Meantime best-sellers now in cans

The Asahi Europe-owned brewer’s London Lager (4.5% ABV), London Pale Ale (4.3% ABV), and Yakima Red (4.1% ABV) will be available across the on-trade from 6 April.

Meantime brewmaster Ciaran Giblin said: “There are loads of reasons why the time is right for us to launch our three best-selling beers in can.

“Canning technology has come a long way, so we know the quality of the beer will be second to none and taste as fresh in can as it would straight from the tap.

“We’ve seen cans grow rapidly in popularity over the past few years and our drinkers and customers have been patiently waiting for us to launch our range in cans too."

Move towards canned

This comes as a number of prominent UK brewers have made their first move into canned beers.

Sussex brewery Harvey’s launched four of its beers​ in cans following a major rebrand in 2016, which it said would help Harvey’s “engage with a demographic and route to market that would not have considered us solely as a cask ale producer”.

Hogs Back Brewery began canning its popular London’s Outback ale​ in January.

London’s Hop Stuff Brewery followed suit last month, releasing its core range of four beers in cans following a round of crowdfunding, which raised £750,000 ahead of a significant expansion of its operations in the capital.

Issue of breakages

Hop Stuff founder James Yeomans told The Morning Advertiser ​at the time: “Historically, the issue of breakages has frustrated brewers, and, given our plans to start exporting to several foreign markets in 2017, we want beer that can travel."

However, he said canning was still ‘tricky’ to get right for many brewers.

“It took us a lot of development to adjust our beers to be perfect in a can. We invested about six months in developing the concept to get to this point,” he said.