Craft Brew Supplement 2021

PRESENTS

CRAFT BREW

PACKAGING & PROCESSING INNOVATION

MARCH 2021

Craft Brewing

ON A WORLD STAGE

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021 1 A supplement to Packaging World

Contents

Ryson Vertical Conveying Solutions

2 Shrink Sleeve Solution Lets Label Art Shine

With a progression of differently decorated labels printed in succession on a roll, this customized shrink sleeve canning operation produces a range of unique, artistic labels during each run of craft beer.

10 Brewing Up Efficiency

Yee-Haw Brewing Co. uses its water tube boiler to reap the benefits of fuel and water savings as well as quality control in its manufacturing process.

14 Craft Brewer Grows into Two-In-One Palletizer, Stretch Wrapper

Automation often begets more automation.

That was certainly the case with Pelican Brewing Co., whose fast filling operations soon necessitated end-of-line palletization.

22 Craft Brewing Quick Hits

From glass bottles to aluminum cans to an unusual bag-in-box format, the craft brewing sector has it all where packaging formats are concerned.

32 Advertiser Index

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PMMI Media Group 401 North Michigan Ave., Suite 300, Chicago, IL 60611 Phone: 312/222-1010 • Fax: 312/222-1310 E-Mail: info@packworld.com • Web: www.packworld.com PMMI The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies 12930 Worldgate Dr., Suite 200, Herndon VA, 20170 Phone: 571/612-3200 • Fax: 703/243-8556 • Web: www.pmmi.org Staff at PMMI Media Group can be contacted at info@pmmimediagroup.com

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021

Shrink Sleeve Solution Lets Label Art Shine With a progression of differently decorated labels printed in succession on a roll, this customized shrink sleeve canning operation produces a range of unique, artistic labels during each run of craft beer.

By Matt Reynolds, Editor

C

ollective Arts Brewing (CAB) combines the creativity of craft beverages with the inspired talents of artists from around the world. The brewery features limitededition works of art on its labels and aims for the liquid on the inside to be as diverse and creative as the artists it profiles. The company was founded in 2013, and after two years contending with scarce capacity among contract brewers, in 2015 it took the plunge with a brewery of its own in Hamilton, Ontario.

After starting with beer in bottles, the company eventually switched exclusively to beer in cans. It grew quickly into ciders in bottles, hard teas in cans, and the latest craft beverage darling—canned ready-to-drink (RTD) cocktails. The company is even doing some distilling, gin mostly, in larger multi-serving bottles. This means the number of SKUs and possible formats is growing exponentially. So grows the opportunity for uniquely decorated labels across the product range.

Lots of labels The artistic concept is about as packaging-forward as craft breweries venture, but it leads to some tough packaging automation decisions from an operational standpoint. It’s one thing for a craft brewery to eschew printed cans in favor of shrink sleeves or p-s labels on bright stock. That practice is pretty common in an industry known for small batches, seasonal varieties, and brewery collaborations in volumes too low to meet printed-can MOQs. But it’s another thing to use multiple different labels on the same brand and batch of beer. All but a few of CAB’s beer brands, including the highest volume core brands, use at least four different labels at once, with each of the four labels featuring a different piece of artwork. Take, for example, the beer brand Life in the Clouds, a New England-style IPA. On any given batch run of this brand, the company will be producing cans with one of four different label treatments. What’s more, that artwork is swapped out at least three to four times per year. If beer and art

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Four different pieces of artwork are printed in succession on the PETG rollstock used to shrink sleeve cans of beer at CAB, resulting in four differently decorated beer varieties coming off of each batch run. connoisseurs decided to collect them, they might find 12 to 14 differently decorated cans of Life in the Clouds in 2021.

“Getting all of that art onto our cans and bottles is a bit of an art in and of itself,” says Jeff Tkachuk, VP, Finance and Operations, Collective Arts Brewing. “Our most common

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021 format is loose 16-oz cans going into a 24-count corrugated tray. When the cans come off the line, we want to have an assortment of all four different pieces of artwork going into each tray. We don’t want to produce trays with 24 pieces of the same artwork on each can. We want to make sure we’re getting a nice distribution of all four pieces of artwork. We want to end up with an evenly mixed pallet.”

That might be technically possible with printed cans, but it would be prohibitively difficult at most craft breweries. It would entail buying a whole lot of large, complex collation equipment, keeping inventory of several different can styles, and paying a premium for low volume/high variety printed cans.

We also asked Tkachuk if the latest tech—direct digital printing onto cans— might be another route to accomplishing this. But as an emerging methodology, digital printing direct to cans is still an expensive prospect. He also sees the image quality, including how much of the can that can be covered in decoration, as a drawback. Digital printing directly on cans might need a few years of adherence to Moore’s Law, whereby a technology decreases in price while increasing in quality, before it’s ready for prime time.

“I know there’s some digital printing tech that will only print between the heel and the shoulder, but I think there is some technology that will print up onto the shoulder, so the digital print technology is evolving, and it certainly is going to be a good fit for us. But at this point, and given our volumes, the digital printing just doesn’t make sense for our entire portfolio because they’re still pretty slow, plus I think the quality still has a way to go.”

Familiar shrink sleeve is the answer Shrink sleeve labeling, however, makes the high-variety label concept attainable in extremely high quality, since label suppliers are able to convert a single, contiguous roll of PETG label stock with four different labels in succession.

The result is a repeating progression on the roll from label 1 to label 4, then back to label 1 and so on. While the products themselves aren’t true rainbow packs—the beer brand is the same in each can style—there are still four possible art pieces on any given can, so a tray of 24 has an even distribution of four differently decorated labels.

“Quality always comes first for us, both on the outside and the inside of the can,” Tkachuk says. “I think making sure that the art is being presented in the best possible format is a big

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The mandrel-based shrink sleever used at Collective Arts typically runs between 200 and 220 cans/min, but could speed up to 300 cans/min. deal for us. Shrink sleeves give us that ability because the sleeve covers 100% of the can, from the shoulders to the heel, letting the artwork stand on its own.”

Using shrink sleeve labels wasn’t a new concept to CAB—operators had been using them since it started its bricks-and-mortar brewery in 2015. But in its more formative state, the brewery had been using cans that were pre-sleeved by a third party on a much slower filling line. Back then, CAB was just running two five-head Cask filling lines in tandem with the pre-sleeved can.

“We were constantly pushing the pre-sleeved can suppliers to get the sleeves up higher on the container, to avoid that silver line on the shoulder between the seam and the can. It’s less aesthetically pleasing if it’s visible, and a big part of our concept relies on the aesthetic, on the art,” Tkachuk says. “But in asking our suppliers to go higher, we ran the risk of going too high with the seam and allowing it to impact the lid-seaming process, leading to scrap and

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021 time on the sleever than we did on anything else, at least when it came to equipment. There’s a handful of fillers that can run at speed, but sleevers we didn’t know a lot about, so we did a lot of due diligence.”

