On a quick stroll through the beer section at any liquor store, customers might notice that the old standby of the craft beer world, the brown, longneck bottle, has some growing competition, the can. Long the vessel for the mass-produced lagers of the big breweries, the aluminum can is gaining traction with smaller brewers and beer nerds thanks to improvements in technology and changing tastes.

Start-ups and established craft breweries alike are introducing canned beers to their product lines or just ditching the bottle altogether.

Two of New Jersey's newest breweries, Forgotten Boardwalk Brewing Co. in Cherry Hill and Spellbound Brewing in Mount Holly -- which both opened in 2014 -- made the decision to can from the very beginning.

John Companick, one of the owners of Spellbound, said although bottling would have been an easier initial investment for his fledging brewery, canning had too many advantages to pass up.

"We looked at advantages like quality and benefits to the environment but also from a cost perspective," he said. "A case of canned beer is 40-percent of the weight of a case of bottled beer. You also don't need to buy all the labels or all the caps."

Jamie Queli, owner of Forgotten Boardwalk, said there are more upfront costs to canning beer, which can make it difficult for new breweries to choose cans over bottles. Not only are the canning lines expensive, in order to get a shipment, breweries have to purchase upwards of 80,000 cans.

"That's just for one brand," she said. "Whereas you can buy 80,000 bottles and then put different labels on them rather than just be limited to one product with one big investment."

For Queli, however, she said it was never even a question of wether Forgotten Boardwalk would can its beer. She knew it would.

"I always wanted to do cans," she said. "I'm very active, and it was nearly impossible to grab a cooler of six glass bottles, put it on my bike and go hiking. Then I'm lugging around all this glass."

As a new brewery taking advantage of a growing trend, Companick said they face an uphill climb trying to educate an older crowd of more-experienced beer drinkers that might be more familiar with the canned beer of the old days.

"The biggest drawback to cans is the perception -- that's really antiquated at this point -- that they give beer a metallic or off taste," he said. "But with the lining they use these days, it's more like you're drinking out of a mini keg."

In fact, cans keep beer fresher for longer. Gene Muller, owner of Flying Fish Brewing Co. in Somerdale, said a lot of people still believe that a back-and-forth transition from cold to hot to cold gives beer that "skunked" taste, when it's actually exposure to light that does the damage.

"If you take a bottle of IPA and put it outside in the sunlight, within a day it would start to get that skunk flavor because the sunlight reacts with the hops," he said. "That's why our six-pack cases are higher: to prevent that."

Cans take it a step further by completely surrounding the beer, shrouding it in darkness until the drinker cracks it open.

Since they started brewing in 1996, Flying Fish has always bottled its beer. Muller said canning was never an option for small brewers because the equipment just wasn't available. The only canning lines were the ones at the massive breweries.

"There wasn't equipment on a smaller scale," he said. "What we're seeing now that there's so many smaller breweries is that the robotics and automation is being downsized to fit them."

Just last month, Flying Fish started experimenting with their first canned products. At a rate of about 100 cases per hour, their canning line is churning out HopFish IPA and Farmhouse Summer Ale.

Muller said for them, it was about expanding their reach. Cans would get them into more beer stations at Citizens Bank Park for Phillies games and gives customers more chances to drink their beer.

"Then there are situations like at golf courses or out on a boat where you have to have cans," he said. "For us it's an experiment to what the customers like."

Getting longtime fans of craft beer to accept cans wasn't always so easy. Their association with the big bad macro breweries would often led to beer snobs turning their noses up at cans.

"My brother was one of those guys," Queli said. "He was like 'I don't know if I would drink a beer from a can.'"

Companick said it was all about perception.

"With a older craft beer drinkers, the audience was only used to everything good being in bottles," he said. "As a craft-beer drinker you weren't a fan of cans because there wasn't anything available in cans."

That started to change about 10 years ago when craft-beer powerhouse Oskar Blues Brewery out of Colorado started distributing their award-winning Dale's Pale Ale and other products in cans.

"It was like 'wow. I can't believe something like this can come in a can.'" Companick said. "Once they came on board, that showed people that cans can be different."

He said that the newer generation of craft beer fanatics don't bring in the same stigma of cans that their parents' generation did, which could be the reason why canned craft beer has taken off so much.

"People have trouble getting past was traditionally done, and a lot of people don't adapt to change," Companick said. "Younger people are used to cans now. To them it's 'why not can?'"

As for the brewers themselves, Companick and Queili both prefer cans, while Muller still stands by the bottle.

With a growing audience that's only becoming more accepting of cans, these New Jersey breweries look like they will always have an alternative to the old brown bottle.

"I'm just happy to see canning get accepted by the masses," Companick said. "I see that cans are definitely here to stay."

Alex Young may be reached at ayoung@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @AlexYoungSJT. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.