canned beer and hop aroma?

[yap]

Just wanted to throw this out there to see if anyone else feels the same...

Has anyone noticed that it seems the hop aroma in a canned beer seems to be significantly less than the equivalent bottled or draft version of the same beer?

I have not yet conducted a "scientific" study into the issue, but I and a few of my friends have noticed that it seems there is a reduced amount of hop aroma in a canned IPA as compared to a bottled IPA....

Again, this is just general observation but I wanted to throw it out there and see if I am alone in this thinking or not...

[einhorn]

Just the opposite came up in a discussion with a customer today. We were talking about the new Sierra Nevada Pale in cans and he thought they were much more aromatic than the bottles.

Probably the same as the age-old discussion of cans vs. bottles vs. draft. Lots of factors which will affect this as you know, including handling, age, temperature and simple subjectivity.

[yap]

Just the opposite came up in a discussion with a customer today. We were talking about the new Sierra Nevada Pale in cans and he thought they were much more aromatic than the bottles.

Probably the same as the age-old discussion of cans vs. bottles vs. draft. Lots of factors which will affect this as you know, including handling, age, temperature and simple subjectivity.

SN cans just came into my area. I was going to do a side by side with it and a bottle for comparison. I know there are a lot of other factors (storage etc), thus my non-scientific testing so far. I have had "fresh" cans vs "fresh" bottles and still noticed the difference, just not side by side, but again I haven't conducted a thorough analysis...

[jvandenbrink]

I package my IPA in 22 ounce bottles and in 12 ounce cans. I've noticed the opposite of what are experiencing. Obviously draft is the best, followed fairly closely by a can and then there is a steep drop off in aroma in a bottle.

again, not empirical. Just observations by my team and I.

[Natrat]

Yup, agreed. Aroma is BETTER from the can. Air pickups are lower in the can. Has anyone compared the volume of headspace in a can to the volume in a comparable bottle?

Nat

[schmogger]

I also bottle and can my IPA and I agree with everyone else about cans being better for aroma. Yap try getting a few people together and do a blind tasting between Sierra's Pale in cans and bottles and also try the same with the Torpedo. Please post your results if you decide to do this experiment.

[BrewinLou]

I would think this is dependent on a great many factors. The biggest being the quality of the fillers. I doubt you are comparing apples to apples when it comes to can filler versus bottle filler. Are they both double pre evac? Single seamer/ capper? Lots of variables...

[KWLSD]

Yup, agreed. Aroma is BETTER from the can. Air pickups are lower in the can. Has anyone compared the volume of headspace in a can to the volume in a comparable bottle? Nat

Headspace is typically around 5% of total volume, so a 500ml can will have roughly 25ml headspace and a 330ml bottle will have ~15ml headspace.

The volatiles that come out of solution into the headspace will - like CO2, O2, etc. - be related to the concentration in the beer and the equilibrated partial pressure they exert once in the headspace; the latter, in turn, will be a function of the proportion of headspace to package volume.

In other words headspace itself will have no effect when bottles and cans are compared like-for-like. However, there are other things to consider...

- Cans are less prone to becoming lightstruck;
- The two packages pour differently which, as the aroma compounds are easily volatilised, may result in different levels of these aromatics;
- There may be some connection to temperature. The glass in a bottle is much thicker than the aluminium of a can and is a better insulator. Any test would need the two to be cooled to exactly the same temperature thoughout to be valid.

[yap]

One point that I forgot to mention is that *most* of the time I have noticed this was in canned beers from smaller breweries. I can't say for sure but I assume most were using a small manual cask system or similar. I have wondered if the open time and surface area from fill to seam has some affect, but of course can't say for sure.

I am going to try the Sierra Nevada comparison. I figure if they can't do it right no one can!

[Woolsocks]

I've heard that crown liners can absorb hop aroma and that some types of them are worse than others, so it might depend partly on the crowns used for the bottling of hoppy beer.