Projo Beer Blog

August 2005 Archives

Wall Street Journal (Can It): "To find out whether tasty beer can come from a pedestrian can, we held a blind tasting -- and found an interesting answer." The story is free today.

These are craft beers, canned by their brewers so they can go where glass is unwelcome -- especially golf courses.

The tasting:

We assembled in The Wall Street Journal's downtown Manhattan offices, and I poured the beer out of sight, presenting it in a proper beer glass and then pouring samples for the panel. I provided only spare information: I would pour the beers by style, starting with lagers and ending with dark ales, and every style would include a mix of cans and bottles. I told the panel if they thought strongly that a beer was canned, they should say so. I asked them to rate all the beers on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest.

The results?

Details are in the accompanying chart, but of the 16 beers tasted, canned brew, in average scores, rated four of the five top spots, though the top-rated beer was Stone's India Pale Ale in a bottle with a rating of 8.8. The canned Scape Goat Pale Ale popped an 8 and Old Chub Scottish Ale a 7.8. Two other canned offerings scored higher than 7.

Just in time for a weekend tasting of your own.

A little cross-pollination here as I share an item I wrote last night for the New England New Media Association listserv.

We asked: "Anyone else doing beverage features or blogs online?" You answered. Check out southcoast247.com, a site targeting younger audiences that is produced by The Standard-Times in New Bedford, Mass. Debbie Opp, Internet sales coordinator for the S-T, pointed out the site's Drinking section, which includes Beer Factor, a column dedicated to the love of beer, and the Beer Bargain of the Week, among other features. Opp says the site is entirely written, edited and produced by part-time "kids" in their 20s. God bless 'em. My favorite piece of the site so far has to be the rotating slogans in the upper left of each page of the site, including "More fun than reading Moby Dick again." Indeed.