Metalman in a can
Co-owner Gráinne Walsh announced recently that the brewery has invested in a canning line from Cask Brewing Systems in Canada which is due to arrive at the Metalman Brewing site at the end of next month.
“2014 has been a very exciting time for us,” says Gráinne, “It’s been non-stop – we added additional capacity to the brewery earlier in the year and right now we’re in the middle of upgrading our brewhouse to make sure we can meet demand for our draught beer. It’s still not enough though. People want to be able to buy our beer to take home and cans will finally allow us to do that.”
Some people see the choice of cans over bottles as an unusual one but Gráinne explains why Metalman Brewing chose this route: “A can offers us a package which seals our beer perfectly, completely excluding light and oxygen – all those things that can make a beer taste bad. It’s the best choice for us and cans are so much easier to transport and recycle”.
Canned craft beer has been on a noticeable growing curve among microbreweries in the US for almost a decade now, with breweries like Oskar Blues, Sierra Nevada and Brooklyn Brewery electing to use cans for their beer.
More recently UK craft brewers like Brew Dog and Camden Town have followed suit.
“The popularity of canned craft beer is massive and continuing to grow at a rapid pace,” agreed Paul Maher of craft beer specialist distributor Fourcorners, “Many craft beer consumers favour it because they know they’re getting a fresh, superb-tasting beer every time they crack open that can. We’re looking forward to getting these canned craft beers from Metalman Brewing into the huge number of retail outlets that have been seeking packaged Metalman beers for the past few years.”
Metalman Brewing won’t yet state which beers it’ll be releasing in canned format but it expects to see them on the shelf from early 2015 onwards.
