The Taste

Canned beer gets a bad rap. Misconceptions have circulated for years: It tastes tinny, serious brews only come in bottles and so on. All false. One shiny-new example of a great canned beer-maker is Buckbean Brewing, a Nevada-based brewery. Founded in 2007, Buckbean just released two excellent, new 16-ounce canned beers: Original Orange Blossom Ale and Black Noddy Lager.

Why cans? The environment, for one. Beer cans are lighter and cheaper to ship than glass bottles -- it takes less gas to ship cans around the country. There's no glue or labels required (fewer resources), they're not packed in cardboard (less paper, no water needed to wash 'em down) and they're easy to recycle. There's also no possible exposure to light, which can ruin beer.

Of the two new brews, the Original Orange Blossom Ale is more drinkable than the Black Noddy, and it's more original. Made with ale and orange blossom water, this can pours orange, smells orange and tastes orange, and yet somehow doesn't invoke Sunkist. You might sense lemon and malt, too, on the nose and in the finish. Neither watery nor syrupy, the balance is near-perfect in the mouth and in the level of carbonation.

The Buckbean Black Noddy Lager, by comparison, is plain dark. It pours like a slightly flat cola drink: deep brown-black. It smells of burnt caramel, and it tastes like dessert. There are massive chocolate-coffee flavors in the finish followed by an appealing bitterness. It feels filling -- certainly not what you want on a hot summer day -- and yet it's less alcoholic than the orange ale: 5.2 percent compared to 5.8 percent alcohol by volume. But both brews are proof that great beer doesn't have to come in a bottle.

-- James Oliver Cury