At Taber Extrusions, we obviously love aluminum. It’s strong, durable, and you can recycle it for a good value — all wonderful things.

However, for those of at Taber that are also beer connoisseurs, we’re not a fan of aluminum cans. Yes, the silver bullet is usually an indicator of mass-produced macrobrew hell. It’s just not something that aficionados usually associate with quality. However, a number of beer crafters and microbrews are beginning to move away from the traditional bottle and reconsider the benefits of aluminum cans. From Fox News:

Reasons for the shift? Today’s aluminum cans are increasingly designed with wider openings allowing the drinker to experience the beer’s aroma before tasting it (check out more about Sly-Fox “360” cans), and now are coated inside so there is no metallic taste.  Brewers say cans do a better job of preserving the beer by keep out the harmful oxygen and light, and the aluminum cools down the brew much faster than a bottle.

Adrian Perez, high-end brands manager at L&F Distributors in El Paso, Tex. says cans are also convenient.

“A lot of the craft cans started coming about when some of the bottles were not being able to be enjoyed in parks and certain areas where bottles were excluded,” said Perez.

While beer cans have been around for decades, the craft brew industry was turned on its head in 2002 when Oskar Blues Brewery, maker of Dale’s Pale Ale, became the first microbrewery to produce and distribute exclusively canned beers.

Then, it was a revolutionary idea for hand-crafted brew to be sold in cans, which were widely seen as inferior. But today many craft brewers have embraced what has been dubbed the can revolution. In fact, one beer consistently rated as one of the world’s top beers–The Alchemist’s Heady Topper — is available only in cans.

Now, this summer even Boston Beer Company, owner of the Sam Adams brands, plans to release its “Sam Can” in the U.S.–the first canned beer in its 29 year history.

That all seems pretty sensible for microbrews to move towards aluminum cans. Still, for die-hard beer fans, it might take just a little bit more time to get used to sipping out of a can rather than a bottle.

American, Japanese, and European car makers have pushed hard to incorporate aluminum into their vehicles, and now our neighbors to the north are jumping on the bandwagon — except instead of just cars, they’re looking at the bigger picture. The National Research Council Of Canada has announced a new focus on studying aluminum innovations for the transportation industry. From Collision Repair Magazine (note the alternate spelling for aluminum):

“Canada is a global leader in producing aluminium, and now has the opportunity to lead the world in the transformation of aluminium into parts for lighter weight vehicles,” says Michel Dumoulin, General Manager of the Automotive and Surface Transportation portfolio at the National Research Council of Canada. “This program will support Canadian manufacturers in developing lighter parts and structures that will make our vehicles more fuel efficient, safer and environmentally friendly.”

The new Lightweighting of Ground Transportation Vehicles program will see to the development, validation and deployment of advanced technologies to form aluminium into parts and to assemble and join these parts into next-generation vehicles. The $45-million program will enable the industry to reduce overall vehicle weight by 10 percent within the next eight years.

While Canada doesn’t produce the volume of vehicles as the United States, Germany, or Japan, its manufacturing industry contributes parts to car companies around the world. This new government initiative to support aluminum innovation shows that the aluminum movement isn’t just isolated to one company or even one country – it’s an end-to-end revolution across the entire workflow.