Anyone heard about a portable bottling trailer? I guess some a company offers a portable bottle facility. They basically pull up to your place, you give them the product and they will put it into cans complete with your label. Anyone heard about this?
We used portable bottling truck for the beer I brewed at one of Rogue’s facilities for NHC last year.
Some of the pros know about it. Yeah they exist but it might be better to do bottlez.
With the explosion of canned craft beer, there has been an increase of poorly canned craft beer. If you outsource your canning, how will you make sure the QC is adequate? Some canning lines require mid-run adjustments to make sure they’re seaming correctly. How much do you trust a stranger with thousands of dollars of your beer? If you have a run of bad cans, it sucks for you but doesn’t matter at all for the canner.
That said, it’s probably more likely that the mobile canner knows how to can better than you, so I’d say outsource before you buy your own canning line. But I’d say bottle before doing any of that.
Canning line is a huge investment.
There is more to it then just buying the equipment.
The same goes for bottling and labeling line.
Ask me how I know.
There are mobile canners/bottelers.
You are still responsible for your own shrink wraps and you pay them per case packaged.
You will still be involved in canning process so do not think that someone will can/bottle for you.
We have a local group who is putting together a mobile bottling unit right now. Should be available in a matter of weeksd. We are no where near label approval yet but as soon as we are they will role up and we will be producing 4 or 6 packs. I’ll have more infor (and photos) then.
Bottles?
Yep.
Nice.
We have a guy with Moheen filler that is filling 22 oz.
make sure that they know what they are doing.
He was bottling in brewery close by and they wasted a lot of beer, it took much more time then anticipated and did not fill as much as they wanted.
If you have a good contractor then there is a great potential.
I’m not doing a damn thing until I see it run at another brewery. I have no contract, don’t intend to have one.
Looking forward to the photos. Thanks,
How was the shelf life of the final product?
The investment in the canning line is the issue here. Did some research over the weekend and minimums are around 1000 cans/labels but none are in Michigan. So this won’t work right not, will stick with the bottles.
Drank what was the last bottle AFAIK about a month ago. Still fine.
Outsourcing packaging seems to be on the rise right now, especially among newer crafts. I understand the appeal – lower capital costs, getting packaged beer to off-sale retailers instead of draft-only sales (which yield a greater margin), and not hiring any direct labor for packaging.
I know there is a company in San Fran (IIRC) called the Can Van that has a mobile canning line for hire. There’s a guy here in Minnesota who has a mobile bottling line for 22 oz bombers. We are mostly likely going with a semi-automatic canning line from Cask Systems in Canada so that we don’t have to rely on outsourcing for off-sale retail packaging. It will require a greater cost up front, and more man hours, but I’d rather keep it in house and be able to package when/how I want to.
I’ve seen a lot of complaints about Cask on the probrewer forum. People seem to prefer Wild Goose.
Matt,
Stay away from Cask.
I also got a quote from Wild Goose. Their semi-automated machine is 2x the price of Cask’s. But I do like that you can easily add automation modules. Does anyone have any personal experience with either Cask or WG?
If your brewery isn’t a failure, you’ll probably be really glad to have automation in short order.
I am in the process.
Cask is Balls reseller and you have to buy supply ONLY from them.
Minimum for Crowns is 8 pallets
Balls is 12 pallets.
You have to wire money…