Taking the plunge Having determined that shrink sleeve was still the best option for CAB’s needs and having committed to the methodology as a long-term solution that they’d rely on for the foreseeable future, they decided to invest in a piece of shrink sleeve equipment that, after a lot of research, they considered best in class—the PDC R300 Sleeving Machine.

“PDC gave us the most confidence that they could consistently get a sleeve on a can at 300 cans per minute in a post-fill environment. That was the conclusion we came to,

Dual banders ensure that the sleeve is in the right position when it leaves the sleever and enters the shrink tunnel. The first is set to a higher tension than the second to deal with variations in condensation or moisture on the cans. waste. That was always in the back of our mind. If we really wanted to get a sleeve up as high as possible, but not impact the integrity of the seam, we really needed to apply the sleeve post-fill.”

Another advantage of post-fill sleeving is that low-fill scraps are almost always caught, thanks to over/under fill level inspection, upstream from the shrink sleever. Underand over-fill scrap will be a less expensive brightstock can, not a value-added decorated can. It might be a nickel or a dime per fill-level scrap, but it adds up. Plus, the brewery already had its depalletizer, a traditional mezzanine-level depal with twist air rinse conveyance that carries empty cans into the lowlevel filler. Figuring out where a prefill shrink sleever would fit into that dynamic would have been difficult.

“There’s a number of different reasons why we wanted to sleeve post-fill, but it certainly presents its own challenges. You have a cold, wet can moving at 300 cans per minute that you’re trying to put a sleeve on, so we did a tremendous amount of work on how we get that can in a presentable format for the sleever. That means we have to heat and dry each can before sleeving, but it’s most important that we temper that heating—we don’t pasteurize our beer, so we don’t want to be doing any damage to the liquid inside by heating it [more on this later, when we describe the full line],” Tkachuk says. “Then, since this was our first foray into sleevers, we probably spent more

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Brightstock cans are filled on a 28-head rotary filler (above) and seamed (left) within a monobloc enclosure. and that’s why we went with them,” Tkachuk says. “If we were doing a higher volume of printed cans, maybe we wouldn’t have gone the high-end route. But because all of our cans are sleeved, we could not afford to have issues with the sleever. It’s running every day.

Every time we produce beer, that sleever is running.”

A secondary factor in selecting this specific make and model was the ability to shrink sleeve labels with both horizontal and vertical micro-perforation. This optional module

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perforates vertically or horizontally and provides precise servo-controlled cutoff registration. The system eliminates the need for the typical suite of knives and blades used to separate individual sleeves from the roll.

“The PDC perfs the sleeve, and then it just shoots it down on the mandrel. I’m estimating here, but I’m guessing we’ve run 50 million cans through that sleever, and we’ve replaced the perf mechanism once,” Tkachuk says.

“We’d heard feedback from some others using the knives that they’re great when they’re sharp and they’re perfectly aligned, but if they’re not, they can give you some troubles. We couldn’t afford to have any of those types of issues where if the knives were a little dull, or they weren’t aligned 100% properly, we didn’t want to have to deal with downtime.

The perforation technology seemed to be the best fit for us.”

The system also allows for an optional vertical perforation running lengthwise down the cylindrically shaped label. A benefit of this feature might be allowing consumers to easily remove the PETG material from the aluminum brightstock for easier recylcing. This is certainly market dependent, right down to the municipalities.

“Here in Canada, even within Ontario, different municipalities have different ways they recycle, but most recycling doesn’t require the sleeve to be removed,” Tkachuk says.

“If there’s a market that requires that, it’s something we can easily accommodate.”

Label placement on inconsistent can surfaces Anyone who has seen a highspeed shrink sleever in action knows that the cylindrical labels are shot down from the mandrel onto the waiting containers below with such a force that they can bounce a bit off the underlying conveyor, rebounding back up in a way that might unfavorably overlap the shoulder of the container while missing the heel of the can. If a container entered the shrink

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tunnel with a misaligned sleeve position, the beer would need to be relabeled or scrapped. To combat this, many systems use a rubber-wheel based banding mechanism between the sleever and the tunnel to gently nudge high-rebound labels back to flush with the bottom of the container, right at the conveyor level. Stock PDC machines use this mechanism as well.

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021 “Now, that works great on a perfectly dry, empty can.

But because the surface of our cans can be somewhat inconsistent—some might be a little bit drier, some might have a little bit of moisture or condensation on them, and there are ambient temperature and humidity differences between summer and winter—it was difficult to dial in the machine so you were getting a consistent application of the sleeve,” Tkachuk says.

If the cans were consistently a little wet, or a little moist, it would be just a matter of dialing in the single bander to compensate. But there is no such consistency, and when a drier can comes through the bander won’t be correctly calibrated. Consequently, the label will be pulled with too much force, causing it once again to bounce off of the conveyor below and come to rest too high on the can. This inconsistency required a custom fix.

“What we did was we added a second set of banders,” Tkachuk says. “The first one is a little bit more aggressive to get that sleeve down and into position on moist cans.

When a bone-dry can comes through, and the label had bounced a bit from the first bander, the second one more gently feathers it on and into place. These two back-to-back banders of varying tensions make sure, regardless of what’s happening on the surface of the can, that sleeve is in the right position when it enters the tunnel, and we’re getting the best shrink.”

The full packaging line The full canning line at CAB accommodates both 12-oz and 16-oz cans, and general cruising speed is around 220 can/min, with capability on the shrink sleeve of 300 cans/ min. The line opens with an overhead depalletizer from Ska Fabricating, which conveys brightstock cans through a twist rinser and an air-blade on the way to an operator-level, CFT 28-head rotary filler and seamer in a monoblock enclosure.

A knife removes any foam or head between the fill and the seam.

The first station after the fill and seam is a Filtec level inspection device, which again rejects overs and unders prior to any added value, like sleeving or date coding. A warmer is next on the line, which carefully brings the beer up to a sleeve-ready temperature. Twist conveyance then overturns the can line to pass underneath an EBS Inkjet System, which codes the beer with packed-on or best-before data prior to a final round of drying before hitting the sleever, well-described above.

After the two banders have precisely positioned the label, cans enter the shrink tunnel, part of the PDC system and precisely specified for the upstream sleever.

“Obviously, the faster you run, the longer a tunnel you need,” Tkachuk says. “As the beer is in there, we’re potentially exposing the product to heat, so we needed to make sure the actual shrink process was not adding any heat to the actual liquid.”

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The versatile tray former and packer handles printed corrugated trays and paperboard cartons of multiple formats, but the largest volume SKUs tend to be 24-count trays of 16-oz loose cans.

