#Can July 6

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Beer has not always packaged in a CAN.

Part of the #Coach4adayChallenge for July is to share some interesting aspect of history. How the beer CAN has evolved is the focus of this post.

Jimmy Buffett’s signature song just may be Margaritaville a song he recorded in 1977. That song made reference to an injury caused by a CAN.

One part of the lyrics to that song goes like this

I blew out my flip flop,
Stepped on a pop top;
Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home.

From 1965 to 1975 a POP TOP came off a can and more often than not found its way on the ground. Photo below is what a POP TOP looked like back then.

As you get older you try to explain to younger people simple changes that have occurred during your life time. One of those changes is how you open a CAN of beer. My first memories of opening a Schaeffer beer for my dad involved my mom’s avocado green CAN opener.

Even though canned foods date back to 1813, the first successful attempt to put beer in a can wasn’t accomplished until 1935 and was the offspring of a partnership between the American Can Company and the New Jersey-based Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company.

Less than two years before that, the American Can Company managed to overcome two challenges which, until then, had precluded them from canning beer—the company successfully produced cans strong enough to hold the pressurized carbonated beverage and “keglined” the inside of the cans with a special coating that prevented any metallic taste from flavoring the beer.

Krueger’s Finest Beer, Krueger’s Cream Ale and Krueger’s Special Beer (all at 3.2 percent ABV—the highest legal level for beer at the time) became the first beers canned and about 4,000 were imbibed by the lucky few in Richmond, Virginia.

Though today beer cans are made from aluminum, those early cans were constructed out of heavy gauged steel coated with a thin layer of tin to prevent rusting. This tinning of steel cans became so ubiquitous that even today aluminum cans are still sometimes called “tin cans.”

While opening a can of beer these days is as simple as flipping a tab, original flat top beer cans required a device called a “church key” or my mom’s prized avocado green can opener in order to access the brew inside. The first can beers had printed instructions on the can on how to open.

Using a can opener, an imbiber (inserted word to impress John Tanner) would puncture a triangular hole at the top of the beer from which he/she would drink, in addition to puncturing a smaller hole on the opposite side to let air into the can and facilitate the free flow of beer.

Very few beer and soda cans had any type of pop top until we got to the 1960’s. In 1975 the danger of the removable tab you could throw on the ground was replaced by the tab we see on today’s cans.

Next time you grab a CAN of beer realize its history.