Long live the beer can? Yes!

This month’s story on the 75th birthday of the beer can is particularly interesting to me - I like beer, packaging, and history, so what could be a more natural combination. Like many older Generation X-ers, I collected beer cans in the 1970s, when the fad swept the country and sent millions of kids scouring the bushes for gleaming hulks of bygone eras.

And as is the case with so many other hobbies, many of those former can collectors have returned the hobby once they’ve reached the point where disposable income and nostalgia for a bygone childhood reach their peak.

Unfortunately, not many others are picking up the hobby of beer can collecting these days, according to a rather interesting Wall Street Journal  article I saw recently. But hey that’s not all that surprising - it’s an odd, somewhat dorky pursuit, I’ll admit. (Then again so is collecting just about anything when you think about it!)

At the same time, plastic is starting to make real inroads into the long reign of the metal can as one of the dominant containers of beer packaging today.

Is the golden age of beer cans behind us? Hard to say, but maybe.

On the other hand, the new shaped aluminum bottles are starting to show up more and more as a container of beer. While not a “can” in the purest sense, they do a lot to revitalize a category that was starting to seem a tad stagnant at times. Plastic bottles may have their advantages. But beer is often somewhat of a premium product that seems poorly served by thin packaging that feels so strictly functional.

And so shaped aluminum bottles are a welcome alternative. Long live the beer can!

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