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MORE CRAFT BREWING AND DISTILLING RESOURCES

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ommon concerns amongst craft producers include: space constraints, implementing automation, small-batch changeover, outsourcing and packaging considerations. Learn more from Craft Breweries and Distilleries Machinery and Automation Trends, a 20-page whitepaper from PMMI’s Business Intelligence. Download the asset for free at pwgo.to/5430. ●

As CAB first put the system through its paces, operators tested the liquid’s temperature pre-tunnel and post-tunnel. This revealed the tunnel imparted a negligible 0.5°C beer temperature pickup.

“It was a big concern for us, but quickly was dismissed,” he adds.

Secondary packaging is a bit more fragmented as it’s completely format dependent, but most often it entails a 24-count corrugated trays of loose 16-oz cans, which are then shrinkwrapped and hand-palletized. The tray former from DMM forms and glues corrugated trays around each 4 x 6, or 24-count can format.

“What we like about the tray packer is it will also do cartons,” Tkachuk says. “If we’re doing a 4-pack or a 6-pack, or a 12-pack, we can do printed paperboard for 12 or 16-oz formats. And we can easily flip between loose cans in a tray and a paperboard carton format, so changeover isn’t a problem.”

For all of its U.S. sales, CAB uses PacTech HDPE can handles. While can handle application is currently manual, Tkachuk envisions installing a mechanical applicator at some point. He would expect that to be an in-line installation, to benefit from the tray packer downstream. And when doing paperboard or loose cans, the line flow would simply flow through the can handle applicator unmolested, right into the tray and carton former.

Looking ahead, another automation investment that might be in the cards down the line is a palletizer, particularly considering the multiple format capabilities of the tray and carton former. ●

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021 Yee-Haw Brewing Co. uses the Miura LX 200 SG gasfired industrial steam boiler for various aspects of its brewing process, from heating the hot liquor tanks to boiling the wort to sanitizing the kegs. Photo courtesy of Miura.

Brewing Up Efficiency Yee-Haw Brewing Co. uses its water tube boiler to reap the benefits of fuel and water savings as well as quality control in its manufacturing process.

By Maya Norris, Former Managing Editor, ProFood World

A

s a small but growing craft brewery, Yee-Haw Brewing Co. needs versatile yet efficient equipment that can meet a multitude of demands in its manufacturing process. The Johnson City, Tenn.-based company says it found just that with a water tube boiler that does a lot more than just heat water. Yee-Haw credits its boiler for bringing efficiency to its operations and giving it precise quality control over the production of its craft beers.

Yee-Haw has been using the Miura LX 200 SG gasfired industrial steam boiler since the company opened its manufacturing plant in 2015. The water tube boiler plays an integral role in Yee-Haw’s manufacturing process, helping the company produce about 18,000 barrels of beer a year. That includes five core beers available year-round; three seasonal beers; and its High Gravity series of beers, which each have an alcohol by volume of 8.5% or higher. Yee-Haw distributes its beers to grocery stores, restaurants, and bars in South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee, as well as its four taprooms in South Carolina and Tennessee.

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An operator adjusts the Miura LX 200 SG, which runs four days a week for 20 hours a day to produce about 360 barrels of beer per week at Yee-Haw Brewing Co. Photo courtesy of Miura.

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11 Efficiency in play Producing 18,000 barrels of beer a year in a small 4,000-sq-ft facility is no easy feat. When it was planning and building out its manufacturing facility, Yee-Haw recognized that it would need highly efficient equipment that could fit in a small footprint. Instead of purchasing a conventional fire tube boiler, the company decided to install the Miura LX 200 water tube boiler for its efficient design and operations. For starters, the Miura boiler is half the size of a fire tube boiler—a key factor when space is at a premium. In addition, the compact design means less energy loss due to radiation and more fuel savings.

The Miura water tube boiler also uses less fuel and water than a typical fire tube boiler thanks to its energy-efficient design. The small size of the Miura water tube boiler allows hot gas to flow back and forth within the boiler faster, generating heat with a reduced amount of fuel.

As the hot gas moves throughout the boiler, it heats the water that is located inside a series of vertical tubes fully welded to upper and lower headers that span across the length of the boiler. This floating header design allows the tubes to expand and contract safely as the water flows through the tubes and rises to the top of the boiler into the steam drum, reducing stress and pressure on the boiler. As a result, the tubes don’t need gallons of water surrounding them to serve as a buffer, which is the case for fire tube boilers. The boiling water in the steam drum continues to be heated by the fire and gas created by the burner furnace. This boiling water ultimately becomes steam that Yee-Haw uses for its manufacturing process.

Because Yee-Haw has used the Miura boiler since the brewery’s inception, Yee-Haw can’t quantify its exact water and fuel savings.

However, Yee-Haw and Miura estimate that the brewery uses only about 10% of the water volume that’s typically used in traditional fire tube boilers, attributing the reduction

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in water usage to the floating header design. Miura’s floating headers confine the water to the small water tubes. The heat source is distributed throughout the boiler and surrounds the tubes, requiring much less water than a fire tube boiler.

In a fire tube boiler, the arrangement is reverse. Flue gases are heated and directed into steel tubes surrounded

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021 by hundreds or thousands of gallons water. The heat from the gases are transferred from the tubes to the surrounding water. Because the Miura boiler heats the water in small sealed tubes, it uses significantly less water than a conventional fire tube boiler. As a result, the Miura boiler doesn’t need as much fuel to produce steam, offering a

fuel-to-steam efficiency rating of 85% compared to an 83% fuel-to-steam efficiency rating of an average fire tube boiler, according to Miura. That 2% difference can create fuel cost savings between 10% and 40%, Miura says.

“The No. 1 expense in a brewery is typically your water bill just because it takes a lot of water to clean tanks, produce beer, everything that you need for it,” says Cris Ellenbecker, brew master at Yee-Haw. “And if your S PD Te hrin boiler isn’t efficiently using water to s Ct k CO on Sle create steam, that bill just climbs RP You eve higher and higher and higher.” .C r P La OM r b od el The Miura boiler also offers /F RE uct energy efficiency by being able to ETE start and stop quickly. From a cold ST startup, the water tube boiler can produce steam in less than five minutes because it only needs to heat a small volume of water in the tubes. In contrast, it may take more than an hour to create steam in a fire tube boiler, which must heat a large volume of water. That forces many manufacturers to leave their fire tube boilers running idle when not in use, thereby wasting fuel and water.

“We’re only making the amount of steam that we need because the Miura [boiler] can start up fast,” Ellenbecker says. “If we were constantly feeding the boiler, we’d be using thousands of gallons of water [for every 20-hour period].”

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In addition to saving on water and fuel costs, Yee-Haw also appreciates the versatility and control the Miura boiler lends to the brewing process.

