Dr Tim's traditional ale on sale throughout SA
Australia 's first naturally conditioned beer in an aluminium can, Dr Tim's Traditional Ale, will go on sale throughout South Australia from next week.
A trial of Dr Tim's Traditional Ale at a major entertainment event in Adelaide during January attracted such strong support that its producer, Coopers Brewery, has decided to release the brand generally.
It will initially be offered in South Australia only.
Coopers Managing Director, Dr Tim Cooper, said that the technology which allowed naturally conditioned ales to be canned in aluminium had been developed in conjunction with Amcor , Australia 's largest beverage can manufacturer, and was believed to be a world breakthrough in packaging technology.
We believe that Coopers is the first brewery in the world to be offering naturally conditioned ales in aluminium cans, although we and others offered such ales in steel cans before, he said.
Dr Cooper, who is also Coopers' Chief Brewer, said the name Dr Tim's Traditional Ale had been employed by Amcor during product development and had stuck.
Offering ales in aluminium cans opens up a different section of the market for us and means that our products can be sold or taken to events where bottles are banned or are not appropriate, he said.
The Group General Manager, Amcor Metal Packaging, Mr Darryl Roberts, said Amcor had worked closely with Coopers over the last 12 months in conducting extensive trials to see how the aluminium cans would perform after being filled, packed on to pallets, stacked and then transported.
Around the world, naturally conditioned beer has traditionally been packaged in glass. So we are pleased to have been involved with Coopers' success in bringing the first naturally conditioned beer in an aluminium can on to the Australian market, he said.
Dr Cooper said packaging naturally conditioned ales in cans presented unique difficulties not experienced when canning lager style beers.
Virtually all lagers are carbonated and canned under pressure and then pasteurised to control any microbial contaminants. Coopers relies on secondary fermentation to carbonate its cloudy beers. Pasteurisation would kill the yeast responsible for this process, he said.
This means that special attention must be given to ensuring absolute cleanliness during the filling process for cloudy ales to avoid contamination by organisms that would otherwise be destroyed during pasteurisation.
Canning lagers under pressure also give aluminium containers the initial strength and rigidity to cope with normal palletising and stacking.
However, naturally conditioned ales are not canned under pressure because the carbon dioxide develops in the weeks after filling. Great care is therefore required to protect the cans during filling and storage in the period before the full carbonation is achieved.
Dr Cooper said that this was another reason why ales had only previously been canned in steel in the 1970s. However, packaging in steel posed the alternative risk of beer oxidation.
He said developing a method of satisfactorily packaging ales in cans was an important step in the brewery's continued growth and development.
Dr Tim's Traditional Ale is similar in beer style to our brewery's popular cloudy ales which represent our strength and expertise, he said.
He said further brews were likely to be offered in cans in the future.
Coopers recorded sales growth of 13.5% nationally in the first half of the 2003-04 financial year, led by enormous expansion in the Sydney and Melbourne markets.
