First Beer In A Can

Some people like beer in a can….others insist on a bottle, some like it on tap.  No matter how you drink it or what brand you like, beer is a $20-billion industry in the United States alone.  But beer in cans was probably the biggest factor in the closing of a lot of local breweries. 

Buffalo at one time had dozens of breweries all over the city.  But when they figured out how to put it in a can and maintain freshness – it made it easier for the big companies to transport it all over the country.  They were easier to stack than bottles, they held up better than glass and they were easier to chill. 

The first company to experiment with beer in a can was the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company.  91 percent of the beer drinkers in Richmond, Virginia liked it and that was enough for the company to give the go ahead for full-scale production. 

Within three months 80 percent of beer distributors in the country were stocking Krueger’s canned beer.  That caught the attention of the “big three” brewers – Anheuser-Busch, Pabst and Schlitz.  It wasn’t long before they were producing canned beer and by the end of the first year over 200 million cans had been sold.

Today is the day in 1935 the Gottfried Krueger Company put out its first can of beer.