I had my wife serve me four glasses of Miller, two from a bottle and two from a can, all prepared in the kitchen while I waited in the living room. I can tell the difference 100% of the time. The bottled beer is clean while the canned beer has a dull cloyingly sweet and bitter flavor. Just in case anybody wanted to know if I would actually do the test. 
How many times have you repeated this? Is it can/bottle or lot/lot variability?
I purposely bought two 24 ounce bombers, one bottle and one can so that it couldn’t be one can or bottle different from the rest. I’ve always been able to tell the difference, but I’ve never tried it without seeing which one went into the glass. Usually if I’m drinking BMC beer I don’t even bother with the glass though. Interestingly enough, I did like the extra bitter from the can, but then I’m kinda hooked on bitter beer too. The cloying sweetness really stood out in the comparison though too.
I’m sure someone will say I should have done more but if I were to do ten glasses then why not do twenty and see if I notice if someone slips in a Bud… 
The real accomplishment is that you got your wife to pour you 4 beers.
Thanks for bringing this up. I’ll have to try this myself a some point.
Kai
+1
Food for thought.
Thanks for doing the test and reporting the results, Dean. 2 questions remain now…first, what is it that’s causing the difference? Is it the cans or something else? If it is the can causing the difference, what about the can is doing it? Second, why is it that no one else has reported this? Is it because no one has done the test the way you did it, or is it something else? I’m teaching a BJCP class and I think we’ll do this for the class. That way, we’ll have 15 more opinions from some people who are pretty good tasters.
I’ve noticed the difference between cans and bottled counterparts. Anecdotal evidence is often influenced by subjectivity. So why not try this with a group of 15 as Denny is suggesting and get the real skinny.
Though, for Miller products, is region important and an influencing factor?
I agree it is good information to build upon. I have to admit what you describe in the difference is not what I expected. I expected a report of something tasting metalic, which is not the case. It is interesting to hear the description being cloying because that is something I guess normally would be attributed to a bad fermentation or overuse of an ingredient. I’m also interested in what property of can a can makes it bitter.
Denny, if you are going to go ahead and do a larger sample I’d make one suggestion. Do it with both BMC beer and a craft beer. I’d be really interested if a noticeable difference is in cheap crap beer, just craft beer, both, or neither.
I will if I can find a craft beer that comes in both cans and bottles. But if it’s due to the packaging, it seems like it shouldn’t make a difference whether it’s mass market or craft beer. Next class won’t be til 4/12, so it won’t happen til then.
I think BMC is actually better for this test - less native flavor to mask the flavors you aim to detect.
I am anxious to hear further results.
Thats why I chose Miller High Life, its clean and has a low flavor profile, no specialty grains or at least a very low amount to throw your tastebuds off. Let us know how the test turns out Denny.
I must admit I’m quite surprised. Although you didn’t repeat this enough times to eliminate chance, it’s at least somewhat unlikely that you would guess correctly twice in a row. Did you find yourself mulling over your choice or was it like instantly ‘that’s it!’. What about the freshness dates on the bottles cans, were they comparable? I’ll have to try this myself next time I head to the store.
I’m a bit confused by your taste results, the can was both sweet and bitter? For me when I taste a beer that is sweet it is lacking in bitterness. Bitterness could be from metal exposure, but sweetness has to be a fermentation or recipe issue. You may have had a lot-lot variance which affected the outcome.
If you do the test again, a better one would be a triangle test, where you have two beers from one side and one beer from the other, and you pick out the beer that is different. When doing a single side-by-side, you know they are different and you can sometimes get a false positive this way.
Nyakavt, since I hadn’t had any Miller in at least 4 months and didn’t taste either one before the test, I could not directly or immediately say which one was from a bottle or a can… what I was able to do was put them in order as to which ones tasted the exact same… ie the two glasses that were from cans were together and the two glasses that were from bottles were together. Try it and you’ll see what I mean. Thats what kind of surprised me, I liked the extra bitterness of the can. The bottles are cleaner… softer might be a better word for it?
Where does the extra bitter come from… I believe it is from contact with the aluminum. What is the chemical name for baking soda… I can’t think of it, but it reacts with aluminum as I described in the cookware test… but the concentration is higher in the cookware test and it tastes like crap. Anyway this is just a guess but I’d say all beer has some trace amount of that chemical in it… some beer has more?
I’ll dig out the bottle and can to check the date on them…
My guess would be because it’s BMC. It’s pretty much gonna suck either way! ;D
Dean, as far as I know, cans are lined so that beer doesn’t contact metal. Is that wrong?
EDIT: I haven’t found any direct info on beer cans, but here’s some about soda cans…
I believe the final pH of beer is about the same as soda, so I’d expect beer cans to be lined for the same reasons. But I’ll keep looking for specific info.
Sodium Bicarbonate?
Didn’t do the blind taste test but I tried bottle vs can of Bud lite, Couldn’t taste a difference. However I did play around with pouring it in a glass as well as drinking from the can and bottle. Drinking from the can does give a certain metallic feel in the mouth.
Man, I cant believe I subjected myself to that. Im gonna go wash my mouth out with caustic.
Oh ok, I didn’t realize you did them all together. This is just as good as a triangle, even a little more difficult since you had to pair down the like beers. Really want to try this now.
The thing I keep wondering about is not that there was a difference, but why the difference was that the can seemed more bitter. What is it about the packaging that would create that taste?
Simplest explanation is that the beer itself was different…different batches, or more likely given BMC’s ridiculously good consistency, different ages. Longer time on the shelf for one batch perhaps. I mean, sitting in the back of a store refrigerator for weeks is a sort of cold conditioning… ;D
The answer for me would be to add more beers to the group. It would suck having to buy 8 different cases of what’s generally considered not great beer, so Denny’s idea of doing it in a BJCP class sounds great. If you can increase the number of trained testers, and increase the sample set significantly of beers, then if there is a difference you should see a nice pattern emerge. And all the different viewpoints should help define the differences too…we all use different language to describe taste sensations. Seems like “metallic” is off the table at least, at least by this test.