Going back through the various links and PR that I was sent and didn’t get to for a week while I was Halloween blogging, and I see CHOW has an article on canned beer. It fits nicely with what I was writing about earlier this year when I did Canned Beer Week.

It’s a good, informative article that covers the angles. For instance, here’s the history of craft canned beer in a nutshell:

A major impetus behind the recent microcanning trend is a change in canning technology, which for decades was geared toward large producers. The Buds and Millers of the world utilize massive industrial canning machinery and purchase blank aluminum cans by the billions every year, according to Hoover. The landscape changed, however, in 2001 when Canadian company Cask Brewing Systems began offering a manual, two-at-a-time canning system designed specifically for small brewers.

(Oskar Blues was their first customer.)

And they have a nice summary of the advantages of canned beer:

Cans are much lighter to carry around, which means less gas used during shipping; plus they require fewer resources to manufacture, they’re more commonly recycled (the Container Recycling Institute claims that the can recycling rate is almost twice that of glass), they’re quicker to chill, and they can go places bottles can’t (beaches, parks, stadiums).

(Not to mention they completely protect the beer from being lightstruck.)

Overall, it’s a fairly quick read, and worth it.