Bottles and cans, just clap your hands, just clap your hay-ands.

I imagine when I first saw a can of Oskar Blues beer, my expression was akin to the one my mother made the first and last time I made her listen to Beck. Like, really–you thought I’d like this?

I first came across this can-only Colorado brewery at the 2006 Great American Beer Fest in Boston. Until then, my only contact with canned beer was that one Busch Light I sipped on unhappily for hours at a college party, the stress of being polite rendering me dead sober. Imagine my surprise when I tasted a sample of Ten Fidy, an imperial stout in Oskar Blues’ trademark can, and found it not just equal to the beer samples I’d had poured from bottles, but even better than many.

Now, eleven years after Oskar Blues launched the “Canned Beer Apocalypse,” the rest of the craft beer world is picking up the trend. Cans are IN. Why, you ask? There are numerous checks in the pro-can column; here are a few:

• Cans are cheaper to make and ship. Aluminum is less expensive than glass and considerably lighter, resulting in lower shipping costs. Also, the cost of creating a label and a bottle separately can be costlier than using pre-printed aluminum. Lastly, glass can break in transit; aluminum doesn’t.
• Cans keep beer better than glass. They don’t let light in, light being the prime culprit in skunky beer. (Beer in green bottles = bleh.) Also, these aren’t my father’s cans: nowadays aluminum cans are lined so the beer never actually touches it, which eliminates that metallic zing on your tongue.
• Cans are more convenient for the consumer. Again, the weight factor if you’re a destination drinker, but also the fact that cans often can go where bottles are prohibited and/or prohibitive; that is, a public park or a canoe or a drive-in theatre…not that I have experience with any of these.
• Cans are greener, or so they say. I’m a little fuzzy on this one as I couldn’t find any real research to back up this claim, though I didn’t really try too hard. A rep from Sierra Nevada cornered me at the Cleveland Beer Festival when I mistakenly expressed some interest in the can trend. He spoke at length to me about why cans are so far superior to bottles and his company’s commitment to sustainability. (Why he thought that, three and a half hours into a beer festival, I would be able to follow let alone retain any of this information, I don’t know.)

And now the pro column for bottles: [cricket, cricket]

I haven’t found anyone leaning heavily toward bottles over cans. Cans are new again; they’re hip, sexy, and look so damn good under a bushy mustache. No, you didn’t think we could go for an entire article about beer in cans without addressing the elephant hipster in the room, did you?

For many years now, Pabst Blue Ribbon in a can has been the drink of choice for hipsters in cities across the nation, preferably served in a koozie with the Boy Scout logo or some other “ironic” emblem. Like trucker hats, beer in a can has been usurped by hipsters from the working class and turned into mockery of a life they’ll never know. And the very popularity of this “irony” is what will be their downfall. Hipsterism has gone mainstream now that you can find skinny jeans and ugly flats at The Gap. Likewise, craft beer in cans is becoming common and popular, too, perhaps so much there will be a hipster backlash and suddenly you’ll realize all the young ‘uns in Ramones T-shirts are sipping bourbon from snifters.

I will admit that I still eye beer cans warily. I understand the appeal and don’t avoid them; it’s just that I grew up with the idea that beer in cans was cheap and tasted bad. This is going to be a hard preconception for the craft beer industry to overcome with some of us. But I don’t believe it is just a phase, and breweries like Southern Star and 21st Amendment and a slew of others are joining Oskar Blues in transforming the market. There are entire generations who will come of age associating craft beer with cans, and who will only ever think of me as old.