There are a few breweries around here doing cans, but most are only doing a style or two. I can only think of one or two that seem to have everything in cans.
I do have a local brewery that instead of doing growlers actually cans a 32oz beer for you on the spot. The can is good for about 7-10 days.
If the canning line is good quality then supposedly there is less chance of oxidation and obviously it won’t get light struck. However there are bunch of breweries in the UK using low quality canning lines and I have lost count of the number of apparently good beers that I have had in a can and found them to be oxidised. It’s infuriating, and really puts me off trying a number of breweries output.
I like cans for portability, I like bottles for fancy beers. Just more aesthetically pleasing. A 12% stout in a can? Wtf. Still was a great beer though.
They are still putting the Tempus project stuff in bottle. Probably just the super limited run things that they’ll bottle from now on I expect.
I don’t pay much attention now to cans or bottles. While most of the higher end stuff (like, ten bucks for a 12oz bottle, and the pricier large beers) is in glass, usually, there’s a ton of great craft beer, including a lot of the local stuff, in cans. Speedway Stout can be had in a pint can, and it’s fabulous, as is the Ten Fiddy stovepipe, for instance. The truly expensive stuff like Eclipse though is always in a fancy schmanzy bottle.
Nearly every craft brewer (dozens of them) here in Ohio is doing nothing but cans. Canning lines are cheaper to buy and operate and mass quantities of cans are easier to handle.
Looked today at my local store. They don’t have the 75 and I can’t remember ever seeing it there. I’m not worried about missing it, though. If your description is accurate it would be somewhere halfway between my favorite beer and a beer I don’t especially like - which doesn’t sound particularly appealing.
I can’t see Brewdog cracking America in any way other than force of will and shouting a lot. It certainly won’t be down to their very average core beers.
Having seen the Brew Dogs on TV I would probably try some of their beer if it were available to me. The only beer of theirs I have seen is one specialty beer in a bomber.
My quest to taste this Nitro Milk Stout continues after coming closer than ever yesterday.
The first time was at a stag do/bachelor party about a year ago but I drank so much the previous night I couldn’t face any more alcohol.
The second time was at a (fantastic) ale festival a few months ago but they didn’t shift enough of the existing kegs to rotate it in.
The third time over the weekend I spent several hours in a boardgaming cafe called Thirsty Meeples in Oxford (which is an amazing place btw, I’m going to make a point of going there every time I’m in Oxford, henceforth) and my girlfriend told me there was a milk stout on the menu…
That’s okay, since it doesn’t look like it was the Nitro version anyway (Left Hand has a regular Milk Stout and a Nitro Milk Stout, and they are reasonably different beasts).
Nitro version = small bubbles, creamy mouthfeel, like Guinness in mouthfeel, head, and drinking (but not taste)
CO2 version = bigger bubbles, normal beer mouthfeel, more standard ale tasting
They are both good, but in different ways. I’ve had a number of beers on nitro, some work really well for it, and some do not.Left Hand is quite good on nitro. So is a local we have here, Duck Rabbit Milk Stout.
Ahh, okay, now I’m wondering about the other two times I could have had ‘it’! So… what exactly is nitro then? It’s the first I’ve heard of it as a variant.
@gendal covered it. It’s the inclusion of nitrogen into the gas mix put into the beer in addition to carbon dioxide. Here it’s called, “beer gas,” but I don’t know if that term is popular everywhere. The nitrogen percentage varies, but I’ve seen something like 65-75% nitrogen is normal. Within beer ingredients, it roughly highlights malts, but mutes hops. So like @moss_icon mentioned, IPA’s on nitro are a real mixed bag. But darker beers, with more of a malt mix, seem to highlight when on nitro. It surprisingly also makes the underlying beer taste a tad flatter, because nitrogen doesn’t absorb into the water as much as carbon dioxide does.
There are two things important in a nitro, both the gas used in the beer, but also the spout they are poured out of. That spout is usually special, it has a small plate that restricts the flow into the glass. This causes the nitrogen to agitate going into the glass and it why when you get a Guinness on tap it seems to cascade in the glass as it bubbles. You can get nitro beers in a can and bottle, they aren’t 100% the same, but it’s close. You usually don’t get that cascading pour effect though.
All of this knowledge was passed to me via by homebrewing buddy, the guru of beer, but who passes these tidbits to me during drinking sessions, like an inebriated Obi-Wan Kenobi. “Only a Budweiser drinker deals in absolutes.”