Will craft beer lovers still host “bottle shares” if bottles themselves cease to exist? That may sound like a modern-day Zen koan, but it’s not exactly beyond contemplation.
This summer, cans made up about 76 percent of craft beer’s slipping retail sales, according to the Brewers Association, with glass dropping to just 24 percent, a major shift from where things were less than a generation ago. Back in 2013, bottles were so ubiquitous in the craft beer world that beer-focused meetups were understandably named after them, and the folks at Sam Adams could make headlines for simply planning to “do something they have never done in this country in their 29 years of existence: sell beer in a can.”
Things have shifted substantially since the days of the second Obama administration, to put it mildly, with cans moving from the new hotness to the industry standard. But as the pendulum swings to its furthest point, cans are evolving in new ways, while traditional glass bottles seem to be turning into a type of branding or a signifier unto themselves. Canning may have changed craft beer culture forever, but additional shifts are clearly coming down the pipe.
The Message of Craft Cans
OG craft beer fans remember the first ISO cans of the early days of the movement, starting with Dale’s Pale Ale, which Oskar Blues originally launched in its local market in 2002, followed a few years later by the brewery’s groundbreaking Ten Fidy, described as “a beer from a small Colorado brewery which has gained somewhat of a cult following lately, due to its scarcity” by an early reviewer in one 2008 blog post. That was the first imperial stout anyone I knew saw in a can, and one of the early turning points for the spread of cans nationwide. Ten Fidy showed that cans could work for small breweries in that era, including styles beyond lawnmower beer, as Sayre Piotrkowski, an Advanced Cicerone and the executive director of the Bay Area Brewers Guild, recalls.
“The can was novel and had charm when Oskar Blues was doing it way before everybody else,” he says.
Cans grew steadily over the next decade, and by the time the pandemic started in early 2020, many if not most craft breweries were offering the same format — 4-packs of 16.9-ounce cans — for retail sales. Social distancing and pandemic restrictions pushed even more breweries into packaging for off-premise sales, almost universally in the same 4-packs. With just about every local brewery using the same packaging to sell its products at the retail level, the 4-pack itself started to mean something to consumers. “That format came to indicate, rightfully or wrongly, that this is fresh, local beer,” Piotrkowski says.
Long after most craft brewers had switched to cans, one subset of the beer world conspicuously stuck to old-fashioned bottles: imports, especially those from traditional Old World producers. Eventually, however, that piece of the puzzle also fell into place. By December 2021, grocery store shoppers could also buy Saison Dupont — which claims a history dating to 1844 — in modern craft-beer 4-packs. Today, Dupont is selling about twice as much in the U.S. as it was before it added cans to its options, according to Lauren Summer, a senior manager at Total Beverage Solution, the brewery’s importer.
“It’s honestly been a great resurgence for the brand,” she says. “Having that pack format is opening up doors for us.”
“Because the shipping is lighter, we’re able to bring the price point a little bit down. So that got us into some retailers that previously weren’t willing to give us a shot.”
Those doors include more on-premise sales — that is, bars and restaurants — that previously wouldn’t or couldn’t stock Saison Dupont in bottles. The packaged version is even leading to increased interest in the draft version.
“Those pack formats are allowing us to get into on-premise accounts where we didn’t have a shot in the dark in the past,” Summer says. In part, she credits the familiarity of the packaging to more “craft-centric” outlets carrying the beer, instead of just “Belgian import” accounts.
Context Is Everything
Other importers are having similar experiences, though not always with the same approach. Like Total Beverage Solutions, D&V International now offers cans for a limited number of its European imports, after first experimenting with cans of St. Bernardus Wit in 2018. That beer was chosen because it was a relatively new style for the brewery and not among the importer’s leading sellers at the time, according to sales director James Curti.
“Obviously, it worked tremendously well,” he says. “The cans made it one of our top SKUs.” Other beers from the brewery, including its annual Christmas Ale and St. Bernardus Tokyo, originally developed for the Japanese market, are now also available in cans. But with an eye on tradition, the Belgian producer has kept St. Bernardus Abt 12 and its other traditional ales in glass.
One big benefit of importing cans from Europe is reduced weight and space, which led to Trader Joe’s recently agreeing to stock cans of the Christmas Ale.
