatile machines like our Gunnison line can be paired with dozens of attachments to make them as simple or as complex as the needs of your brewery dictate. If you’re ready to start canning your beer and getting it into the hands of your customers, no matter where they are, get in touch with Twin Monkeys today.