"With a tavern you get a different clientele," said Mary Ann DiNoto, who co-owns the Half Keg, a tavern in an old military Quonset hut in New London.
The biggest advantage to cans over kegs is the fact that leftover cans can be kept for your next party, a half empty keg, cannot (unless you have a kegerator).
"Do you want to see a keg stand?" shouted a bunch of shirtless fraternity brothers who were crowded around a half-buried keg of beer.
'I've been a cooper for 17 years, but I've been drinking ale for a good deal longer,' he says, running a spoke-shave down the edge of a half-finished keg.
Even though it turns out a hefty 4,000 half-kegs a year, its signature product, Old Yankee Ale, isn't really known outside Stonington, Mystic and New London.
Trout Brook, a seven-year-old microbrewery whose 2,400 half-kegs of beer a year are branded under the Thomas Hooker label, like the award-winning Blonde Ale, is vigorously joining the pro-growler fight.
Today, Olde Burnside rolls out 3,000 half-kegs of beer a year, like the Ten Penny Ale, brewed Scottish-style with few hops, and this winter, Father Christmas Highland Ale.
"Ordinarily we can fill 85 kegs in two and a half hours," Mr. Oliver said.
Soon you'll be achieving with one stiff cocktail what used to take half a keg to achieve.
At the company's five connected stone warehouses, DeVoe writes, maize went for one and a half florins a bushel, a six-month-old hog fetched fifteen florins, and a keg of butter sold for twenty-five florins.
