Days of the Beer, February 23

The beer for today is Oskar Blues Dale's Pale Ale.

On February 23, 1886, Charles Martin Hall produced the first samples of man-made aluminum. His invention was a very inexpensive method for making aluminum, which became the first metal to attain widespread use since the prehistoric discovery of iron.

His process involved passing an electric current through a bath of alumina dissolved in cryolite, which resulted in a puddle of aluminum forming in the bottom. He filed for a patent on the process on July 9, 1886. He later moved to Pittsburgh and helped form the Reduction Company of Pittsburgh (which later became Alcoa).

He is considered to be the originator of the American spelling of aluminum, since he misspelled it on a graphic publicizing his refinement process. Ever since then, Americans have called it aluminum, while most of the rest of the world calls it aluminium. Al-oo-min-um compared to al-u-min-e-um.

As to the beer:

Oskar Blues is credited as being the first US craft brewer to brew and can its own beer. That's right, there beer is in cans.

The brewery began hand-canning its hoppy, assertive-but-elegant Dale’s Pale Ale on a table-top machine that sealed just one can at a time. The move made Oskar Blues the first US craft brewer to brew and can its own beer.

Why cans? “We thought the idea of our big, luscious pale ale in a can was hilarious,” recalls founder Dale Katechis. “And it made our beer immensely portable for outdoor enjoyment fun.” Katechis and his crew then discovered other bennies of aluminum cans. “Cans keep beer incredibly fresh by fully protecting it from light and oxygen.”

Additionally, modern aluminum cans are lined with a coating, so the beer never touches the metal.

America’s first hand-canned craft beer is a voluminously hopped mutha that delivers a hoppy nose, assertive-but-balanced flavors of pale malts and hops from start to finish. First canned in 2002, Dale’s Pale Ale is a hearty (6.5% and 65 IBUs), critically acclaimed trailblazer that has changed the way craft beer fiends perceive canned beer.

The beer comes in at 6.5% ABV. (You probably won't find their beer in Illinois, or most of Indiana, but it is right across the border in Wisconsin, and also in Fort Wayne, Indiana).

So, for Charles Martin Hall, who first discovered the modern process for making aluminum, have a Dale's Pale Ale, the first modern craft beer to be put into aluminum cans.