In 1909, Leopold Schmidt, a German immigrant and brewmaster, requested that American Can look into canning beer for his Olympia Brewing Company in Washington state. Cans were — in theory, at least — superior to bottles in several ways: They were easier to stack, and thus to transport; they didn’t break as easily; they were lighter; and they didn’t expose beer to sunlight the way bottles did. (Sunlight can damage the flavor of beer, leaving it sour and spoiled-tasting, or “skunky.”) The problem, however, was that, unlike beans, corn and tomatoes, beer produced pressure as it carbonated — and the outgassing tended to burst the flimsy tin cans of the time. Though American Can struggled mightily with the problem between 1909 and 1920, the onset of Prohibition slowed the project and the U.S. brewing industry ground to a virtual halt.
It wasn’t until 1933, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the 73rd Congress passed a series of laws repealing the Volstead Act, that American Can again took up the cause of canned beer. Working at a rapid pace, its engineers solved the exploding-can problem that September, producing the world’s first beer can. In addition to traditional tin, they reinforced the can with steel, which proved able to hold up to beer’s pressure. Drinkers opened the can with a “church-key” opener, a slice of metal with a sharp bill to punch a hole in the can’s flat top. But with this innovation arose more problems. Designers had to find a way to combat the fact that beer packaged in metal began to taste metallic or tinny. To counteract this, American Can inventors slathered the inside of the cans with brewer’s pitch, made from pine tar. The pitch insulated the can walls from the beer just like the inside of a keg; thus, their cans came to be known as “keglined.”
History and beer combined. I like it.
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