In late January, Oakshire Brewing in Eugene, Oregon joined a select, infamous club: It became the latest brewery to issue a voluntary recall for a beer due to exploding cans. The precedent for this type of recall had already been set by breweries across the country, with some notable examples coming from Massachusetts’ Trillium Brewing Company, Indiana’s 450 North Brewing Company, and Pennsylvania’s Cellar Works Brewing. The issue of brewers choosing to package unpasteurized, heavily fruited beers that can potentially referment in their cans to the point of bursting has plagued the industry for at least three years.
What’s changed in that time? Not a lot. Despite the safety risk exploding cans present, no regulatory agency or trade group has stepped in to issue reprimands. Mostly, the industry is treating the subject as one requiring guidance, not consequences. But unlike topics such as beer freshness that the industry has addressed with technical education, exploding cans are not purely a quality-control issue. They’re also a product and food-safety concern.
“Safety is an issue that goes beyond functionality and durability,” says Dr. Manpreet Hora, an associate professor at Georgia Institute of Technology’s Scheller College of Business whose research focuses on managing operational risk. “If I don’t like a craft beer’s taste, that’s a different concern than if the can explodes.”
Hora believes that if this continues, it’s “only a matter of time” until regulators take notice. Many brewers share his concern—but that’s not stopped their peers from making or bragging about their literal beer bombs. So far, these incidents haven’t forced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has oversight over this issue, to step in. Nor has the Brewers Association (BA), the trade group representing small and independent breweries, reprimanded those whose cans explode. There’s not much, other than the cost of issuing refunds, to deter breweries from continuing to churn out these trendy fruit beers. And for many, the sky-high Untappd scores and cases of beer sold have been worth the hassle.
Sporadic explosions are unlikely to just go away, not when drinkers are still clamoring for these beers. For that to happen, there will need to be consequences—but what should those consequences be, and who should impose them?
When other brewers criticize those making non-shelf-stable beers, the specter that looms largest in their minds is the FDA. It’s part of the reason Andy Ruhland, head brewer at Bad Weather Brewing in St. Paul, Minnesota, has chastised breweries on Twitter for their exploding cans.
“It’s one of those things where [the FDA] could say, ‘Maybe we need to start looking into things a little more,’” Ruhland tells GBH.
The FDA has oversight over food and beverage manufacturers, including breweries, under its massive Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), particularly subsection 21 CFR Part 117, which covers “Current Good Manufacturing Practice.” The members-only section of the BA’s website is full of guidance for breweries on how to comply with this part of the FSMA. Even among non-members, it’s impossible to imagine a brewery wouldn’t be aware that brewing is an industry with federal oversight.
“[Breweries] are aware that they have obligations under the FDA,” says Chuck Skypeck, technical brewing projects manager for the BA. “From a regulatory point of view, there can be fines, or revocation of licenses. There’s a lot the FDA can do if they choose to do so.”
So far, it hasn’t chosen to. In response to questions from GBH about its oversight of breweries in regards to exploding cans, a spokesperson for the FDA initially seemed confused about whether the issue fell under the FDA’s purview. Then, in a follow-up email, the spokesperson said that “after speaking with our subject matter experts, your questions are better suited for ATF [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives].” When GBH provided specific subsections of the FSMA to the FDA, its spokesperson did not respond.
In short, the FDA doesn’t seem to have exploding cans on its radar—for now.
If regulators aren’t stepping in, it’s up to other groups to address beer’s exploding can problem. Hora says this is often solved through trade groups or professional organizations.
“Because there are no large-scale regulations in a lot of industries, companies gravitate toward, ‘We abide by, let’s say, these five things we collectively agree upon. We know it won’t happen because there are basic qualifiers in place,’” Hora says. “The industry sort of comes to an agreed level of guidance.”
A portion of brewers have come to an agreement—that exploding cans are a necessary part of delivering craft beer enthusiasts the most flavorful beers possible. That’s despite some guidance from the BA. Skypeck points to documents on the BA’s members-only website that specifically address techniques to avoid refermentation, can bulging, and overpressurization, as well as guidance on issuing voluntary recalls.
But there’s a question of whether breweries that sell exploding cans simply don’t know better. Many who release these unpasteurized, heavily fruited beers do so with labels or specific instructions to keep the beer cold at all times (to reduce the risk of bursting), which indicates they comprehend the risks.
New Jersey’s Magnify Brewing Company even conducted its own tests to determine how its heavily fruited beer, Trade Proof, would hold up in cans. After just three or four days in an ambient 85-90° Fahrenheit room, the can exploded. The brewery subsequently released a second batch with a ticking time bomb on its label, announcing via a Facebook post that read, “It is imperative that these cans remain cold at all times! For real!”
Maryland’s Burley Oak Brewing Company, which boasts that its brewers puree fruit with a hand blender before adding it to a beer, also has a “Disclaimer” section of its can release webpage that reads, in part: “We do suggest the beers are kept cold in transportation and storage to ensure the best quality product.”
This begs the question: Does this obvious knowledge that the cans could explode set breweries up for greater legal liability? With a wink, a nod, and a reminder to keep cans refrigerated, breweries indicate they know exactly what they’re doing in releasing these beers.
“If they’re putting stuff on the can label that says, ‘Keep it cold or refermentation is going to occur,’ they know,” Ruhland says. “And really, it’s basic brewing 101.”
The BA has a different view.
“I’d like to think it’s an educational issue,” Skypeck says. He says that perhaps the reason not all BA members are aware of the group’s vast technical guidance on this issue is because they’re busy and haven’t read it. But as Ruhland notes, even a novice homebrewer understands the math at work here: Simple sugars, plus a yeast cell or microbe, plus a confined vessel, equals a dangerous increase in pressure.
