Panhead brewery owner Mike Neilson shows off one of his new 'Canhead' designs.

Mike Neilson thinks it's time New Zealanders gave canned beer a second chance.

Neilson is the the owner and founder of Upper Hutt's Panhead brewery and is a fan of beer from a can.

His appreciation for the cheap and cheerful packaging method is such that he arranged to borrow a canning line from another craft brewer in the region just to give canned versions of Panhead beers a go.

Blake Crayton-Brown Two of Panhead's new Canhead beer characters, Lola Deville and Johnny Octane.

"The can is the best way of packaging beer," Neilson said.

"It doesn't let in light, it gives you better beer stability and it cools down quicker."

Cans were also lighter and cost less to transport, but there was a downside - canning lines cost more than bottling lines.

Undeterred by the capital costs once he returns the borrowed canning line, or the perception that canned beer was cheap and nasty, Neilson has developed four new beers specially to be canned.

He's called them "Canheads".

Neilson said he wanted the cans to stand out in fridges or on supermarket shelves, so commissioned tattoo artist Simon Morse to come up with Canhead characters for the beer.

"We had these images before we had any idea of what the beers would be," Neilson said.

"We reverse engineered it and matched beer that we thought would best suit the character."

Each character was given a backstory and matched with a style of beer, for example, Jonny Octane, based on an old school drag racer, was filled with a red IPA.

Neilson said packaging had previously been a total afterthought, so it was great to be mixing things up.

The brewery has use of the borrowed canning machine for another three months, and if things go well with the Canhead range there are plans to put a deposit down for Panhead to get its own machine.

Neilson said the brewery was going from strength to strength, with plans for expansion well underway.

Having leased an adjacent building to the one the business already occupied at the old South Pacific Tyre factory in Upper Hutt, Neilson said he was hoping to significantly increase the brewery's capacity over the next year.

That would take the brewery's capacity from one million to four million litres a year.

Such an expansion would allow for new bottling and canning lines and more on-site storage.

An engineer had been looking over the building to establish what work would need to be undertaken to prepare it for its new role as a brewery, tasting room and office space.

Neilson said he hoped the tasting room, which would require an extra five or six staff members, would be open in time for Christmas.