The release has been welcomed by drinkers, but unfortunately not everyone will get the chance to pound an easily-portable tallboy in the woods. Canned White will only be available at first in eight of the brewery’s 17-state footprint: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Western/Upstate New York.

It’s also getting released next month alongside a new, year-round canned beer called River Trip, described by Allagash as “an easy drinking, sessionable Belgian-style ale” that’s dry hopped for “notes of grapefruit, lime, and stone fruit.” But when a longtime, beloved beer like White is released at the same time, it’s easy to understand why the latter would get more attention.

“It's a beer that made me want to work in this industry as an unassuming, know-nothing, 21-year-old, and it's a beer I still eagerly anticipate drinking as my first beer whenever I'm on a trip to the East Coast,” says Steve Luke, founder and head brewer at Seattle’s Cloudburst Brewing. Luke spent part of his early career at Allagash. “I brewed that beer nine days out of 10, for close to a year, and I never got sick of it. I can't think or even dream of that ever being the case with the brewing of any other beer, except for maybe Orval.”

While drinkers may be giddy at the chance to drink a favorite beer directly from the can, Allagash also has reason to be happy with the new move. The brewery has seen its IRI sales track upward consistently, growing its portfolio of beers by 131% over the last five years, and about 10% from 2017-2018. White has done essentially the same thing, growing in IRI sales volume by 174% since 2014 and 10.6% year-to-year in 2018. New England, where a majority of White will be released in cans since it’s close to home, accounted for 43.5% of IRI sales in 2018.

But it's also about the package.

Almost a year ago exactly, GBH documented the fast rise of cans in sales channels, a trend that didn’t change in 2018. According to IRI data for last year, the 16-ounce, four-pack format grew by 17% in sales volume and 26.5% in dollar sales from 2017-2018.