Beer, including Ontario craft beers, are shown at a grocery store in Ottawa in this August 2018 photo. Tall cans make up 80 per cent of craft beer sales in the province, according to the LCBO.Anyone walking through the beer aisles of their local liquor shop will be familiar with the scene: rows and rows of local craft beer, swathed in distinctive and often colourful logos and art — all in tall, 473-ml cans.
Haydon Dewes, co-founder of Cabin Brewing Company in Calgary, says the cost of a tall can versus a short can is "negligible," at least in terms of the additional aluminum required to produce it. Dewes says the four-pack for tall cans has become a craft beer standard, because of long-held expectations on how much packs of beer costs.
Tall cans are also popular among many non-craft beer brands, the LCBO noted, accounting for 60 per cent of sales in that category. The outlier of that is tall cans, which sell very well in convenience stores. He said they also allow people to have just one beer and feel satisfied.Craft beer people are kind of like bird watchers; they just want it all. They want to be able to tick off as many as they possibly can. According to Dewes, selling in singles also allows beer connoisseurs to sample several varieties in one go.
According to Steinman, it sparked "a tremendous amount of buzz" among "craft geek cognoscenti" consumers.