Most Central Oregon craft brewers have their beers on draft.

Others, like Deschutes Brewery, 10 Barrel and Cascade Lakes brewing companies also bottle their beer.

Boneyard Beer plans to sell its beer in cans, possibly by next year.

And GoodLife and Worthy brewing companies plan to do all three.

GoodLife, which began bottling seven months after it opened,plans later this month to start canning its beer, using a mobile canning company.

By fall, Worthy expects to be operating canning and bottling lines.

“Cans are only second to kegs for maintaining a high level of product integrity — quality beer,” said Chris Hodge, co-owner of the east-side brewery that opened last month. “They are the optimum method for getting your beer far and wide: Less weight, less waste and lower shipping cost.

“But bottling is an important method for reaching the consumers who still have not embraced craft beer in a can.”

GoodLife co-owner Ty Barnett agrees.

“We chose to do both because bottles are perceivably more artisanal, more readily available and more accepted by the public,” he said. “Us trying to get (bottles) into a store is easier than cans.”

Bottles dominate the distribution of craft beer, although canning has been gaining ground. For craft brewers, the taste of the beer is key. Some people believe cans change the flavor, but canning proponents disagree.

Barnett hopes to change the misperception that cans contain lower quality beer by canning GoodLife.

“Cans are starting to be more accepted. We want to help the beer industry push the ball forward in the can genre to become more readily acceptable by the general public and stores,” he said. “Craft should be, whether you put it in a bottle or a can, accepted either way. It should be about the beer and not the package.”

Barnett said he wants GoodLife beer available everywhere, in all locations where a beer drinker may see it and want to try it.

Distribution in kegs gets GoodLife beer into bars, restaurants and growler fill stations; cans and bottles put GoodLife on grocery store shelves, and larger, 22-ounce bottles, lands the brew in specialty bottle shops, he said.

Tony Lawrence, co-owner of Boneyard Beer, said the original business plan he formulated in his living room in 2009 called for canning, which Boneyard expects to start sometime next year. He chose the can mostly because that’s what he prefers. Canning’s recent trendiness is a bonus.

“For the bulk of our packaged volume, canning is our business plan,” he said, “50 percent draft, 50 percent canned packaging.”

From a business standpoint, he said it would beneficial to sell draft, bottled and canned beer, but Boneyard plans to stick to cans and kegs, except for a few top-shelf specialty beers that will be bottled in wax-capped or caged-and-corked bottles.

“I don’t think I’d be interested in all three tiers,” he said. “But when you look at the big players … they play on all three tiers. If you want to act like the big boys, you have to play like the big boys.”

Hodge, of Worthy, said he’s not trying to equal the production of mega breweries. Like Barnett at GoodLife, Hodge just wants to reach all craft-beer aficionados — whether they choose the bottle, can or the tap.

“We will never put quantity in front of quality, ever,” he said. “We want to ensure any beer we put into any package tastes as good as it does coming fresh out of the tap.”

On average, he said, 7 percent of beer drinkers nationally consume craft beer. In Oregon, he said, it’s about four times that.

“If we only did cans, we’d be able to reach half that percentage,” Hodge said. “If we did cans, bottles and kegs we’d be able to maximize our reach to all the consumers that are looking for a great craft brew.”

Crux Fermentation Project, which opened in June, began distributing kegs to local restaurants eight weeks ago, said Dave Wilson, co-owner.

Crux bottled the first 16 cases of beer Feb. 22 in a test run inside the tasting room. The beermakers used a manual, two-head filling machine that bottles two beers at one time, he said.

“We love cans, we love bottles,” Wilson said. “They both bring a different element to craft beer.”

But, it’s not his strategy to do both.

“My personal preference is you pick a direction and you go that direction,” he said. “We are bottling here. It fits our branding; it fits who we are.”

But he’s traveled in the other direction, too.

Wilson is also vice president of sales and marketing for San Francisco-based 21st Amendment Brewery, the nation’s second-largest craft brewery — one that distributes beer exclusively in cans.

“I own a brewery where we’re bottling, and I believe that’s the best way for Crux, and here I run another company that exclusively cans and I think it’s the best direction for the 21st Amendment Brewery,” he said. “It has to do with what you’re trying to achieve.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7818,

First canned beer sold in 1935

Humans learned to make beer more than 10,000 years ago, according to historians, but they did not figure out how to put it in a can until the 1930s.

The first can of beer, brewed by Krueger Beer, was sold Jan. 24, 1935, in Richmond, Va., according to the Can Manufacturers Institute. The steel can could only be opened with a can opener.