anybody seen an electric can seamer for say under $1000? I never really thought about getting one, but recently while at jeffy’s LHBS I overheard another patron talking about one in the $500-$700 range. still expensive, but low enough to pique my interest.
since then I’ve been searching online, but the lowest I’ve seen is around $1600. That’s a bit much particularly for something that i’ll be primarily using to help give away more of my beer. I’m a bit crushed (see what I did there).
I think Drew’s is hand powered, but I’m not certain. IRC, it was around 600-700.
I looked into the all american that Drew has, I haven’t seen an electric for under $1000. The part that kills me is the cost of the cans. For a 5 gallon batch, you’re spending ~$15 on bright (unlabeled) cans. That’s around $0.37 per 16 oz. can, and around $0.58/labelled from what I’ve found.
I don’t see the price of cans coming down by much unless they begin to geographically spread the manufacture of the cans to reduce the freight and storage costs. Pallets of cans are light but big, this makes them expensive. I’m curious if the big boys bring their cans in on rail to reduce the cost beyond ordering at scale.
ouch; thankfully aside from a high gravity batch here or there which I might be inclined to package, I’d mostly be using it for a few cans/4pk here and there to give to friends and not have to hound them to give me back a growler when they are done.
that’s not too bad, just have heard of more occurrences of leaking with a hand crank, but it may be a reasonable trade off.
So far he seems happy with it. He keeps claiming he’s gonna send me something he’s canned, but I’m not holding my breath.