If you’re a Carlsberg beer drinker, you might soon have to get used to toasting without that familiar “clink.”
The alcohol giant announced today that it is in the process of developing a biodegradable bottle made of wood fibres, meaning there won’t be any sound when you touch bottles before throwing back a cold one.
Though the “Green Fiber Bottle” won’t replace Carlsberg’s aluminum or glass varieties, it could face criticism from diehard beer lovers who have become accustomed to the sound.
It’s a problem Carlsberg faced when it introduced a polyethylene terephthalate bottle in Sweden, said the company’s spokesperson Simon Hoffmeyer Boas. To address the backlash, it rolled out a website allowing beer drinkers to download recordings of the “bottle clink,” the “buddy clink” and the “bag jingle”—sounds made when a bottle is opened, tapped with another and rattled around in a bag.
“You can pour it in a glass and still hear the sound,” Hoffmeyer Boas jokingly offered as a solution to the clinking problem.
Ken Wong, a marketing professor at Queen’s University, said he’s not sure how many brew lovers will be heartbroken over the clink, but “certainly it will be a factor.”
“I don’t know that anyone has bought or not bought beer with the clink in mind,” he said. “I don’t see a lot of people clinking beer bottles here, but I see a lot of people smacking mugs. I don’t know that there will be that kind of sensitivity.”
He noted that the bottle announcement came as companies are pouring their efforts into generating buzz and cultivating buyers. As beer sales have declined, brewers have been offering flavoured beverages, frosted liners, textured cans and promotional add-ons just to generate sales.
“This is one more turn of the wheel,” Wong said. “Whether or not it works is another story.”
Steve Beauchesne, CEO and co-founder of Beau’s All Natural Brewing Co., a craft brewery, said Carlsberg isn’t the first to use innovative packaging materials that stretch beyond glass and aluminum. His company sells beer in ceramic bottles with a swing top and packages them in a wooden crate that is stackable and fits 12” vinyl records.
He says companies are getting creative because “beer is not just about the liquid,” but also the experience.
“If you have the best beer in the world and you put it in a terrible container, you are really not doing the beer justice,” he says. “The effort you put into the package is a usually a good indicator of how much effort went into making the beer.”
As for Carlsberg’s effort, that’ll be a three-year process taken on with packaging company ecoXpac, the Innovation Fund of Denmark and the Technical University of Denmark.
Part of the reason for the lengthy development is the impulse drying process Carlsberg is using. It involves pressing materials between a heated rotating roll and a static surface in an extremely short period of time to ensure bottles are smooth.
So far Hoffmeyer Boas says the bottle, which will generate zero waste and feature a bio-based cap, “is not done and ready for the shelves yet.”
Only prototypes have been developed.
