On the upside, the beer lasts longer. That’s not something that I feel should be easily dismissed, alongside the benefits of reduced weight for easier shipping, and less fuel being used to get product to market.
The downside is that plastics just aren’t as renewable as metal is. While the company claims that these new kegs are recyclable, I can’t help but feel dubious.
Still, it’s a pretty interesting innovation and if the net benefit is positive, then that’s pretty cool.
Just another reason to love science: They’ve discovered that adding hops to the beer after fermentation is apparently complete, can lead to some further fermentation process!
This news is more interesting, admittedly, for brewers and homebrewers (like myself) than it might be for the lay person but as a homebrewer, I might be able to use this information to plan how my beer might turn out or what might result because I’ve added hops to the beer in secondary.
Carlsberg has replaced the plastic rings that keep cans together with glue. Which is both really neat and the kind of problem that a large brewery could just throw money at to solve, as I mentioned in last week’s post.
But it’s a cool way to solve that pollution problem and as cans become more and more prominent as a vehicle to deliver beer, this is a clever way to solve the problem. Props were due: this is a good thing and we need more of these kinds of good things.
Of the things I thought I’d ever have to worry about, exploding beer cans is not one of them.
But the linked article provides an interesting overview of the subject and is a reminder that with all the innovation that’s coming through the brewing industry, caution is also warranted. Not just because of off flavors, but because of what I can only think of as unforeseen consequences.
Consumers just do not have a reference for beer exploding, even if there are warnings on the can. That’s a whole new pickle to try and solve-and I have to ask: Is it even worth trying to retrain customers like this?
They’ve found new ways to uncover evidence of brewing in Mesopotamia.
Longtime readers of the blog know that I have a thing for science and the use of this science to see how people made beer so long ago is absolutely fascinating to me.
