Why would the NA beer industry standardize on a bottle shape that's grotesquely inconvenient, topples with minimal force, and doubles the required volume to ship?
Why would the NA beer industry standardize on a bottle shape that's grotesquely inconvenient, topples with minimal force, and doubles the required volume to ship?
Not sure why NA is being singled out here. Bottles are largely the same shape (with a few functional differences, see below) no matter where they come from.
The round shape is mostly a historical artifact from early designs that were hand-blown. A hexagonal (bestagons!) shape would pack better in an infinitely large container, but since most shipping crates are rectangular, there will be wasted space either way, and round is far easier and cheaper to mass-produce. Also, as a carbonated beverage, sharper corners could create stress points and exploding bottles.
Toppling over could potentially be reduced with a wider base, but fitting in the hand is a hugely important factor for any drinking container. There are larger-based bottles, but they also need more specialized packaging and storage space. By using bottles that are similar size to aluminum cans, lots of infrastructure can be dual-purpose (I'm thinking of things like can/bottle storage in your refrigerator, for example).
Double the volume of what? Glass bottles have to be thicker than other materials, so to get the same volume as a can with the same size base, it has to be taller.
If you want to do a lot more reading, here's a few sources I borrowed from:
https://sha.org/bottle/beer.htm
Regarding the functional design features referenced above:
https://www.hillebrandgori.com/media/publication/beer-bottle-sizes-and-their-surprising-history
Those ‘shoulders’ we keep mentioning remain in modern beer bottle design mainly for aesthetic reasons. Their original function was to provide a handy place for the yeast residue and dregs to collect, so that these didn’t pour out into the glass with the beer. Nowadays, most beer is filtered, so this design feature is no longer needed. Unless you’re bottling a yeast beer like a Belgian beer, of course.
Not the deep dive I expected to go on today. Thank you, bottle scientist.
By using bottles that are similar size to aluminum cans, lots of infrastructure can be dual-purpose (I’m thinking of things like can/bottle storage in your refrigerator, for example).
A great benefit of both containers being designed to fit in a hand!
Sounds like it’s time for a stubby.
You forgot coors golden banquet
Not sexy enough.
Ahh, the old brown tit/nipple. Miss drinking from these bottles
NA = North American or non-alcoholic?
North America wasn't even on my radar! I suspect anyone who's worked in the industry thought non-alcoholic by default.
Have they? Can you give an example? Any NA beer I've bought (which is quite a bit) has been in standard beer bottles. Assuming you mean non-alcoholic, right?
I've never really seen an issue with the standard glass beer bottle in North America, is there a superior bottle shape that I've been missing all my life?
are they bagging their beer up in Canada now like their milk!?
From a European, what does a standard NA beer bottle look like? I thought your bottles were similar to ours, which means bottom heavy and a slim neck.
More and more craft breweries are going can-only. It's better for the beer and the environment.
I was under the impression that the glass was actually better, since the cans require a plastic lining to not ruin the beer and the bottles can either be recycled and reused as-is after a wash or ground up and remelted with little/no loss in quality.
The plastic lining is for soda - beer tends to be less acidic and so doesn't need it. (at least in general)
There's no plastic in an aluminum can. Both glass and aluminum are almost totally recycled into their base materials. Aluminum is lighter to transport to and from the recycling facility.
The lining in question is very thin (akin to a layer of paint) and just burns up when the cans are re-melted.
Recycling beer bottles is indeed pretty easy once you get them to the processing center intact, but it's getting there that's the hard part. They're fragile, pretty heavy and don't stack well unless you put them in some form of packaging.
Once they're broken, they're basically useless; glass isn't recycled much except as grit material for sandpaper; re-melting it is resource-intensive and sensitive to impurities.
Glass is almost always the most environmentally friendly packaging for drinks. Aluminium needs a lot of energy to be recycled and can only be used once. I'm not sure how it works in the states but here in Germany we reuse our glass bottles up to 50 times.
Each to their own, but I always prefer the taste of beer from a bottle over beer from a can.
You're supposed to decant it into a glass for optimal experience, but I hear you. I can drink straight from a bottle in a way I won't from a can.
The "stubby" bottles were replaced with tall "classier" bottles in a surge of .. fashion-moment, or something.
I remember somebody did a news vid, or documentary on it, & the industry lost usable-storage-effectiveness when they went with the taller bottles, and there's more glass in them, too..
They said if they'd known what the actual results would be ( it didn't alter the market to increase the percentage of the population which is always buying beer, for some reason.. ), they wouldn't have done it.
Well, Duh..
"never believe your own hype" IS a rule, because when you're believing your own marketing-bumf, then you're not competent at calculating any sort of project balance-sheet, right?
I only drink my beer by the growler.
