Why Bottles?

What kind of luddite decides to package beer in bottles in this day and age? Bottles are heavier, they take up more space, they don’t store as well, they break if you drop them, everybody else uses cans, etc. In spite of all of the negatives, there are many positives to using the venerable bottle.

First and foremost, they allow us to naturally carbonate our beers. Natural carbonation is caused by adding a small amount of some kind of sugar to the beer before it is sealed in the bottle. The residual yeast in the beer then consumes those sugars and creates a minuscule amount of additional alcohol and carbon dioxide. Because the bottle is sealed, the CO2 ends up dissolved in the beer which creates the bubbles you see and feel when you open your beverage. From the consumer point of view, this also minimizes the possibility of dissolved oxygen in the beer because in order to consume the sugar, the yeast has to pull oxygen from the bottle. Dissolved oxygen in improperly packaged beer can create several nasty off flavors including green apple, vinegar, and cardboard. Using natural carbonation also means that we don’t have to spend money on carbonation equipment and buying carbon dioxide. This has the side benefit of reducing our carbon footprint since we aren’t shipping air.*

Secondly, the production of glass is far less damaging to the environment. The production of aluminum depends upon the open pit mining of bauxite.   Glass is essentially melted sand. It can be recycled and reused easily. While aluminum is recyclable, the industry has been slow to accept recycled aluminum as an appropriate material for can production. Even major companies like Coca Cola and ABInBev, with their massive purchasing power and ability to drive massive change if they chose to do so have shied away from using recycled aluminum in spite of the fact that there are companies producing sheet aluminum with 90% recycled content. Aluminum producers like Novelis have bet big on recycling going so far as selling their bauxite mines and using the proceeds to build massive recycling plants, but most of their product is being diverted not into can production but into automobiles whose producers are looking to reduce the embedded carbon in their product. This leaves the major beverage producers in the unenviable position of seeming less environmentally conscious than car companies.

Thirdly, small scale packaging in cans makes it necessary to label with either plastic wraps or stickers, both of which make the cans much more difficult to recycle than printed cans. The plastic wraps on cans end up either cut off the cans and going into the waste stream or they are burned off, either is undesirable. Paper labels on glass bottles can be soaked in water and scraped off. And if the label is particularly beautiful (like ours), some people might think they are worth displaying.

Ultimately, as a small scale producer who isn’t beholden to the vagaries of supermarket shelf space requirements and the demands of distributors, the decision comes down to the factors above and to the simple fact that bottles are just better looking than cans. There is a greater variety of aesthetic possibilities with bottles which goes beyond just a broader range of sizes to encompass an entire pantheon of bottle shapes. And in the end, sitting down to share a bottle of something with friends always sounds better than sitting down to share a can of something.

*This can also be accomplished in kegged beer using spunding valves, which we also do.