Boston Beer Considering New & Better Cans With Thicker Linings for Samuel Adams

Yes that’s just MY silly mock-up, but after speaking with Jim Koch a few weeks ago on the Friday BeerBuzz, one of the topics that interested us the most was the potential for Boston Beer to follow suit with many other brewers and put Samuel Adams in a can.  Jim has long been somewhat of an opponent of canning Sam Adams because of the subtleties in hop flavor that he considers at risk, and because of concerns over BPA in the liners.  For these reasons Jim has decided to wait out the development of better can liners.

Now comes word from a Washington Post article that Jim Koch & Boston Beer may actually be working to develop a better liner for canned beer:

”Even Boston Beer, maker of Samuel Adams, is working with several manufacturers to develop cans for its products, according to its president, Jim Koch, who used to be firmly in the anti-can camp. “There will come a day,” he says, “when I will feel comfortable putting Sam Adams in a can.”

For Boston Beer’s Koch, the main problem with cans is how they affect beer’s taste. Although many brewers disagree with him, he believes that tiny tears in can linings frequently lead to metallic notes and that the plastic linings suck up delicate hop aromas. “The cans tend to absorb the floral character of the hop and, to me, dumb the hop down,” he says. In developing cans for Samuel Adams, he adds, he hopes to create thicker, denser linings that address those problems.”