How Zichovec’s move away from bottles reveals a much bigger change taking place across Czech craft beer.
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ZICHOVEC Packaging, change and Czech craft
2019 First canned beer
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BOTTLES + CANS Both formats coexist
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TODAY Bottles phased out
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WHAT’S NEXT? A new canning line
There are a lot of cans at Zichovec.
They sit stacked high on pallets beside the packaging line, waiting to be filled. Others move through the machinery, one after another, on their way to becoming the next Zichovec beer.
Look around for the bottles and you will not find them.
That is not an accident.
Zichovec filled its first canned beer in 2019. Today, the brewery has stopped bottling altogether.
When we visited Zichovec, we sat down with Martin Urban, CEO and head brewmaster, and asked him when that decision was made.
It turns out there was no single moment.
No big announcement. No sudden rejection of the bottle.
It happened gradually.
And perhaps that is what makes the story interesting.
Because something has changed beyond Zichovec too. Walk into a Czech craft beer shop today and the can no longer feels unusual. A format that once carried a very different reputation has become part of the everyday landscape of Czech craft beer.
So what changed?
FOR A WHILE, BOTH MADE SENSE
For a while, bottles and cans existed alongside each other. But producing the same beer in two different formats brought its own complications.
Two types of packaging meant more complexity. More storage. More decisions about how much of each format to produce.
At the same time, demand for cans was growing.
Zichovec stopped bottling completely around the time it introduced its new visual identity. But Martin told us there was no single trigger behind the decision.
It was a combination of things.
And one of them had nothing to do with how the packaging looked.
It was about the beer inside.
A CAN ISN’T AUTOMATICALLY BETTER
Ask whether cans are better for beer and it is tempting to look for a simple answer.
Martin’s answer was more nuanced.
A can does not automatically guarantee better beer. The packaging process matters.
One thing Martin kept coming back to was oxygen. When beer is packaged properly, cans can help keep oxygen exposure very low.
“OXYGEN KILLS BEER”
Martin Urban
CEO and head brewer, Zichovec
Protecting the beer was part of Zichovec’s thinking, but it wasn’t the only consideration. As Martin explained, the reasons for leaving bottles behind extended well beyond what happens during filling.
That makes the conversation less about choosing aluminium over glass and more about how the beer is packaged in the first place.
But beer quality alone does not explain why Zichovec was willing to leave bottles behind completely.
For that, you have to look around the beer.
Literally.
THEN THERE IS EVERYTHING AROUND THE BEER
A bottle is heavy.
One bottle might not feel particularly significant. Multiply that weight across pallets, deliveries and thousands of litres of beer, and it becomes a very different calculation.
Martin told us that the can itself is cheaper than a bottle, but the bigger economic advantage comes from logistics.
Cans weigh much less. They take up less space. More beer can fit onto a pallet. They are easier to store and transport, and there is less risk of breakage along the way.
There is an environmental argument here too, although the comparison is not as simple as saying that cans are always more sustainable than bottles.
For Zichovec, weight and transport efficiency matter. Aluminium is highly recyclable, and moving more beer with less packaging weight makes sense for the way the brewery operates.
And then there is something every growing brewery eventually runs out of.
Space.
MAKING ROOM FOR WHAT COMES NEXT
Zichovec is planning a new canning line with a pasteurisation unit.
That equipment needs somewhere to go.
Keeping a bottling line for a packaging format the brewery no longer considered essential would mean giving valuable brewery space to something used less and less.
Removing it creates room for what comes next.
There is a small detail in this part of the story that stayed with us.
Once Zichovec no longer needed its old bottling line, the brewery tried to sell it.
Finding a buyer was difficult.
Almost no brewery wanted it.
It is only one piece of equipment from one Czech brewery, so it would be easy to read too much into it. Still, in a story about changing packaging habits, a bottling line that almost nobody wanted is telling.
If Zichovec were being built from scratch now, Martin told us, they would go straight to cans.
THE CAN HAD A REPUTATION PROBLEM
But changing the packaging was only part of the story. There was also the question of how Czech drinkers saw the can in the first place.
Martin traced some of that perception back to the 1990s. He remembers large breweries putting beer into cans at a time when the technology did not protect the beer as well as it can today.
For some drinkers, that experience created an association that proved difficult to shake.
Beer in a can meant something different from beer in a bottle.
The bottle felt familiar. Established. Proper.
The can had work to do.
That history helps explain why changing the perception of canned beer has taken time.
Even Zichovec encountered some resistance.
When the brewery stopped bottling, there was no major public announcement, so there was no dramatic reaction either. Martin remembers some beer shops saying they would stop buying Zichovec if bottles disappeared.
In the end, they kept buying.
The brewery also lost one or two product spaces in a major supermarket.
But there was no broader backlash.
People kept buying the beer.
And slowly, the can became less remarkable.
ARE BOTTLES DISAPPEARING?
Probably not.
And that distinction matters.
Zichovec may have left bottles behind, but Martin does not expect every Czech craft brewery to follow exactly the same path.
Martin expects that, over the next five years, cans will become increasingly common among larger craft breweries. Smaller breweries, however, are likely to continue using bottles.
Different breweries have different production volumes, equipment, customers and economics.
What makes sense for Zichovec does not automatically make sense for a small local brewery.
At Zichovec itself, however, the direction is clear.
Nothing will remain in bottles.
Regular beers will generally continue in 500 ml cans, while barrel aged specials will move into smaller 330 ml cans.
For Zichovec, the bottle is not being kept around for tradition.
The transition is complete.
MORE THAN A CHANGE OF PACKAGING
Standing beside Zichovec’s packaging operation, it would be easy to make this a story about aluminium and glass.
But that is not really what changed.
What changed is everything around them.
Packaging technology improved. Logistics became more important as craft breweries grew. Customers became more comfortable seeing serious beer in cans. Breweries began thinking differently about space, transport and shelf life.
None of those things happened overnight.
Neither did Zichovec’s transition.
Its first canned beer was filled in 2019. Bottles continued for years afterwards. Then, quietly, they stopped.
No farewell campaign.
No declaration that the bottle was dead.
There was no single moment when the can won.
It simply became normal.
And perhaps that is the more interesting shift taking place in Czech craft beer.
Not that every brewery will choose the same package.
But that a can no longer needs explaining.
THE CHEERS! QUESTION
After talking about packaging lines, oxygen, logistics, supermarkets and the future of Czech craft beer, we wanted to finish somewhere simpler.
So we asked Martin one last question.
If you could share a beer with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?
He chose Václav Havel.
Someone he admired and someone he would have liked the chance to sit down with over a beer.
And what would he pour?
Krahulík, Zichovec’s lager.
Explore September Collection
Six carefully selected Czech craft beers, chosen to be shared and enjoyed.
