Time for a topless beer: how craft brewers in London are creating novel ways to crack into your beer can

Shirts back on, guys. Craft brewers are just ripping things up with ‘360’ lids and ultra-hip vintage cans, says Phoebe Luckhurst
New openings: Sly Fox’s Helles golden lager, left, and Churchkey’s Pilsner

Opening a tinnie is a satisfying sound: the hiss of the ring pull foregrounds your own gratified exhalation. However, you worry that the movement is becoming too fluid — the muscles find and remove it without you really having to think.

This is problematic because alcohol is tied to a complicated equation of guilt and gratification. You feel you have to earn your drink, to really deserve it before you can get smashed. It’s basically the whole reason people go to work. If things are getting too easy, you’ll lose the justification for a cold and frosty one.

Luckily, brewers are innovating on the simple can: creating topless versions that you have to peel or hack into (gently) in order to release the malty potion inside. It’s the sort of innovation you’d drink to if you hadn’t made a rule to wait until after 5pm on Mondays to Thursdays.

Churchkey Beer Company (churchkey.com) creates a Pilsner in a can that must be winched open using a church key: an American term for a small metal device with a triangular blade at one end and a rounded edge at the other. The former is good for punching holes, the latter for releasing bottle caps. Why the innovation? Churchkey Beer Company thinks “it’s worth putting a little extra effort back into our modern-day lifestyle.” Cheers to that.

Sly Fox brewing company, meanwhile, has a “360-degree can”: you must peel off the whole lid in order to release the beer and its heady bouquet. Its manufacturers claim this makes the beer taste better — as “you taste first with your nose”. It also minimises the need for glasses (less washing up! More time for beers!) and the likelihood of injury, as the edges have been softened (less blood loss! More strength for beers!)

Of course, you won’t find this sort of innovation on your average six-pack from Tesco: in order to buy into the new beer, you need to go specialist. Try We Brought Beer in Balham (28 Hildreth Street, SW12, webroughtbeer.com), which stocks Sly Fox’s golden Helles. There have also been sightings of it at Street Feast’s soon-to-reopen Dinerama. Take yours to the park and then talk really loudly about how different the experience is until everyone knows you’re on the coalface of drinking trends.

Latest London drinks trends

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And just when you’d fabricated a new excuse for after-work bevvies (support for burgeoning innovation, obviously), an excuse for brekkie ones falls onto your toast: the Italians have delivered us news of spreadable beer. Birra Spalmabile is a collaboration between an Italian beer maker and an Italian chocolate maker — it’s gooey and hoppy and comes in a jar and contains 40 per cent beer (firebox.com). Obviously, it’s a screwtop: another novel way to crack into a beer.

Drink up — you’ve earned it.

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