Can or bottle.

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Can or bottle

  • I can tell the difference so do not drink canned beer.

  • I cannot tell the difference so buy both.


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Overall both these studies show that bottled beer really does taste different and is preferred - providing you can see it came from a bottle. That perception in taste appears lost if you don't see or know it came from a bottle. Importantly that doesn't mean it's wrong that beer tastes better from a bottle, since the experience of taste is more than the objective liquid consumed. It does of course mean that you can argue either way in this thread and be equally correct 😄.
This actually does make a lot of sense, my first thoughts when it comes to canned beers is four packs of cheap larger, although with more and more of the more up market breweries using cans I do wonder if this would start to shift.
 
Just having a Grolsch in a can. No doubt they have changed the recipe since I last had it but it's a fresh malty bready lager and nothing like the last time I had it in a bottle. I am adamant that green and clear bottles knacker beer. I bottle mine in clear PET but they're always kept away from sunlight.
 
Back in the '70s when my beer consumption first accelerated I could definitely tast the difference between canned and bottled beer. However I think can linings have improved hugely since then and today I can't tell the difference.
I always poor my beer into a glass to ensure that it is properly aerated to maximise its flavour release.
There is also the question of sediment. Easy to see in a bottle and to keep out of the glass, but with hazy beers nowadays impossible to see in a can where it not easy to keep out of the glass. But perhaps you shouldn't. I tend to swill the last 1/3 of a hazy can to avoid a curtain of sediment drifting through my beer.
 
I don't often buy canned beer, but that is not because of any conscious prejudice against cans. However, back in the summer I bought a pack of Proper Job in cans for reasons of convenience. I did not do a side-by-side test but I could tell the difference immediately, and I didn't like it very much. It tasted wishy-washy, and had much less body than the bottled version.
An earlier poster mentioned speaking to the brewery, and being told that they believed that the canned beer tastes more like the cask version. I've enjoyed hand pumped Proper Job many times when in SW England, and believe me they are not in the same league 👎
 
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