Beer Can Blog

If you have a mild interest in beer can collecting and haven't yet begun, now might be a good time to start, as more and more microbreweries are getting into producing cans. Or if you have been inactive, but seek to get back into it "for fun", "micro cans" can take you back to where most of us began.

From the website "Craft Cans", as of today, their database consists of 283 cans from 109 different breweries. With the new wave of microbrewery cans added to the pre-microbrewery cans", beer cans have been produced in 48 of the 50 states, with Mississippi and Arkansas being the only two without "native" cans.

Today's microbreweries are taking the place of (and in some cases, resurrecting the names of) the remaining regional and local breweries that were slipping away in the mid-1970s, when I and many other "senior collectors" began. One way we built our early collections (when buying and selling were frowned upon by the B.C.C.A.) was to buy local and regional brands and trade them with other collectors in other parts of the country.

In the Atlanta area - at the time when I began - most of the tradeable cans were regionals that drifted in from time to time. The numerous G. Heileman brands, National Brewing Co. (Regal), Duncan Brewing Co. (Auburndale, FL), sometimes Pearl Brewing Co. and Pittsburgh Brewing Co. brands would sometimes grace our store shelves and supplant our trade stocks. Now all of those are gone (or are owned/contract-brewed by someone else), but they have been replaced by microbreweries.

Starting a collection from scratch is a slow process, but it is how you gradually build the knowledge that makes you a true collector. Simply buying a collection doesn't really make you a collector, in and of itself. You have to have a knowledge of the histories of the breweries and cans to feel a part of the "fine madness" of our hobby.

[As I have to get back to work, I will write more later, but consider this...all of the currently-available "micro cans" are NOT nationally distributed, so a collector somewhere else needs them. Some of these micro breweries will not survive or else they may decide that maintaining canning and bottling lines does not work for them, so the cans may be a "one shot deal" - worth putting a few aside for future trading.]

Labels: Beer Can Collecting, Craft Brewery Cans