“Clearly, you can see that we’ve addressed it, and have not said, ‘This will go away.’ But there is that hope that this trend [of heavily fruited beers] will pass,” Skypeck says.
The trend may well pass one day, but for three years, it’s remained a pernicious thorn in the industry’s side. High Untappd ratings for these beers, a secondary beer-trading market for such cans, and the potential for near-national sales through beer shipping services like Tavour provide financial incentives to keep making them.
Skypeck says he wants people in the industry to email him about breweries who have put out exploding cans, but not so the BA can discipline them.
“We’re not a standard-setting agency or a regulatory organization,” he says, contradicting Hora’s assertion about trade groups’ role as standard-setters. “My interest there would be more in regards to, when we’re having conversations about this, to be able to say, ‘I’ve seen X amount of examples.’”
One might reasonably expect consequences for breweries that sell exploding cans to come in the form of consumer backlash. So far, though, those voices seem to be in the overall minority.
“We all buy meats and other perishable foods and take responsibility not to let them spoil, I don't think breweries should have any more responsibility than a butcher,” a BeerAdvocate forum user wrote on a January 2019 thread about bursting cans from MORE Brewing Company.
Why aren’t drinkers more upset about the mess, the wasted beer, and the hassle of having to ask for refunds? Because they’re being told exploding cans are just par for the course if they want flavorful, exciting beer.
That message comes first from the breweries themselves, which have taken varying degrees of responsibility for exploding cans. Trillium’s statement, for example, noted that cans refrigerated at the brewery did not explode, adding that the onus is on the customer to ensure cans don’t burst: “We don’t want anyone to have to clean up a mess and advise that you store these cans in a refrigerator immediately.” When 450 North was confronted with reports of both exploding cans and miscalculated ABVs in early 2020, the brewery’s sales director told GBH: “Our fans love this line of beers, and we don’t plan to change the brewing process.”
“What other food product is out there where it’s acceptable that a container can randomly blow up, and the manufacturer can say, ‘It’s not our fault. You didn’t keep it cold,’?” Ruhland asks. “It’s ludicrous.”
Media outlets, too, have parroted breweries’ assertion that it’s a customer’s responsibility to mitigate the risk of explosion.
“Again, re-fermentation is rare, but beer drinkers who like a fruity ale should know that it’s a possibility—and maybe consider drink [sic] those cans sooner than later,” a Food & Wine piece about Oakshire’s recall concludes.
“The customer must … accept that there is risk in purchasing these heavily fruited beers,” reads a post on the blog Craft Beer Joe.
The perception that explosion is an acceptable risk gains purchase because craft beer is an industry known for experimentation and innovation, Hora says.
“It’s a pretty adventurous market. Both producers and consumers are looking for innovation and novelty,” Hora says. “But say I’m a skydiving instructor. I can’t let anyone go skydiving without a parachute, even if they want to. I have to put some baseline safety mechanisms in place. I need to have some checks and balances there to monitor the product once it’s in the hands of consumers.”
The risks of skydiving without a parachute—or putting out cans that have a good potential to rupture—aren’t just to customers, but to the industry serving them.
Thus far, there haven’t been any widely reported instances of physical injury from exploding cans. But Skypeck says beyond regulatory concerns, civil liability for personal injury should deter breweries from selling them. He’s also concerned, as are many brewers, about reputational damage to beer as a whole. What’s to happen if state and federal regulators, who may be quick to jump to conclusions when it comes to exploding alcohol, ever find out a constituent is harmed by an acknowledged packaging defect?
“Over the years, it’s been real easy to lean on the association that beer is food-safe,” Skypeck says. He says that assumption has been pervasive for decades, to the benefit of breweries that have been given flexibility on issues like allergen or nutritional labeling. But it may be backfiring now. “It gives [brewers] the mindset that anything goes.”
It’s an odd argument, but one that needs to be made in the case of exploding cans: storing and opening a beer should not seem like a threat. "That whole thing, that beer is safe, becomes a mindset,” Skypeck says, “rather than taking responsibility that you need to put something out there that is going to be safe and not harm anybody."
Even if these cans have only been a sporadic problem for small breweries that sell directly to drinkers from their taprooms, it’s not worth sweeping the issue under the rug. Small problems are small problems—until they’re not.
Hora gives the example of hoverboards, which began making headlines in 2015 when their batteries caught fire. Companies issued recalls, and though it was only certain hoverboard brands that caught fire, few consumers made the distinction. The takeaway for most people was: Hoverboards are unsafe.
Consumer-safety watchdog groups like World Against Toys Causing Harm, Inc. (WATCH) were not mincing words: “Hoverboards continue to be linked to fires, children are dying—with no sense of urgency on the part of the manufacturers and retailers,” read a press release WATCH issued in 2017.
“For six months it was very difficult for the entire industry,” Hora says. “Some of the smaller players ceased to exist.”
A narrow subset of beer consumers in search of the trendiest styles might shrug off exploding cans, but there’s a risk of reputational damage among a broader set of consumers. This is what weighs heavily on Ruhland’s mind when he hears of yet another brewery’s cans exploding, or yet another brewery shrugging off a recall.
“I take my job very seriously. I tell our staff to take our jobs very seriously. Yes, we’re brewing beer and it’s fun, but it’s manufacturing,” Ruhland says. “It’s not a professional look for brewers when customers have cans blowing up in their fridge or on the shelf. There are better ways to do this.”
Words by Kate Bernot
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