This Good Brews Week Pete and Matt are joined by Dr. André Sammartino to discuss the beer news of the week.

André is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management & Marketing at the University of Melbourne and his main research interests are at the intersection of international business and strategic management. His recent projects have looked at the geographical reach of multinationals, reconfiguration of international competitive advantages, and the cognitive processes of individual executives making international decisions.

He was the right guest in the right week as this week we look at:

• A first-of-its-kind coastal shipping service for craft brewers
• Andre’s own article: Despite our growing taste for craft brews, smaller beer makers face a huge disadvantage
• $15-million brewing collaboration centre announced for Brisbane

We also discuss our letter of the week which included the following question from listener Landon Moss:

The purpose of me writing this is to share a major gripe I have, and is one of the reasons I love craft beer in cans so much. 

Most of the craft beer available locally and the most affordable comes in bottles and I find after the first swig all I can taste is metal or to be more precise rust.  There is not always a glass handy and I shouldn’t have to wipe down every bottle before I take a drink imo. Is this something you have come across?

We threw the question out to a couple of production managers and received this reply from Richard Crowe, Production Manager at Stone & Wood after we recorded:

This phenomenon is typically due to inadequate drying under crowns before secondary packaging (cluster/wraps). The beer-contacting part of the crown has a wadding layer which is designed to form a tight seal and protect against air ingress. However, if you look at the underside of a crown on close inspection, you’ll see that the outer perimeter is still exposed metal and its here where water can reside and effectively leach metallic flavours – ending up on the mouth of the bottle.

I’ve tasted this myself and it is unpleasant, and the onus is on packaging plant design to dry under crown as much as possible before putting into secondary pack. Beyond this I’m unsure how feasible it is for crown suppliers to put this wadding material over the entire crown underside right to the perimeter, but that too could help with things.

Thanks to Landon for his email and to Richard for his reply.

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Tell us what you think about what’s going on in the beer industry by emailing us at producer@brewsnews.com.au. All letter writers will receive a brews news bottle opener, and our good friends at Beer Cartel sponsor our letter for the week. We will choose an email, a tweet or a comment each week and Beer Cartel will send you a mixed six-pack plus a Brews News bottle opener.