Because the boiler only requires a small amount of water to produce steam quickly and consistently, it can easily adapt to shifting loads and changes in demand for steam. So Yee-Haw uses the boiler for various aspects of its brewing process, from heating the hot liquor tanks to boiling the wort with hops to sanitizing the kegs.

Yee-Haw is particularly impressed with how the Miura boiler allows it to modify the malts by precisely controlling and adjusting the temperature of the mashing process,

Artist credit: Chen Li, for Collective Arts Brewing. All company and products names, logos, brands, and trademarks are property of their respective owners, are for identification purposes only, and does not imply endorsement.

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the first step in brewing beer. During mashing, malt is the quality of its beers and ultimately expansion, according immersed in hot water to activate the enzymes in the grains to Ellenbecker. “It all comes back to quality,” he says. “From that break down the starches into fermentable sugars. With how we’re brewing the beer, the ingredients we’re using, our the Miura boiler, Yee-Haw can heat the water to various meticulous care for packing and microbiology. We’re making temperatures to activate different enzymes in the malt to sure that everything that leaves this facility is at the highest create a certain color, body, and flavor for each of its beers. quality it can be.” ● “[The Miura boiler] helps you modify the malt so you can do a protein rest and help knock down the protein content or bring up the protein content to build a different profile for your beer,” Ellenbecker says. “Because we have that steam More than a century of experience in canning technology, system, we can brew a Kölsch at adapted for brewers of all sizes

CB50F Open Air Inline Canning Line (up to 50 CPM)

CB50F Open Air Inline Canning Line (up to 50 CPM) The Miura LX 200 SG boiler lets Yee-Haw Brewing Co. precisely control the temperature of the mashing process to create specific beer profiles, including its awardwinning Dunkel, a dark German lager. Photo courtesy of Yee-Haw Brewing Co. 148°F and have it be real crisp and dry and finish with no residual sugar.

Whereas we can also have our Dunkel mash in at 160°F and build a really good malty backbone to the beer. So it allows you to manipulate the malt a little bit more.”

Because the Miura boiler delivers precision and efficiency to YeeHaw’s manufacturing process, the brewery has been able to focus on

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021

Craft Brewer Grows into Two-In-One Palletizer, Stretch Wrapper Automation often begets more automation. That was certainly the case with Pelican Brewing Co., whose fast filling operations soon necessitated end-of-line palletization.

By Matt Reynolds, Editor

P

elican Brewing Co. was born at the beach in Pacific City, Ore. in 1996, the brainchild of three enthusiastic young folks, Mary Jones, Jeff Schons, and Darron Welch, whose thirst for great beer overshadowed their understanding of what it would take to build a brewery. They did it anyway.

Now 25 years older and wiser, Pelican Brewing Company is a craft beer industry leader with fans throughout the Northwest and the world. The brewery’s physical footprint

now spans its original, laid back beachfront pub and brewery in Pacific City, a more upscale restaurant and brewery in Cannon Beach, Ore., and—where most of the magic happens—a highproduction brewery plus tasting room in Tillamook, Ore. Pelican’s reputation is built on extremely high quality above all other factors, and the company has the awards hardware to prove their devotion in this department.

Packaging plays a key role in quality by way of dissolved oxygen (DO) pickup during the fill. The less DO pickup

Packaging operations at Pelican include a full canning line and a full bottling line, each capped by its own combination stretch wrapper/palletizer.

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The rotary labeler affixes clear p-s labels, from rollstock, onto clear brown 12 oz. bottles. These clear labels put the beer first, even at the expense of billboard space. during the handshake between the bottle fill and capping, or between the can fill and seaming, the higher the quality and the longer the shelf life of the beer. That makes packaging much more than just a delivery device for Pelican. So when the company was planning and specifying equipment for its current production facility in 2016, quality-conscious filling was the first concern.

But once the primary packaging automation was up and running, producing the ultra-low DO brews at a rate of 200 bottles/min, a second factor swam into view—end-of-line labor. With filling lines humming along, manual palletizing became a daunting, ergonomically unfriendly, tiresome task, and Pelican’s Marty Bills, Director of Brewing Operations, realized backbreaking labor wasn’t the best deployment of his operations team. With limited space, adding a palletizer and stretch wrapper may have been tough, but they had planned for the eventuality of automated palletizers. The resulting two packaging lines, one for bottles and a second for cans, thus have a dual focus: quality on the front of the line and efficient, small-footprint palletizing at the end of the line.

Here’s how they did it.

head rotary KHS filler and capper, then run through a Filtec fill-height detector. Bottles are laser coded with batches and dates on Domino coding and marking equipment.

Secondary packaging for bottles consists of a Pearson box shop, which does the carrier and case erecting. Erected paperboard carriers are fed into a Hartness case packer that receives the filled and capped bottles, places them in the erected six-pack carriers, and places those into corrugated cases. The most common format is 12-oz. bottles in six-pack paperboard carriers, which are packed two-by-two into a 24-count corrugated case. A less common format is a 12pack format of 22-oz bottles. Cases run through a Pearson top sealer before palletizing, which initially was done by hand. But automation frequently begets more automation downstream, and a rule of thumb in craft brew is that once you’re getting to speeds of about 200 containers/min, that’s the point when end-of-line automation starts making sense.

And 200 bottles/min was the cruising speed for the upstream filler and case packing equipment.

“When we first started up that line, our volume was low enough where we only needed one operator hand palletizing, but we grew so quickly that we needed a second operator before long,” says Bills. “I think by January 2018, we were just beginning to realize that we were stacking more than 3,000 cases per day. We could get by doing that with two guys in January, but by the heat of the summer, that would become really grueling and even damaging on operators’ bodies.”

End-of-line automation Even in a 15,000-sq-ft facility, it’s not always easy to be adding large pieces of equipment to existing lines. Luckily, Weller and Bills had designed the line with the eventuality of a palletizer in mind. In fact, they had one specified that would save them some space. They selected a TopTier model TTL 30 low-level infeed palletizer with concurrent stretch

The packaging lines Pelican opened its new 15,000-sq-ft production facility in 2016, and immediately began planning packaging all new lines—little of the legacy equipment would make the move. But while the facility now features two complete, soup-to-nuts packaging lines, their installation was more of a graduated process.

The bottling line installation was first to come together, integrated in 2016 in partnership with David Weller of Pacific Packaging Systems Inc. It consists of a Ska depalletizer at the front of the line that feeds empty glass bottles into a rotary labeler by P.E. Labelers (Pelican labels empty instead of filled bottles). Bottles are filled on a 30-

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Cases run through a Pearson top sealer before palletizing, which initially was done by hand before the first TopTier palletizer was introduced.

