Canned: Artwork of the Modern American Beer Can is a new craft beer book on the shelves showing off the gorgeous cans of the craft beer industry.
This book is from the man behind CraftCans.com, Russ Phillips, which has focused on the “Canned Beer Revolution” for 5 years. The website provides a database of canned beer across America with reviews of many of those beers.
The book provides a short history of beer cans from their invention, use by macros, then eventual adoption by craft breweries. The real meat of the book is formed by beautiful pictures of hundreds of cans. Along with these pictures are brief descriptions of the beers, their breweries, and the cans designs. Essentially taking that database from the website and laying it out in a great spread.
Unfortunately for Ohioans the book falls short of the website and doesn’t include any Ohio cans. Despite the beauty of MadTree’s design for PsycHOPathy it somehow didn’t make the cut. I’m guessing that’s mainly due to publication timelines and the lead up necessary to lay out the book and everything with MadTree being a relatively new brewery.
Also unfortunately the meat of this book is more like what you’d find on a single chicken wing than on a nice cut of steak. If you’re an absolute can fanatic or really into design and artwork then Canned: Artwork of the Modern American Beer Can could be for you. If you’re just into craft beer then there isn’t much here beyond a cool coffee table book.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I was contacted by the publishing company who was kind enough to hook me up with a free copy. To our readers, and any companies interested in sending me stuff, giving me free stuff impacts the review in only 2 ways. That I WILL review it and that and I WILL write a blog post about it. Giving me free stuff does not guarantee you a favorable review, as has been proven here – I wonder if anyone actually reads this.
BrewMinds 