As craft brewers expand into beverages beyond beer, many are under the impression that a counter pressure canning system is required to meet the carbonation levels of seltzers and other higher-carbonation beverages. But new research from Cask Global Canning Solutions (the inventor of micro-canning for craft brewers) reveals that such thinking is incorrect.

According to Cask’s new Data Labs research, atmospheric canning systems from Cask are more than sufficient to reach the actual carbonation levels of hard seltzers, RTD cocktails and other canned products.

“The commercially available products analyzed,” Cask’s research found, “never exceeded 2.8 vol CO2 in-can, while craft beverages from Cask customers packaged on our in-line atmospheric filler ranged from 1.9-3.3 vol in-can.”

The mass-market products tested for CO2 volumes (with an Anton Paar CboxQC) stretched from the popular White Claw and Truly hard seltzers to Perrier and RTD cocktails from Jack Daniels. Cask also tested the CO2 volumes of an array of similar beverages canned on its equipment.

“Our research showed that brewers often don’t know the true benchmarks for carbonation of the beverages they want to create,” says Cask’s B.h. Jamison.

The findings mean craft beverage makers can achieve the needed carbonation volumes for a range of new products on a more affordable and compact non-counter-pressure canning system. “We’re making it easier,” Jamison says, “for beverage makers to create new products and revenue streams.”

And as the report concludes, for those beverage makers wondering if you need a counter-pressure filler to can higher carbonated beverages, there’s an emphatic and clear answer: “No.”

See the complete Cask Data labs carbonation research paper at https://www.cask.com/2021/07/data-labs-carbonation/ .