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021

The ability to palletize and shrink-wrap in a single footprint and enclosure was a major differentiator for TopTier in this project. For a brief video showing the two-in-one palletizer and stretch wrapper in action, visit pwgo.to/5809. wrapping capability for the bottling line, eliminating the need for a separate traditional, pedestal-style stretch film wrapper. Where there would otherwise be two standalone systems, the TopTier does it in one, saving both cost and footprint. A pallet dispenser and some exit conveyance are also onboard on the TTL 30, and all of the palletizing, stretch wrapping, and pallet handling is fully automatic. An operator can use a single HMI to adjust the pallet pattern and the pre-stretch film’s load containment tension.

“The TopTier palletizers have been great,” Bills says. “They allow us fast and careful handling, and they’re directly adjacent to our docks. We don’t store much inventory here on-site—we have 30,000 sq ft of storage south of town for that. That’s where our bottles and cans reside, as well as materials like corrugated and carriers, plus we have cold storage.

So here we load direct-to-trailer and ship it four miles down the street. They warehouse it and ship to our distributors from there.”

The palletizers are capable of handling line speeds of upwards of 400 cans per minute, or 1.5 to 1.75 layers per minute in palletizing parlance, so Pelican has room to grow into them or speed up if need be.

Move into cans Pelican’s bottling line was fully dialed in—from depalletizers to end-of-line automation—by mid2018. But that time frame coincided with consumer demand veering toward craft beer in cans instead of bottles. Counterintuitively, this actually worked in Pelican’s favor—other breweries were moving into cans so quickly that a void for bottles was created. Pelican happily filled that void. Getting shelf placements at retailers was comparatively easy in bottles, and the brewery was able to grow its bottle profile while everyone else was shifting to cans.

“We thought, ‘Wow, that makes us look pretty

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021 smart,’ and even though we knew it was mostly an accident, we were willing to take it,” Bills says. “But we also knew the writing was on the wall that we’d have to start offering cans.”

Plus, the recent can trend in craft beer isn’t just a fleeting consumer fad to be weathered. Retailers prefer cans because they can put more SKUs on the same shelf space, a

factor that bubbles up to distributors who sell into retail. As a brewery, Pelican listens closely to its distributor partners, and all signs were pointing to cans.

Pelican first experimented with mobile canning but Bills never felt fully comfortable with them due to inability to closely control DO. After all, that translates directly to the brewery’s hallmark quality. So, Bills again contacted Wells at Pacific Packaging Systems in 2019, and the two began drawing up plans for a canning line that would fit. This time, though, they didn’t wait on end-of-line automation.

Expecting to be immediately running close to capacity, a TopTier palletizer—the same model in fact—was on the end of the new packaging line when they first fired it up.

“Why would we put in a fast, new line, only to hand stack?” Bills asks, having learned from the first bottling line installation.

Leap to rotary filller Most brewers new to canning tend to start with smaller, slower in-line fillers maxing out around 40 cans/min, learning to crawl before

AUTOMATION NO ENEMY TO LABOR

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s is often the case when new automation is introduced, operators were nervous about the prospect of a machine replacing their manual case-stacking labor.

In fact, one of the operators outright asked Bills how many people would lose their jobs due to the palletizer.

“I told him, ‘Nobody’s going to lose their job,’” Bills says. “I had to explain that we were going to retrain them and teach them to learn different skills that will be even more valuable to both him and us. No matter the industry—packaging or

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they learn to walk. But with fill-quality the most important factor at the front of the line, and oxidized beer being Pelican’s mortal enemy, Bills had a sense that a rotary filler could do a better job with DO than in-line fillers. This led Pelican to jump into the deeper end with canning, choosing a CFT rotary filler with an electrostatic can rinser on the infeed. The filler is capable of speeds up to 300 cans/min and features an automated clean-in-place (CIP) set up. Just upstream of this filler sits a Codi upper level depalletizer, plus conveyance by Bevco.

“This filler’s DO levels were fantastic out of the gate,” Bills says.

“What I really appreciated about CFT is they came here with a new valve design, but the integrating technicians decided they didn’t like it. So CFT came out and did another round of valve retrofit, and we never saw any cost. They put us down for half a day for the whole retrofit. Those refitted valves have been super stable, it’s a great valve design. We’re spinning a lot of cans out there now.”

Downstream of the filler, cans are

batch- and date-coded on the bottom with another Domino coding and marking system, thermal inkjet this time.

The highest volume format on this line is the typical 12-oz printed can. These are cartoned into six-packs by a Switchback can-wrap cartoner. Four six pack cartons at a time are then tray packed, also on Switchback tray packing

brewing—people come and go, and quality people are hard to find and retain.”

About six months after the palletizer was installed, the same young man confessed that he hadn’t believe Bills’ earlier reassurance. But since, he had realized that not only did he still have a job, but that his position was growing. And even with the palletizer there, it’s not a fully automated, lights-out operation.

There’s still plenty for operators to do on the line to keep things running efficiently, just not necessarily lifting and stacking 3,000 cases per day.

“For somebody who’s 20-something, that feeling of being valued and being trained is a big deal,” Bills says. ●

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021 equipment, in corrugated 24-count trays, which are then palletized on the new TopTier.

A newer, more experimental format is a 19.2oz tall boy-style, a convenience store single-serve option. These are placed in lightly branded 12-pack cases that are palletized directly, with the expectation that cases will be broken down for c-stores and sold as singles.

“The 19.2s are really popular right now, and we pack four of our leading brands in that,” Bills says. “That business is growing, but I think that our marketplace is still trying to decide what that right package size is.”

The line is configured to also handle 16-oz cans, and Bills says Pelican might be testing that can format this year.

Customer service a factor Aftermarket service and support is critical for most capital equipment investments, and these palletizers are no exception. And this type of equipment relies on some components that are subject to damage or wear.

“When the photo eyes are damaged, that’s something we’ve asked for [TopTier’s] help on,” Bills says. “Service and support are readily available over the phone or in person. If the sensor gets damaged and we don’t know what’s going on, they’re very helpful. And when we get in over our heads,

A

G R E AT

WAY

Erected paperboard carriers are fed into a Hartness case packer that receives the filled and capped bottles, places them in the erected six-pack carriers, and places those into corrugated cases. they’re not very far away [TopTier is located in Portland]. I think it’s only happened once where, as one of the systems was putting the first layer on the pallet, we kept crunching cases. It had something to do with the first slide-off. They

TO

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came right out to the brewery and solved the problem. They knew the problem—they knew just how to adjust everything and got us back in alignment and basically worked with us throughout the morning to make sure that it was doing everything else we needed to do. It was really slick.”

What’s next The beer landscape—especially draft/keg—is in limbo due to the pandemic, with restaurants not doing the business that they previously were, and tap houses being more closely restricted. But Pelican is adapting fast, and the canning and bottling lines are cranking. In fact, Pelican moved to seven day per week brewing in February 2020, just before the COVID-19 outbreak, and they haven’t had to tap the breaks yet.

