Cans vs Bottles

BeerCanNews.com taste test held at the Great British Beer Festival, 07-08-2004

Why I did this tasting:
A Czech beer tasting at the GBBF Bieres sans Frontieres bar on Wednesday August 4th, 2004, included a canned beer, Gambrinus. This brought about resentment and ridicule of canned beers from some CAMRA members. Being a can collector and having sampled literally thousands of canned beers (both good and bad) over the years, I thought it might be interesting to do a blind tasting of several canned and bottled beers with a number of CAMRA members and beer experts.

How the tasting was done:
As this tasting was arranged at short notice I was unable to get the same beer in both cans and bottles, that tasting will have to wait until next year. Identical glasses were numbered 1 through 9 and the beers were randomly poured. Participants were asked to taste each beer in any order they wished and to record on a grid with a "C" or "B" what they thought was the original container for the beer.

The beers (percentage alcohol given by volume):
1) Harboe Paske Bryg (5.9%), Denmark - Can
2) Piast Beer (5.7%), Poland - Bottle
3) Land Brauerei Echigo-Brau Premium Beer (5.0%), Japan - Can
4) Kirin Ichiban Dark (5.5%), Japan - Can
5) Castle Lager (5.0%), South Africa - Bottle
6) Rodenbach Klassiek 5.0%), Belgium - Can
7) Gold Label Very Strong Special Beer (9.5%), UK - Can
8) Zywiec Beer (5.7%), Poland - Bottle
9) Ginga Kogen Galaxy Express (for JR West Railway Co)(5.0%), Japan - Can

Why these beers?
As far as the cans are concerned, they were some of the more interesting I still had full, the bottles were chosen from two local stores and I chose "mass produced" brands for a reason, more on that later.

The Participants:
Jasper and Tom from the Oxford Bottled Beer Database
Lorenzo Dabove, Italian Beer Expert
Ian Garrett - co-ordinator of Bieres Sans Frontieres at GBBF
Derek Moore, brewer - Kelburn Brewery
Tom Perera - Knickerbocker's Bier Tours
Dave Sanders, brewer - Elland Brewery
Hugh Shipman, Beer Distributor
Jos Brouwer - PINT Netherlands
Fred Waltman - FranconiaBeerGuide.com
Andy Benson, Peter Alexander, Richard and James - all manning the BSF bars.

The results:
I'm not going to embarrass any of the participants by giving individual scores, but the average failure rate was 62.4%.

1) Harboe Paske Bryg. 8 out of 14 participants (57%) wrongly identified that as a bottled beer.
2) Piast Beer. 9 out of 14 participants (64%) wrongly identified this as a canned beer.
3) Land Brauerei Echigo-Brau Premium Beer. 8 out of 14 participants (57%) wrongly identified this as a bottled beer.
4) Kirin Ichiban Dark. 5 out of 14 participants (36%) wrongly identified this as a bottled beer.
5) Castle Lager. 9 out of 14 participants (64%) wrongly identified this as a canned beer.
6) Rodenbach Klassiek. 11 out of 14 participants (78%) wrongly identified this as a bottled beer.
7) Gold Label Very Strong Special Beer. 10 out of 14 participants (71%) wrongly identified this as a bottled beer.
8) Zywiec Beer. 11 out of 14 participants (78%) wrongly identified this as a canned beer.
9) Ginga Kogen Galaxy Express. 7 out of 14 participants (50%) wrongly identified this as a bottled beer.

Conclusion:
It would seem from the results that mass produced beers (from taste alone, as the brands were not revealed to participants until after the tasting) were perceived to come from a can, even if they were actually from a bottle and that the better quality or more unusual canned beers were perceived as bottled beers, this can be clearly seen in the results for Zywiec and Rodenbach. A number of participants stated that they were just guessing and really could not tell if the beer came from a can or bottle on taste alone. It can be concluded that canned beer is not inferior to bottled beer and that people are prejudiced against canned beer because they perceive this form of packaging to be associated with mass produced beers.