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Don’t forget to sign up to win the Burton[AK], Backcountry Magazine & Oskar Blues gear giveaway each month at www.bcBEERnGEAR.com

THE DEAL
Burton/AK, Oskar Blues Brewery and Backcountry Magazine have teamed up to offer a monthly giveaway. Each month a winner will be chosen at random. Please check back and sign up each month for new prizes.

THE RULES
You need to re-register each month at www.bcBEERnGEAR.com in order to be eligible for that month’s prizes.
Limit of one entry per person, per month, please.

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Read the Entire Article Here: http://adage.com/article?article_id=147047

By E.J. Schultz
CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — Craft beer in a can?

“It was too far-fetched for anyone to really believe, even in our industry, that someone would put a full-flavored, hoppy beer in a can,” said Dale Katechis, recalling the 2002 launch of Dale’s Pale Ale. “Some people laughed it off.”

They aren’t laughing anymore.

The beer, first made as a home brew by Mr. Katechis while in college, is one of the hottest beers in the sizzling craft category.

Mr. Katechis’ company, Colorado-based Oskar Blues Brewery, pumped out 29,500 barrels of beer last year, up from 17,900 the year before, and is on pace to produce 44,000 barrels this year.

Oskar Blues can’t make enough of the stuff. The brewer, which sells Dale’s Pale Ale along with five other can varieties in 26 states, typically sells out every summer. The company recently invested $1 million in new tanks in hopes of making 70,000 barrels next year to meet surging demand.

It all started in Alabama in the late ’80s, when Mr. Katechis began experimenting with home brews while attending Auburn University. He refined Dale’s Pale Ale over the years and began selling it in 1999 in a restaurant he opened in tiny Lyons, Colo.

Mr. Katechis began canning it in 2002 — literally one can at a time — as a way to publicize his restaurant, Oskar Blues Grill and Brew. “We’d just load up the van or RV or the truck and go to a music festival or go to an outdoor biking event,” said Chad Melis, a professional mountain biker whom Mr. Katechis hired as the brewer’s marketing director.

Beer enthusiasts, used to drinking sophisticated crafts in bottles, were skeptical. Oskar Blues changed their minds “one can at a time,” Mr. Melis said, by emphasizing the can advantage, which he says includes less exposure to light and oxygen, potential taste-ruiners.

The trend caught on and at least 100 craft brewers now sell in cans, said Julia Herz, of the Brewers Association.

The brewer now has 80 distributors, 220 employees and annual revenue of more than $20 million. Its distribution network mostly covers Colorado, the South and the coasts, and includes bars and retailers such as Whole Foods and BevMo.

Mr. Katechis said his biggest challenge is keeping the brewer’s rebellious soul while it grows. “We’re the scrappy little guy that took a lot of risk,” he said. “We kind of did it while we were flipping everybody else off.”

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Dale’s Pale Ale, Burton AK & Backcountry Magazine have joined forces to create a FREE Monthly Gear Giveaway at www.bcBEERnGEAR.com

Hit the website to grab the latest Burton, Backcountry Magazine & Dale’s Pale Ale gear throughout the 2010/2011 season (November through April 2011). We’re also going to giveway 10 Burton AK jackets at select OB Fueled locations throughout the season, keep an eye onwww.bcBEERnGEAR.com & our facebook pages to find those hot spots. Catch the Oskar Blues Brewery crew at events (Pint Nights & Tastings) to get Backcountry Magazine Subscriptions and Swag from Oskar Blues Brewery at select events coast to coast…

BURTON Facebook Page

Backcountry Magazine Facebook Page

Oskar Blues Brewery Facebook Page

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In addition to the cover article on P. 16 & 17, Oskar Blues was the featured story on P.52 in the Innovation Packaging article by Andrew Kaplan titled “Pedal to the Metal.”  Here is an excerpt:

“The results of the can have been astounding.  The company has seen the public take to its canned brews – often after a little hesitation – and Oskar Blues’ sales have skyrocketed as a result.  Even in 2009, global financial apocalypse and all, the Canned Beer Apocalypse has continued unabated.  Oskar Blues saw a whopping 83.7 percent increase in shipments.  In fact, in each of the past seven years, the company has experienced double-digit growth.  But last year was its biggest leap: 29,000 barrels produced compared to 17,000 in 2008.”

Welcome to the Dale’s/Paste Downlow’d Club. We’re Continuing our partnership with Oskar Blues Brewery, Colorado’s trailblazing microcanning craft brewery and makers of the mighty Dale’s Pale Ale. Check out the back of each & every can of the iconic Dale’s Pale Ale.

Each month here at the Downlow’d Club we’ll offer a batch of exceptional music from the nation’s best music makers. Like the beer artisans at Oskar Blues, these artists make full-flavored, unflinching creations deserving of your attention.

Simply sign in to grab the 17 free tracks we’ve curated for you below and be sure and come back each month for more music.

Registered Club members (and you already are one if you’re reading this page) are also automatically entered in drawings to win cool stuff like tickets for concerts at Red Rocks, outdoor gear from Kelty, and good things from Oskar Blues and Paste.

The Dale’s Pale Ale & PASTE Magazine DOWNLOW’D club has fresh cuts FREE FOR DOWNLOAD from National Roots Musicians as well as tracks from OB Local favorites.

If you love this magazine as much as we do hit ‘em up for a subscription at https://www.pastemagazine.com/subscribe

Check out: Romano Paoletti, Reed Foehl , Jami Lunde, Beth Wood, The Infamous String Dusters, The Watson Twins, Interstate Stash Express & Trevor Hall.

