The "official" birthday of the beer can is January 24, 1935. That's the day cans of Krueger's Finest Beer and Krueger's Cream Ale first went on sale in Richmond, VA. But the beer can really made its debut some 14 months earlier - just before the repeal of Prohibition. American Can Company had engineered a workable beer can. All that was needed was a brewer willing to take the pioneering plunge. The Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company of Newark, NJ signed on the dotted line in November 1933. By the end of that month, American had installed a temporary canning line and delivered 2,000 Krueger's Special Beer cans, which were promptly filled with 3.2% Krueger beer - the highest alcohol content allowed at the time. Krueger's Special Beer thus became the world's first beer can. The 2,000 cans of beer were given to faithful Krueger drinkers; 91% gave it thumbs up, and 85% said it tasted more like draft than bottled beer. Reassured by this successful test, Krueger gave canning the green light, and history was made. A photo of two Krueger Special cans appeared in the December 28, 1933 issue of Brewer's News, but no current example has been positively verified to exist. The can has seen several stages of evolution since that time. The major distinct types are outlined below. Note that there are several different types within each major category (low profile, high profile, j-spout, crowntainer and quart cone tops for instance).

Flat Top Style

The name is self-explanatory. This steel can style, first marketed by the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company in January 1935, and nationally by Pabst in June of the same year, was in use up until about 1970. It's hard to imagine, in this day of paper-thin aluminum containers, that the first flat-top cans weighed in at nearly four ounces. No wonder that the device designed to open them, the indispensable tool we call the churchkey, was originally 5 1/2" long, 3/4" wide and 1/8" thick!

Cone Top Style

Cone-top cans, so named because of their funnel-like tops, entered the picture in September 1935, when the G. Heilemann Brewing Company of La Crosse, WI first marketed them. Schlitz was the first national brewer to follow suit. This was a style that appealed to smaller brewers because cone-top cans could be filled on existing bottling lines. By 1960, though, the big nationals had driven many of those smaller brewers out of business and the cone-top era came to an end.

There are four basic types of cone-top cans. Low Profile, High Profile and J-spout cans are all three-piece cans. The difference is mostly in the height of the cone or spout. The fourth type, the Crowntainer, has a one-piece body attached to a concave bottom.

Pull Tab or Tab Top Style

The change that revolutionized the beer can came in March 1963 when the Pittsburgh Brewing Company introduced its flagship Iron City Beer in self-opening cans. You put your finger into the ring and yanked and bingo, the can was open! Schlitz took what it called the "Pop Top" national, and by 1965, some 75% of all cans produced had an easy-open device. Pull tabs were around for a little over 10 years, when they began to be replaced by the stay tab.

Stay Tab Style

Pull tabs were a beer drinker's dream and an environmental disaster. Pets and wildlife died from ingesting them - as did more than a few people who dropped them into a can of beer and then accidentally choked on them. They wound up on beaches, where children cut their feet on them. They littered roadsides and damaged garbage disposals. Stay tabs were the answer. Introduced in 1975 by the Falls City Brewing Company of Louisville, KY, they stayed connected to the can. Today, virtually all carbonated beverages are marketed in cans with stay tabs.

Enjoy the 85 Years of Canned Beer Presented by the BCCA