“I think we all thought that when we put in a 15,000 square foot facility, that that would last us 20 years.” Bills says. “And here we are a few years down the road and we’re thinking of yet another facility.”

Pelican owns some property nearby, and its owners are already thinking if that could possibly serve as a space for new-product development. Or maybe that could be converted to ready-to-load cold storage, reducing some shipping and improving some logistics. Pelican leadership is just starting to look at these options, and probably would have been much deeper into it if COVID-19 hadn’t happened.

Another iron in the fire at Pelican is a rotary keg filler, and Bills has a specific KHS model in mind. When the foodservice business rebounds, and with it, draft beer in kegs, that might be a next piece to the puzzle.

The facility’s existing lines and power systems are already designed to accept it.

“I think we’re in a great place, we are where we want to be,” Bills concludes. “We’ve got great new products that came out in January and February of this year that our customers are really excited about.

The other project we have going is I just finished integration [late October

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2020] on a 100-barrel brewing system. We were turning our 30-barrel, six turns a day, seven days a week. Before COVID hit, we had already started on this new brewing system to supply beer. Once this is complete and fully product-tested, we’ll be balanced with our two packaging lines and our keg line for the foreseeable future.” ●

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021

Craft Brewing Quick Hits From glass bottles to aluminum cans to an unusual bag-in-box format, the craft brewing sector has it all where packaging formats are concerned.

By Pat Reynolds, VP Editor Emeritus

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ecent developments, some in Europe and some in the U.S., show the varied approach to packaging that craft brewers are taking these days. There’s even a bag-inbox option.

But let’s begin with returnable glass bottles, which may have gone the way of the dodo bird in the U.S. but are alive and well in Europe. Take the Bavarian brewery Eder & Heyland of Ascheffenburg, Germany, for example. A regional family business built on craft brewing and top-quality beer, the firm recently moved its bottling operations from the town center to the outskirts of town. There it installed two glass bottling lines from KHS. When choosing the new equipment,

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The Innofill Glass DRS-ZMS filler shown below handles 0.33- and 0.5-L returnable glass bottles, while the swing-top bottles are filled on an Innofill Glass DPG system.

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LASER CODING BEER

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laser coder is providing a craft beer start-up in Scotland with an enhanced coding and marking solution to support its growth. Edinburgh Beer Factory is benefitting from improved codes, reliability, and ease of use from the Linx CSL30, which also has the potential to handle more production and new bottle sizes as the business continues to expand and enter export markets.

The brewery currently uses the Linx CSL30 to code “best before” dates and batch codes on its bottling line, which processes around 2,000 330-mL bottle/hr. The company has been particularly pleased with the Edinburgh Beer Factory in Scotland is pleased by the quality and consistent positioning of the laser coding it uses on its glass bottles. quality of the codes, which are highly legible and always appear in the same position on the bottles. This is vital as Edinburgh were no hidden extras—and in the first few months Beer Factory, which takes inspiration from Edinburghwe’ve had no problems at all as well as regular support born Pop Art-founder Eduardo Paolozzi, demands from Linx’s salesman.” high aesthetic standards for its bottles and therefore Also important has been the Linx CSL30’s large, requires impeccable codes that do not detract from colour LinxVision® Touch Screen, which makes their visual appeal. operation extremely intuitive, leading to fewer Since it is a laser coder, the CSL30 uses no ink and mistakes, and ensures adjustments can be easily as a result there is no drying time involved or risk of carried out in a matter of minutes. smudging—problems the company found with its “We can turn it on, type in the details, press start, previous coding solution. “For various reasons, our and forget about it all day,” concludes Martin. “When original coder for batch and date codes wasn’t quite you process 2,000 bottles per hour, you need to be right for us,” explains Martin Borland, Head Brewer confident that your date and batch codes are being at Edinburgh Beer Factory. “We started looking into properly printed, and the Linx coder gives us this. alternatives and laser technology fit the bill, with Linx Everything we wanted—cleaner codes, more reliability, offering the most competitive price as well as a turnkey the potential to grow—we now have. It’s even more solution. The price quoted was what we paid—there cost-effective than our previous coder.” ●

a high degree of automation was a priority, including such things as recipe selection, automatic overnight heat-up of the bottle washers, and adequate head section disinfection. KHS technology, says Filling Center Project Manager Maximilian Weber, “was able to meet our high demands.”

The Bavarian brewery ultimately opted for two Innoclean SE bottle washing machines and two modern glass fillers. The Innofill Glass DRS-ZMS filler can handle either standardized longneck 0.33-L bottles or 0.5-L standardized bottles at up to 36,000 bottles/hr. The other new filler, an Innofill Glass DPG, can fill up to 15,000 swing-top bottles/hr.

Washing swing-top bottles often poses something of a challenge to breweries. “After washing bottles with caustic, if the swing top falls onto the bottle neck it might prevent

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caustic that’s still in the bottle from being emptied and rinsed out,” says Stefan Knappmann, KHS Area Sales Manager. “If this were the case, the downstream inspection unit would then channel out any bottles containing residual caustic.

If this happens too frequently, these bottles are no longer available for further production. If the detection unit doesn’t work properly, in the worst case bottles containing caustic residue may be filled. This must be avoided at all costs so as to avoid any possible health risks to the consumer.”

For this reason KHS installed a bottle base spray for the customer to circumvent this problem. It produces a jet of water that pushes the bottle deeper into the individual bottle washer pocket so that the swing top cannot slip in front of the neck. Also worth noting is that the bottle washer on the

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021 swing-top line can also process bottles without a swing top.

One of the features that brings savings is the way the warm water is taken from the bottle washers and used in other areas such as the washing of returnable crates. In addition, KHS installed a powerful fresh-water control unit and electricity-saving function for the sprays.

KHS also satisfied Eder and Heyland’s requirements regarding the infeed of empties. “The challenge here was to match the number of empties fed into the system to the amount of beer still to be filled so that at the end of production there were neither too many nor too few bottles and crates on the line,” says Knappmann. A lot of this has to do with logistics—as in, the brewing plant is still at the old production site in the middle of town. Following brewing and

storage, the beer is transported in tank trucks by a logistics company specialized in food to the new bottling shop where it is either filled into bright beer tanks or filled directly.

The systems’ low consumption values, including a minimal use of water for bottle washing and of CO2 during filling, also had the Bavarian brewers convinced. Thanks to the filling method developed by KHS, depending on the processing program the filling equipment only uses 240 grams of carbon dioxide per hectoliter of beer. “KHS’ machinery is perfectly adapted to our requirements as a medium-sized brewery. We benefit from this proven technology,” says Weber. “Our production processes have also been greatly simplified and are now much more efficient.”

