Profile America: Canned Beer Appreciation Day

Canned Beer_Krueger BeerCANNED BEER

An innovation in product packaging — and a staple of TV advertising — had is its 81st anniversary last Sunday: Beer Can Appreciation Day. The first canned beer went on sale on January 24, 1935 as a marketing test in Richmond, Virginia, by the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company of Newark, New Jersey. Experiments with putting beer in cans had taken place as early as 1909 but the technology of the time couldn’t stop the beer from interacting negatively with the metal of the can. Prohibition delayed further development. By the late 1960s, canned beer sales exceeded that for bottled beer. There are more than 1,560 breweries in the U.S., employing up to 31,000 people in a nearly $32 billion per year craft.

 

 

Sources: Kane’s Famous First Facts

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