“Because the shipping is lighter, we’re able to bring the price point a little bit down. So that got us into some retailers that previously weren’t willing to give us a shot,” Curti says. When St. Bernardus Wit was only available in bottles, he says, the retail cost hovered around $15, while cans of the same beer launched at $10.
Instead of importing already canned European beer, B. United takes a different approach, bringing in giant, temperature-controlled tanks of Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier and other Old World specialties before packaging them for retail sales at its facility in Connecticut. Despite his love for the most traditional European ales and lagers, company founder Matthias Neidhart says that cans have greatly benefited modern beer culture, protecting products exceptionally well from light and oxygen and offering huge environmental benefits. In addition, their lower shipping costs could also help offset some of the new tariffs. Cans are what makes it possible for B. United to sell revered but obscure lagers like St. GeorgenBräu Kellerbier.
“I do see some people starting to think, again, ‘What format makes the most sense for this product? What format makes the most sense for my brewery aesthetic?’”
“We wouldn’t sell any bottles, or very little bottles, and the cans are doing really, really well,” Neidhart says. “If you give me a choice, usually I will go with a can in today’s world, because I think it has better quality, and the freshness is maintained better.”
While cans are leading the way at B. United, there are exceptions. Possibly because of the pleasing shape of its old-fashioned stubby bottle, the Bamberg brewery Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier still sells very well in glass as well as cans. And for stylistic reasons, the importer plans to keep most of its Italian producers in bottles. Those beers often appear in Italian restaurants, where the vibe is heavily influenced by wine.
“They do not accept cans — they are very, very traditional,” Neidhart says. “We bring them in tank containers for draft, but we will not make them available in cans, because it’s the wrong container for that specific context. And the context plays a huge role.”
What Comes Next
Context plays a role in multiple ways, for both types of packaging. This summer, leading craft producer Sierra Nevada — which still sells loads of its landmark Pale Ale and other beers in traditional 12-ounce bottles — launched a new, European-style Pils in a small, 8.4-ounce can in select markets, with a nationwide rollout planned for early 2026. That new size “is rooted in the European tradition of a premium pilsner drinking experience,” the brewery announced.
Other craft breweries are exploring different contexts. In the last couple of years, brands have moved to both larger 19.2-ounce “stovepipes” and smaller “mini” cans of 8 or 8.5 ounces. And some producers are even going back to the old ways. In June, Craft Brew News quoted New Realm Brewing CEO Carey Falcone as saying that he thought the current growth of cans was being primarily driven by supply, rather than demand. The Georgia-based brewery recently acquired a bottling line, in what looks like an “if you build it, they will come” approach.
Bottles are also part of the health-focused marketing campaign at the new Fathers Brewing in Lafayette, Calif., highlighting a beer made with “organic malt and hops” that is “double-filtered to reduce heavy metals, unwanted chemicals and microplastics,” before being “packaged in glass — just like beer should be.”
That message might resonate with MAHA affiliates and nostalgia buffs. But glass still offers tangible benefits that metal cylinders can’t quite touch. While Saison Dupont sells very well in cans, Summer acknowledges the beautiful visual “beer theater” of opening a large-format, cork-and-cage bottle. Bottle conditioning at high carbonation is probably best done in glass, for obvious reasons. In December 2023, I opened a long-cellared 3-liter (6.3-pint) bottle — a jeroboam — of Austria’s Samichlaus that was then just over 16 years old for a group of friends. I couldn’t imagine getting the same enjoyment from a 16-year-old can.
Long-term aging definitely fits bottles best, Piotrkowski notes, since the plastic liners inside cans have limited shelf life. And yet it’s hard not to see the benefits of that format, too, which brought craft beer and imports to golf courses, hiking trails, airline beverage carts and plain-Jane bars and restaurants, among other new destinations. At its apex, craft beer benefited from the message of 4-packs of cans, as well as their panache and visual appeal. Something similar could happen with a different type of retail packaging in craft beer’s future — a future where doing things the same way as everyone else probably isn’t going to cut it.
“I do see some people starting to think, again, ‘What format makes the most sense for this product? What format makes the most sense for my brewery aesthetic?’” Piotrkowski says. Craft brewers have always been good at doing creative and compelling things, including packaging and labeling, and some will probably place a bet on new, novel-looking packaging in the future. Some of those wagers just might pay off. “I think that’s going to be a long, slow process out of the ubiquity of the 16-ounce can just meaning ‘that’s a small, local brewery,’” Piotrkowski says.
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