the beer tinny

Meaning taken from Wikipedia

The slang or colloquial term tinnie or tinny has a variety of meanings, generally derived from some association with the metal tin, or aluminium foil which has a loose allusion to tin.

Another variant of "tinny"/"tinnie" is as a slang term for a can of beer, commonly used in Australia, New Zealand and some parts of the UK.

Beer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize (corn), and rice are widely used. Most beer is flavoured with hops, which add bitterness and act as a natural preservative, though other flavourings such as herbs or fruit may occasionally be included.

Beer forms part of the culture of beer-drinking nations and is associated with social traditions such as beer festivals, as well as a rich pub culture involving activities like pub crawling and pub games such as bar billiards.

Many beers are sold in cans, though there is considerable variation in the proportion between different countries. In Sweden in 2001, 63.9% of beer was sold in cans. People either drink from the can or pour the beer into a glass. Cans protect the beer from light (thereby preventing "skunked" beer) and have a seal less prone to leaking over time than bottles. Cans were initially viewed as a technological breakthrough for maintaining the quality of a beer, then became commonly associated with less expensive, mass-produced beers, even though the quality of storage in cans is much like bottles.
 

THE HISTORY OF THE CAN

This feature originally appeared in the December 12th 1985 issue of the trade magazine OFF LICENCE NEWS

IN DECEMBER 1935, a small Welsh brewery started to sell its beer in a new type of container. Many were sceptical about this new form of packaging, claiming that it was a novelty and would never be an alternative to the bottle.

But this month the British beer can is 50 years old.

The origins of the beer can can be traced back to 1909, when a brewery in the USA approached American Can Co to see if it could supply cans for the packaging of beer. It could not, its attempts to produce a can were unsuccessful.

In 1931, anticipating the end of Prohibition, American Can again began to experiment with canned beer. Most cans at that time only needed to withstand a pressure of 2535 lb per square inch, but beer needed a container that would withstand in excess of 80 Ib per square inch, otherwise there would be a major problem with cans bursting along the welded seam.

After two years of research, American Can had overcome the problems of pressure and had developed a coating for the inside of the can to stop the beer reacting with the tinplate. The company now had to sell the idea to the breweries.

This was not easy, the big breweries did not want to risk their reputations on such a radical innovation.

One of the smaller breweries that American Can approached was the Gottfried Krueger Brewery of Newark, New Jersey.

After 13 years of Prohibition and the death in 1926 of Gottfried Krueger, the brewery’s founder, the family business was not in good shape.

As the can company would install the canning equipment for free and the brewery would only pay for it if the venture was a success, Krueger had nothing to lose.

A test run of 2,000 cans was produced in 1933 and these were sampled by regular Krueger drinkers. The results were positive, 91 per cent of them liked the can. It was not until Jan 24, 1935, that the first beer cans went on sale to the general public when Krueger’s Finest Beer went on sale in Richmond, Virginia.

By the end of 1935, no less than 37 US breweries were producing canned beer.

In Britain, Metal Box Co had seen the developments across the Atlantic and began looking for a British brewery that would be willing to package its beer in cans. Unfortunately, many of the breweries did not believe that canned beer was a viable proposition.

And so it was left to the small, independent Felinfoel Brewery Co of Llanelli, Wales, to become the first brewery outside of the USA to sell its beer in a can. The cans, supplied by Metal Box, were “conetops,” which looked similar to a can of metal polish and were sealed with a crown cork, the same as a glass bottle. Two sizes were produced, 10oz for the domestic market and 12oz for export.

Felinfoel’s Pale Ale went on sale in December 1936, and by March of the following year the experiment was deemed a success.

By October 1937, some 23 breweries were producing over 40 different brands of canned beer! Then, in 1939, the advance of the beer can was brought to an abrupt halt by the outbreak of the war. With, it seems, one exception, all canning for the domestic market was stopped and the only cans filled were for the troops.

More than 60 countries around the world now produce canned beer in every conceivable shape and size, from 135ml through to 5 litres.

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