Craft brewery’s microcanned beers now in Alaska, Oregon, and San Francisco/Oakland area of California
(Lyons, Colorado) — The acclaimed canned beers from Oskar Blues Brewery — Dale’s Pale Ale, Old Chub Scottish Style Ale and Gordon — are now on store shelves in Alaska, Oregon, and the San Francisco/Oakland areas of California.
“These new markets are packed with people who love great beer and time outdoors,” says Oskar Blues founder Dale Katechis. “Many of these people also appreciate the enviro bennies of aluminum cans, so we think they’ll like our luscious, portable, easily recycled canned beers.”
Odom Corporation is handling Oskar Blues beers in Alaska. “People here,” says Odom’s John Burket, “love to enjoy a great beer after a day of fishing, hiking and other outdoor activities. Oskar Blues’ canned beers are a perfect fit for Alaska.”
“Most of Alaska doesn’t have roads.” Burket adds, “so everything has to be barged or air freighted in and it gets expensive. Canned beer is dramatically cheaper to ship than bottles, and much easier to recycle.”
In Oregon, the beers are being carried by Maletis, in conjunction with Odom. Jerome Chicvara heads up the craft beer effort for Maletis. “They’ve made a canned beer believer out of me,” Chicvara says of Oskar Blues beers. “The beers have big, bold flavors and taste as fresh as can be. My customers have been wowed by them.”
Oskar Blues beers are also now available in the San Francisco Bay Area. Oskar Blues beers will be featured in a large number of events in the upcoming SF Beer Week, February 6-15. The event showcases the rich craft beer scene of the San Francisco and Oakland areas. Get details at www.sfbeerweek.org .
In November of 2002, tiny Oskar Blues Brewery launched its “Canned Beer Apocalypse” and became the first US craft brewer to brew and can its own beer. The brewery began hand-canning its hoppy Dale’s Pale Ale on a table-top machine that sealed one can at a time.
“We thought the idea of our big, hoppy pale ale in a can was hilarious,” Katechis recalls, “and it made our beer more portable for our fans who have fun outdoors.” Katechis soon discovered other benefits to cans. “Cans deliver the freshest beer possible by fully protecting it from light and oxygen. They’re good for beer.”
The modern-day aluminum can is lined with a water-based coating so beer and the can never touch. “It’s a myth that cans impart metallic flavors,” Katechis says.
Cans also have many environmental benefits. ”They‘re the most recycled beverage container and they’re infinitely recyclable,” Katechis says. “Because of their light weight, cans are less fuel-consuming to ship and allow us to shrink our carbon footprint for out-of-state beer by about 40%.”
The company’s assertive-but-elegant canned beers have helped Oskar Blues achieve some of the craft beer industry’s biggest growth. Prior to canning, Oskar Blues produced 700 barrels of beer. In 2008 it produced 19,500 barrels, up from 12,409 in 2007.
The company’s flagship, Dale’s Pale Ale, is a robust American pale ale with 6.5% ABV and 65 International Bittering Units. Its honors include Top American Pale Ale from the New York Times, Top Colorado-Brewed Beer from the Rocky Mountain News, and World’s Best Canned Beer from Details.
Old Chub Scottish Style Ale is a semi-sweet Scotch strong ale (8% ABV) brewed with ridiculous amounts of malts. Old Chub has won rave reviews from the Wall Street Journal, Celebrator Beer News, Alestreet News and consumer reviewers at Beeradvocate.com and Ratebeer.com.
Gordon (8.7% ABV, 65 IBUs) is a double/imperial red ale made with six malts, three hops, and a massive dry-hop addition. It is brewed in honor of Gordon Knight, a Colorado craft beer pioneer who died fighting a wild fire outside of Lyons in 2002. It has earned glowing reviews and a bronze medal in the 2008 World Beer Cup.
Oskar Blues brews and packages its beers in a new 35,000-square-feet brewery in Longmont, Colorado, just east of Lyons. The beers are available in 24 states.
For more information visit http://www.oskarblues.com/.