DIGITAL PRINT BOOSTS SUCCESS IN SEASONALS

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easonal flavors in craft brewing are a key strategy for building brand loyalty and driving sales. But seasonals can also be risky, forcing breweries to accurately estimate demand for an untested product several times a year. An inaccurate forecast can be costly, either in terms of the missed opportunity to meet demand for an unexpectedly popular seasonal or in the tens of thousands of dollars wasted in obsolete packaging for a flavor that fails to catch on with consumers.

Digital print solutions from Hummingbird give craft brewers like Eugene, Ore.-based Ninkasi Brewing Company the needed flexibility to make the most of a

Digitally printed cases play a key role in Ninkasi Brewing’s seasonal beer strategy.

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successful seasonal strategy and reduce the risk.

“Beer brand loyalty is not what it used to be, so being nimble is important,” says Ninkasi Purchasing Manager Ryan Halleman. “Working with Hummingbird™ has made it possible for us to do smaller runs and launch brands in a way we couldn’t do before. It’s huge.”

The Ninkasi cases are run on Hummingbird’s PageWide T1100 from HP. Hummingbird’s ability to aggregate demand and print multiple package designs in a single run gives Ninkasi better control over its seasonal packaging inventory. When launching a new beer, the team places an initial order that is between 60 and 70% of estimated demand. When that inventory is nearly depleted, Ninkasi places a second, short-run order that is printed side-by-side with one of its yearround packaging designs. Combining the orders keeps costs and obsolescence low, and Hummingbird’s quick turnaround ensures that Ninkasi always has packaging at the ready.

The icing on the proverbial cake—or maybe the foam on the top of the beer—is that Ninkasi saves $12,000 or more a year by working with Hummingbird. Thanks to the power of digital preprint, a change in package design is as simple as modifying a computer file—no expensive print plates required. That kind of savings makes it easier to successfully execute a seasonal strategy and also takes some of the risk out of major packaging changes—key advantages everyone can raise a glass to. ●

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021

Can filling

O

ne story heard time and time again from craft brewers is that when aluminum cans all of a sudden became a must-have format, the canning equipment they first installed to meet the sudden demand quickly proved inadequate.

“What we installed was enough to dip our toes in the water,” is a common refrain—but it wasn’t enough to keep up with how quickly the demand for cans grew.

Elysian Brewing’s new 24-head canning system, which occupies minimal floor space, lets the firm handle 12-oz cans, 12-oz skinnies, 16-oz cans, and 19.2-oz cans.

What to do in such circumstances? At both Seattle-based Elysian Brewing Co. and at Lake Travis Brewing Co. in Austin, Tex., the answer was to install a Krones Craftmate C filler.

A 24-valve volumetric filler combined with a 4-head seamer from Ferrum, the Craftmate is specifically designed for the low-output range of 1,200 cans/hr.

Elysian’s CEO Joe Bisacca says that a few years ago the firm had just invested in a new bottling line capable of 400 bottles/min when all of a sudden, as he puts it, “Canning sort of flipped the switch. It got to where you couldn’t get access to stadiums because they weren’t taking glass bottles anymore. And they wanted a 19.2-oz format, not the traditional 12-oz bottle. So we started with an in-line intermittent-motion canning system, but before long we were limping along with it and not nearly reaching the volumes we needed to reach. With the Craftmate, on the other hand, I can not only reach the necessary volumes, I can do multiple SKUs, like 12-oz cans or 12-oz skinnies as well as 16- and 19.2-oz cans.”

Feeding the Krones/Ferrum equipment is a used depalletizer and a feed chute conveyor that takes cans down to the filler. Mounted on this conveyor is a Videojet ink-jet coder that puts lot and date code on can bottoms. As for graphics, the vast majority of the cans filled at Elysian come preprinted. But for a few limited-volume beers, cans are decorated with shrink sleeve labels by the can supplier.

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One other new piece of equipment on the line is a fill level inspector from Filtec. Secondary packaging on a used wraparound cartoner that was installed along with the filler/ seamer limits the speeds at which Elysian is able to run its new can filler, but typically the 12-oz cans are filled at about 200 to 225/min. “We’re now looking at an upgrade in cartoning that will help us boost throughput,” says Bisacca.

Texan brewer Lake Travis Brewing Co. had an experience very similar to Elysian’s when it “dipped its toes” into canning. “Our first stab at canning had us limited to 40 cans/

Among the brands Lake Travis Brewing fills on its new canning system is Pearl, a Texas icon.

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021 min,” says General Manager Max Schleder. About a year after installing a Krones Craftmate solution very similar to the one at Elysian, speeds of 300/min are what the brewery is now seeing.

Also significant parts of the installation at Lake Travis are the machines upstream and downstream from filler/seamer.

Upstream it’s an automated depalletizing and twist-rinse system from Ska Fabricating. Downstream from the filler,

shortly after an accumulation table, there’s a split in the line and then two handle applicators from American Canning.

And for date coding, it’s done on can bottoms just after the twist-rinse by an ink-jet coder from Videojet.

Notable brands running on the new line are Pearl and Lone Star Rio Jade, both owned by San Antonio-based Pabst, which for some time now has outsourced all of its beer making.

A LOOK AT STILL BEER

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rimitive Beer, a small blending facility and taproom in Longmont, Colo., is putting its lambic-style ales in 1.5- and 5-L bag-in-box formats. It should be noted that this is a still beer, modelled after Belgian breweries that have long offered such beverages. The lack of carbonation, of course, eliminates the risk of the bag exploding inside of its corrugated box.

“When we launched in 2018, it was a year-old beer we put into these packages,” says Lisa Boldt, who owns Primitive with her husband Brandon. “Now we’ve settled on two-and three-year-old beers, which are more ‘finished’ in terms the amount of sugar that’s left to ferment. That means less likelihood of the bags puffing up as fermentation continues to take place.”

Assisting the Colorado brewer on the supply side is Astrapouch, which sources the bags, the corrugated box, and the Astrofil-1000 on which the bags are filled.

The bag material, which has a total thickness of 115 microns, is a nine-layer coextrusion that includes PE/ EVOH/Nylon/PE. The corrugated is a single-wall B-flute.

When it comes to filling, speed is not exactly a priority. When asked how many packages per minute, Boldt says, “You mean how many minutes per package.”

It’s a manual operation consisting of the following steps: • remove the tap from the spout that is welded to the bag • insert the spout into tooling on the filler • vacuum flush with nitrogen and then vacuum purge it out • hit a foot pedal to begin filling • remove filled bag and return tap to spout • enclose the bag in its corrugated box and seal box with glue “We buy labels in large quantities to apply to one side of the box,” adds Boldt. “It’s a big canvas for graphics, and we can feature local artists.”

