East Sussex-based Harvey’s has moved into offering its beers in cans following a request from British Airways.

The brewery expedited its plans to diversify into canned beer after British Airways tasked Harvey’s with supplying beer to its i360, a 450ft high viewing pod, in Brighton last year.

“They were unable to dispense draught beer and there was a restriction on glass bottles so we decided to put our Best Bitter into a can,” explained Harvey’s sales and marketing manager Bob Trimm, going on to explain how it was a success.

He added “With our new branding on the cans it created a whole new market for us, with a younger demographic clearly attracted to our beer – some of whom told us they would never have tried it if they’d only come across it in cask.”

The success convinced Harvey’s to launch a whole range of beer in cans so Best Bitter is joined by Gold Bier (4%), Malt Brown (4.8%) and the newest addition to the line-up, Black Stout (4.8%), a traditional stout porter.

The latter is described as having undertones of coffee and chocolate and a balanced, bittersweet flavour from a combination of light and dark malts together with traditional British hops.

Trimm added: ”We believe cans give us the opportunity to engage with a demographic and a route to market that would not have considered us as solely a cask ale producer.

“We’ve had interest from companies that supply cruise ships and airlines and we’re also talking to restaurants and hotels. These are all conversations we couldn’t have had with cask ale.”