Essentially, a Crowler is a giant, 32 oz. can. These oversized containers can be filled on any ordinary tap line, but the catch is that you have to have a Crowler sealing machine to cap it. There are over 600 machines being used in America, more and more breweries are offering Crowlers as a takeaway beer option (though there are only a handful of companies making Crowler machines). In the current craft beer landscape, brewers and beer drinkers alike are accepting cans as the premium in beer packaging, and it makes sense that this trend would grow—quite literally.

Mom, where do Crowlers come from?

Most beer drinkers credit Oskar Blues’s Dale’s Pale Ale as the pioneering brew of the canned craft beer movement, which the Colorado-based brewery has been canning since 2002. If there was a brewery to expand on the opportunities that canning brews had to offer, these guys would be the ones to do it—and they did.

“We get off on pushing the limits, doing things differently, and the Crowler is another step of innovation to take advantage of what the can package has to offer from behind the bar,” explains Jason Dan, the head of the Crowler program at Oskar Blues.

They worked with Ball Corporation, a manufacturer that produces machines that seal steel food cans (and those things called Ball jars) and modified the existing seaming machine to seal Ball's new 32 oz. to-go beer cans.

Photo: Jeremy Farmer Jeremy Farmer

After implementing the machines at their breweries and tap rooms, OB decided it was time to get other breweries involved, making Crowler machines available for purchase by other beer makers. Helping the competition may seem a bit counterintuitive, but craft beer truly is a community. Albeit, sometimes a community that loves to argue about hops in forums online—but a community no less.

According to Dan, more than 400 Oskar Blues Crowler machines and 1.3 million Crowler cans were sold in 2015, a 1000% increase in sales from 2014. Buying the blank cans in bulk and slapping on their own sticker labels makes it convenient for breweries to adapt their designs to the Crowler and explains why such a staggering amount of cans were sold.

Other companies, like Dixie Canner Co., have developed Crowler machines for their clients including Cigar City Brewing and Sierra Nevada Brewing. Whether your Crowler is coming from an OB machine or a Dixie canner, the result is the same. Fresher, longer-lasting brews. “More beer, more accessible, in more places,” says Dan.

Why should I be drinking beer out of a can, again?