Corkey Trivia: A Legacy of Beer
I recall in my classical archeology class, a while back, we were discussing the various periods of ancient Greek history and how, in the Bronze Age, there were Greek homes decorated with stunning Minoan style frescoes. Our professor also mentioned that it was called the Bronze Age because when excavating that period of time, the things they dug up which most clearly distinguished it from any other age was their widespread use of bronze. Being curious young college students, we had to ask, “So what do you think would identify our time period?” He took a moment and said, “The metal rings from aluminum pull tab cans and those plastic six pack holders.” An interesting legacy.
When I was growing up, I drank a lot of beer from those pull tab cans. I used to throw those ring pull tabs away till one of my friends said she was making leis out of them, so I passed my collection of them onto her. It seemed to me that beer and soda had always come in those aluminum ring pull tab cans. However, this was not always so.
In the days before bottled beer, the only way to enjoy a beer at home was to walk over to the brew pub and carry it home in a growler (basically a jug or pail with a lid on it). Beer spoiled quickly this way, so most people drank their beer in bars and pubs.
In 1907, they started bottling beers in glass returnable bottles. This made it possible to enjoy beers at home and allowed brewers to distribute their beers even 30 miles away. Then in 1935 Krueger beer released the first canned beer in Richmond Virginia. It was a steel can that required a church key (can opener) to open. It was a huge hit and in a few months Kruger’s Beer was taking huge chunks of business away from the “big three” national brewers: Anheuser-Busch, Pabst, and Schlitz.
The use of steel cans increased the distribution radius of a beer to about 400 miles. The steel cans were non-breakable, stackable and fast cooling compared to glass beer bottles. Consumers loved the convenience of being able to throw away the empty can rather than having to deal with the return deposit on the glass bottles.
In 1958, Coors started producing the first all aluminum beer cans. They shared all the advantages of steel but they were also one third lighter, (which saved on delivery costs) they did not rust, and you could print vibrant colors on them. In 1959, sodas started migrating over to cans too. Beer cans were one of the very first convenience packages and blazed the trail for beverage packaging.
In 1963, Iron City Beer was the first to introduce the ring pull tab can. Evidently, rather than make leis or throw away the pull tabs, some people like to slip them inside their beer cans and accidentally swallow them rather than be thought of as a “litter- bug”. So I guess they were kinda dangerous and, in addition, the pull tabs produced a lot of litter too. I recall those pull tabs mixed in the sand at the beach along with used cigarette butts, how lovely.
Then in 1975, the Falls Brewing company introduced an aluminum can with the first non-detachable tab opener. It was safer than the ring pull tab and eliminated the pull tab as a source of litter. (Beer blazes the trail again.)
So 3,000 years from now when they dig up our civilization and find a thin layer of rings from the pull tabs, that would indicate all the artifacts found in that layer would date from 1963 – 1975 or thereabouts. I wonder what those future archaeologists would think of our era? Hmmm… maybe that we really liked to drink beers six at a time? All righty then; I guess I’ll start on number one. Cheers!
Tags: aluminum pull tab cans, beer, corkey trivia
