In the beer business, quality and convenience are often at odds with one another. It's universally accepted that the best-tasting beer is draft beer--assuming your draft lines are clean and everyting is in good working order. But a full keg of beer weighs 160 pounds, and that's nothing you'd want to lug to the beach. Your next best bet is beer in bottles, which work great in most scenarios, but still aren't perfect. Bottles are kind of heavy, they break if you drop them, they can be used as deadly weapons, and are often prohibited from places like swimming pools and airplanes for these reasons. So until the beer world makes my dreams come true and starts putting their suds into Tetra Pak-style boxes like my kid's apple juice, that leaves us with cans. I've never had a problem with cans, except that not enough good beers actually come in cans. There are scientific reasons for this, something to do with the beer-to-air ratio, but it's probably a consumer perception issue more than anything. Fortunately, that's changing. Companies like Brooklyn's Sixpoint brewery are putting some of their beers in snazzy, Red Bull-style cans. But Sam Adams is keeping it real by continuing to use the can style we're all familiar with. They've just made a couple tiny tweaks that make a big difference. Pick up a Sam Can of Sam Adams Boston Lager and you'll see what I mean.
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