Projo Beer Blog

Wall Street Journal (Can It): "To find out whether tasty beer can come from a pedestrian can, we held a blind tasting -- and found an interesting answer." The story is free today.

These are craft beers, canned by their brewers so they can go where glass is unwelcome -- especially golf courses.

The tasting:

We assembled in The Wall Street Journal's downtown Manhattan offices, and I poured the beer out of sight, presenting it in a proper beer glass and then pouring samples for the panel. I provided only spare information: I would pour the beers by style, starting with lagers and ending with dark ales, and every style would include a mix of cans and bottles. I told the panel if they thought strongly that a beer was canned, they should say so. I asked them to rate all the beers on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest.

The results?

Details are in the accompanying chart, but of the 16 beers tasted, canned brew, in average scores, rated four of the five top spots, though the top-rated beer was Stone's India Pale Ale in a bottle with a rating of 8.8. The canned Scape Goat Pale Ale popped an 8 and Old Chub Scottish Ale a 7.8. Two other canned offerings scored higher than 7.

Just in time for a weekend tasting of your own.

Finally, Heineken stoops to enter the light beer market, testing Heineken Light in four U.S. cities. This historic tasting took place at twilight last night on my back porch in one of them: Providence.

Our sample was small, but we aimed for pseudoscience: Heinken, Heineken Light and Miller Lite. Two Heineken loyalists, a Miller Lite drinker and, as a wildcard, one Tangueray and tonic drinker went at it.

First, appearance: The Heinken Light bottle is taller and slimmer (get it?) than regular Heinie. One wag dubbed it "The Heineken Girl."

In the glass, both Heinekens have color; the Miller merely has hue, like yellow snow.

Taste: Both Heinekens have taste -- hops taste. Miller Lite tastes watery, subtle, like sugar-free beer soda. Quenches a thirst, though, almost as well as water.

Old Heineken tastes thicker, heavier than "Light." To the Heineken fan who does not like Miller Lite at all, it's the best of the light beers, but... "It tastes like Heineken with club soda. It's more carbonated."

To the regular Lite drinker, the taste was disturbingly bitter at first, recalling what she remembers of the days when she drank real beer and didn't gain an ounce, but she got used to it. Quickly.

We asked Ken Khoury, co-owner of City Liquors in Providence, what he thought of the new Light. "Tastes like Heineken to me," he said.

We thought we had a bona fide beer expert's opinion there until he told us his favorite beer was Michelob Ultra Light, which is so watery it makes Miller Lite seem robust.

The Tangueray-and-tonic fellow thought the Light was "not bad," and would drink either Heineken on a hot day, wouldn't matter which. "Tastes like Heineken," he said of the Light.

There's the market, since the Miller Lite person was put off by the price of the new brew: $12.99 and $7.29 for a 12-pack and six-pack, respectively; the Miller Lite was $9.58 for 12 and $5.37 for six. (Your shelf price may vary, of course.)

The carbs and calories (the allure of light beer, after all):

The barstool bottom line: The confirmed Heineken drinkers will stick with the heartier brew. The T&T drinker wouldn't turn down the Heinie Light. The Miller Lite drinker might buy Heineken Light again, since the slight increase in carbs seems insignificant, and the taste "made me feel like I'm drinking real beer."

If you live in Tampa, Dallas or Phoenix, you too can have this much fun on a hot summer night.