The Beer Can

In the late 1920s Pabst and Anheuser-Busch, sensing the eventual end to Prohibition, asked American Can to start working on the beer can again. By the early 1930s American Can had developed a can strong enough to withstand the pressures of packaged beer. They finally solved the problem of lining the can with a moldable plastic called Vinylite. Initial tests with Pabst beer were positive but the big brewers wouldn’t commit until the can had been tested in a real market.

The Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company in Newark, New Jersey had suffered like most regional breweries during prohibition. American Can’s offer to build a canning line and to pay for the initial test batches convinced Krueger to submit their beer to the can test. In June of 1934 four cans of beer each were delivered to one thousand homes in the Richmond, Virginia area. They were delivered with a questionnaire and the results were better than anyone expected. By January 1935 Krueger’s canned beer was being sold throughout the city.

And so the beer can was born. But the cheaper cans presented an unexpected challenge, especially for smaller breweries, in that they required a completely new packaging line. The problem was solved with bottle shaped, called cone top, cans that could be sealed with crown caps just like bottles. This provided the smaller breweries with a can that they could run through their old bottling lines. They could enjoy the cost effectiveness of the cans without having to retool their packaging lines. As breweries went out of business or upgraded their equipment the cone top cans slowly disappeared and by 1960 were gone entirely.

In 1963 the first pull tab beer cans appeared on the market. Pittsburgh Brewing Company used the tabs on their iconic Iron City Beer and consumers loved them. But these easily removable strips of metal caused a whole new set of problems. Litterbugs seemed determined to scatter the sharp metal tabs everywhere. Pets and wild animals often choked on them and they cut swimmers’ feet at the beach. In 1975, the first fixed or stay tab beer can was introduced by Falls City Brewing Company of Louisville, KY. The design caught on has remained relatively unchanged since.