Oskar Blues Dale’s Pale Ale – $9 (6-pack cans)
Packed with tons of citrus from a heavy dose of American hops, this is the quintessential stateside IPA. Like most pale ales, it’s on the hoppier side-which means its slightly bitter and sour. You know hops when you taste em. However, it’s not as hoppy as a IPA (Indian Pale Ale). And we really like the can, which makes it easily transportable, great to bring to a picnic or barbecue or the beach. Technically speaking, beer lasts longer in a can because no light is allowed in.

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Check out the entire GQ article here via the web. http://www.gq.com/food-travel/wine-and-cocktails/201004/best-greatest-beers-in-the-world#slide=14
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GQ magazine compiled the top 50 list and GQ editor Adam Rapaport brought his favorites for Harry Smith to try on CBS News The Early Show on Friday, April 23rd. Dales’s Pale Ale had an extended stay in “the top 50 beers you should try before you die” segment as Adam discussed the Hoppiness of Dale’s Pale Ale as well as the advantages of Canning quality craft beer. Watch the segment right here, right now.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Inc. Magazine featured Oskar Blues Brewery & Dale Katechis in their new piece: “Craft Beer In A Can” 

Click HERE to view the piece.   As usual, all Oskar Blues photo’s courtesy of www.photo-cycle.com

If you think the best beers are only in bottles, think again. Brewers from around the world are discovering that the secret to freshness is in the can.

In fact, canned beer and the Super Bowl have more in common than halftime commercials. Like the Giants’ stunning victory over the undefeated New England Patriots, Dale’s Pale Ale has proven to be another underdog victor in the battle of perception: bottle versus can. “When we started, the idea of canning beer was blasphemous,” says Dale Katechis, founder of Oskar Blues. “It was frowned upon as a cheap way to deliver lager-style cheap beer. The fact is, if you put bad beer in a can, it’s going to be bad beer. But our goal is to deliver beer as fresh as possible, and the can is the best.” Since Oskar Blues first hand-canned their crisp, hoppy Dale’s Pale Ale eight years ago, today some 50 domestic craft breweries as well as 25 Canadian and a dozen internationally are following suit, placing their premium beers in cans.

The three biggest enemies of beer are light, oxygen, and heat. So if you think about it, cans eliminate the first two hazards. But as logical as that sounds, for this skeptic, tasting was believing. I confess that while I’ve been a fan of Dale’s Pale Ale for several years, I’d mentally filed the beer under the novelty category. (Wow! A great beer in a can!) My true conversion came when my favorite Fat Tire Amber Ale from New Belgium, which had previously only been available in brown bottles, came out in a can two summers ago. Here is where things get crazy. Taste the can and the bottle—side by side—and judge for yourself. The beer from the can tastes rich, toasty, and creamy. By comparison, the same beer in the bottle tastes a little flat, less fresh. Turns out there’s a reason why. New Belgium adds a slurry of active live yeast to its Fat Tire cans just before sealing to take up oxygen and prevent stale off-flavors. The result is a fresher, more complex beer. Think of it as a mini keg.

Now, try conducting the same side-by-side taste test with cans and bottles from one of your favorite craft brewers, like Brooklyn Brewery or 21st Amendment. Or from one of the larger quality producers, like Guinness or Stella Artois. I conducted this experiment with several colleagues, including our resident beer aficionado and design director, Matthew Lenning. “I was completely preconditioned to think that canned beer equaled bad beer (see Meister Bräu). Tasting is believing, however,” Lenning admits. “What seemed to me from the outset as just a gimmicky attempt to latch onto the Pabst-in-a-Can trend has actually improved the quality of what we drink.”

The truth is that many of us still largely associate cans with college kids, hipsters, and, let’s face it, cheap beer. “The myth is that high-quality craft beer has to be in a brown bottle,” says Oskar Blues’ Katechis. When American craft brewers started competing against import beers in green bottles some 20 years ago, they entered the market using brown glass bottles, which didn’t allow as much UV light in. (Green bottles are more prone to skunking beer.) This gave American craft brewers the advantage in quality control, and the ability to compete. “Microbrewers have always sold one beer at a time. It’s a grassroots movement. The moment a craft brewer gets focused on quantity, they stop being a craft brewer,” says Katechis. “These guys started in their garages and basements, and 20 years ago the only machines out there for cans were very large, so craft brewers were forced into bottles.”

Garrett Marrero at Maui Brewing Co. adds, “Even the large domestic breweries will tell you that cans are a better package for the beer. The myth of the metallic taste goes back to 50 years ago when tin cans were soldered with lead.” Today’s aluminum cans feature a water-based polymer lining that eliminates any metallic contamination. That is, the beer never comes in contact with the aluminum. “You’d have to bite the can while you were drinking from it,” Marrero jokes. “Coors has done the best job of marketing cans with the Frost Brew Liner to seal in freshness. That’s the same liner that has been in cans for more than 20 years now, and it does exactly what Coors says it does.”

But canned beer’s benefits don’t stop at freshness. Cans are easier on the environment: They are nearly 50 percent lighter to ship than bottles, which greatly reduces their carbon footprint. Jamie Gordon at Cask Brewing Systems, the Canadian company that invented the craft canning system in 1999 and sold its first U.S. model to Oskar Blues several years later, says the number one reason brewers call him is environmental concerns. Creating a more eco-friendly product is what led Marrero to put his craft brews exclusively in cans, a decision that helped earn him a “Who’s Keeping Hawaii Green” award in 2008. “Aluminum is infinitely recyclable, and recycled cans can be back on the shelf with new product within eight weeks,” says Marrero. “To use bottles, we’d have to ship from thousands of miles away only to ship it back. The cans are locally produced and have a one-way journey. It’s better for the beer, better for the environment.”

So whether you’re going green or toasting your team’s colors, when settling in this February 7 for America’s most-watched television broadcast, why not root for the underdog? Grab a pint glass, a can of craft brew, and prepare to level the playing field in the great beer debate.