Canned Beer Turns 75

livescience ^ | 23 January 2010 | Heather Whipps

[JoeProBono]

Be sure to crack open a cold one on Jan. 24, the day canned beer celebrates its 75th birthday.

New Jersey's Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company churned out the world's first beer can in 1935, stocking select shelves in Richmond, Va., as a market test. The experiment took off and American drinkers haven't looked back since, nowadays choosing cans over bottles for the majority of the 22 gallons of beer they each drink per year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Canned brewskies may have only hit shelves in 1935, but the drink's history goes back much further — at least 6,000 years, in fact, to ancient Iraq.

Though it is impossible to tell just how many important decisions in world history were lubricated by a pint or two, the potent potable has played a role in at least a few milestone events, from the plagues of medieval Europe to the founding of the United States.

Who drank the first fermented wheat?

Beer is nearly as old as civilization itself, historians believe, as the accidental fermentation of wheat or barley — which produces a rudimentary beer — almost certainly occurred soon after the advent of crop agriculture (the question becoming then who was the first to volunteer to drink a murky pool of wheat water?).

[JoeProBono]

[colorado tanker]

Thanks for your story. I remember fondly hanging out in the dad’s garages with the guys while they took a break and quaffed beers and swapped stories. PBR was one of the brands and all had to be opened with “church keys.”