Boulevard in aluminum: step forward or backward?

Yesterday Boulevard Brewing Co. announced it was going to start selling Boulevard Wheat in aluminum cans very soon. It used to be rare for microbreweries such as Boulevard to venture into the world of aluminum. Similar-sized breweries such as Sierra Nevada and O’Dell’s have yet to turn to aluminum. It was only last year that Colorado’s New Belgium started canning its most popular seller Fat Tire.

At the time, New Belgium said the reason for the cans was to be more versatile — for the company, the venues where its beer was sold, and the customers who can take canned beer more places. You’re not putting bottles in your backpack for a long hike. But a couple of big cans? Hell, yes!

Boulevard has similar motives if a different approach: an aluminum bottle with a twist-off cap. If you’ve ever been to a sports game and seen vendors selling bright-blue aluminum Bud Light bottles, it’s the same idea. Boulevard has a movie with a 360-degree view of the bottle on its Web site.

Another positive with aluminum is that it doesn’t allow light in. Ask any homebrewer: The number one enemy of beer is sunlight. It breaks down the beer and causes a skunky flavor. That problem is gone with aluminum, only to be replaced by a metallic flavor. It’s not as bad as it used to be, but purists still agree there’s definitely a difference in taste.

The only worry I have about the wheat is bottle conditioning. Like many craft brewers, Boulevard says it adds “a small amount of yeast to the beer just before bottling…. This secondary fermentation consumes much of the residual oxygen,

greatly enhancing the stability and longevity of the beer, and

producing a remarkable and otherwise unattainable depth of flavor.” Will the aluminum affect this process and therefore the taste? I don’t know, but we’ll all find out soon enough.