Boldt says the 5-L size is for on-premise customers.

The 1.5-L bag-in-box sells for $25 to $33 and is available

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Bag-in-box is just the right format for this Lambic-style ale, a flat beer that has no carbonation. not only from the Longmont microbrewery but also in select retail channels as well as online. “If you don’t mind sour, oaky, and funky, you should try it,” she says. ●

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pre-sets let you quickly adjust to various-sized cans or bottles ensuring fast changeovers.

Add on a Weber Markoprint X1 Jet thermal ink jet systems to print date or lot code information as the product is labeled and you have a complete craft beer labeling solution.

Let our experts help you show you how you can improve your labeling efforts by sourcing labels and automated labeling equipment from Weber.

Visit our website to get a closer look at our labels and labeling solutions. Or call us at 1.800.843.4242.

www.weberpackaging.com Locations Worldwide

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021

Beer from Iceland

W

hen Bruggsmiðjan Kaldi Brewery was launched in 2006 in the small town of Árskógssandur in the north of Iceland, glass bottles were of course the format. But it seems that consumers in Iceland are just as mad about beer in cans as everyone else in the world. So last year the craft brewer installed a canning line—right about the time that the pandemic was rearing its ugly head.

“The machines were due into our plant in March, along

Bruggsmiðjan Kaldi Brewery of Iceland opted for this versatile, reliable cartoner when it installed a new can line.

Go to pwgo.to/6017 for a video of the cartoner in action. with technicians from suppliers to get things up and running,” says Brewmaster Siggi Ólafsson.

“We wound up doing most of the installation and commissioning ourselves, and we were only delayed about a month. By June of 2020 we were in production.”

The equipment in the line comes from numerous parts of the world, including the U.S.-made end-of-line Econocorp E-2000 cartoning machine from Econocorp. “We were led to Econocorp during conversations we had with other machine suppliers who are familiar with the kind of machinery that’s suitable for craft brewers,” says Ólafsson. “It’s just the right size machine for our production, and it’s very simple in design and, subsequently, in operation.”

Italy is also well represented in the new line, as Cimec supplied the automatic depalletizer, the twist rinser, the 12-head counterpressure filler, and both of the can seamers.

The depalletizer automatically removes slip sheets and sweeps the 330-mL cans onto a conveyor that leads to the twist rinser.

An ink-jet coder from Hitachi puts lot and production codes on the bottom of each can. Then comes filling and seaming. “In 2006 we started with a Cimec bottle filler,” says Ólafsson when asked what led to Cimec as the firm’s choice of filling and seaming equipment. “We haven’t

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been at all disappointed with it, so it was easy enough to of handling these changes,” says Ólafsson. specify Cimec again when it came time to fill cans.”

Cans are printed by supplier Ball. “But we’re looking Two lanes exit the filler so that cans can be sent into two at adding a labeler to the canning line for small runs,” says Cimec seamers. “Having two seamers in place helps us in Ólafsson. reaching our goal of 3,000 cans/hour,” says Ólafsson.

Like many craft brewers, this one has a charming Exiting the seamer, cans pass through a Cimec air dryer backstory, which you can read here pwgo.to/6012. ● so that moisture from the cans won’t spoil the carton material.

Then a Filtec level inspection device MANUFACTURED IN ROCKMART, GA ensures that anything with a bad fill will be automatically rejected.

Right after the dryer the cans make a right angle turn and feed onto the conveyor that takes them into the cartoning machine. Line pressure causes the cans to spread evenly into five lanes. When a group of ten cans in a 2 x 5 pattern are in place, an escapement device opens to let those ten advance into the transfer station so that a pusher arm can push all ten cans at a right angle into an E-flute corrugated carton that has been pulled by vacuum arms and erected directly into the loading station. To eliminate backpressure that could interfere with the smooth transfer of cans, a second device holds the rest of the cans back while cans are in the transfer station.

The E-2000 cartoner uses hot In 2013, Badger State Brewing Company opened with the glue to close cartons. Glue pellets goal of growing their business and going green. Their choice go into a pre-melting area. A hot of Miura steam boilers allowed them to succeed at both, plate melts the glue and then glue giving them the scalability to continue making strides in the fingers dip into this “bath” of glue to craft brewing industry, while providing full steam in less than apply a series of dots of glue across five minutes from a cold start, an enormous advantage that the flaps. A mechanical plate closes saves fuel and water, while reducing emissions. on these trailing flaps and provides a solid backstop for the incoming cans. Then the filled carton is pushed forward into a sealing system, and while it’s being pushed a series of rails closes the remaining flaps. In GREEN BENEFITS the process the glue fingers apply adhesive to these flaps, too. Then Turn-Key Boiler Room Solutions the carton is elevated and sits a moment in a compression station so Full Steam in Under Five Minutes the glue can set up. When the next filled and closed case is pushed up, Optimum In-Service Efficiency the preceding case slides down an Online Monitoring Systems exit ramp.

“We do 10-counts only for now, but this could certainly change and Miura LX-300, the cartoning machine is fully capable Industrial Steam Boiler us.info@miuraz.com • 888.309.5574

Badger State Brewing GOES GREEN (and Gold)

miuraboiler.com

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2021

Advertiser Index COMPANY / WEBSITE

PAGE

AFM - American Film & Machinery www.afmsleeves.com

3

Columbia Machine, Inc. www.palletizing.com

7

Continental IFC www.continental-industry.com CTM Labeling Systems, Inc. www.ctmlabelingsystems.com Econocorp Inc. www.econocorp.com GEA Systems North America LLC www.gea.com Hurst Boilers www.hurstboiler.com/

18 16, 32 IBC OBC

ITW Air Management-Paxton Products www.paxtonproducts.com

21

Krones, Inc. USA www.krones.com/en/

17

Miura America Co., LTD www.miuraboiler.com

31

Mpac Switchback www.mpac-switchback.com

27

Multi-Conveyor 9 www.multi-conveyor.com PakTech 11 www.paktech-opi.com PDC International Corp. www.pdc-corp.com

12

Pneumatic Scale Angelus www.psangelus.com

13

Roberts PolyPro Inc. www.robertspolypro.com

20

Ryson International, Inc. www.ryson.com

1

Stolle Machinery Company www.stollemachinery.com TopTier Palletizers www.toptier.com

19 5

TRIpack 30 www.tripack.net

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Weber Packaging Solutions www.weberpackaging.com

29

Wire Belt www.wirebelt.com

25

2/15/21 6:07 AM

“After we tasted de-alc beer produced with this membrane technology, we didn’t even consider alternatives.” ~ Gary Lohin, Brewmaster, Central City Brewers + Distillers, Vancouver, B.C. When Central City decided to add dealcoholized beer to their highly varied selection of brews, they sampled some German Weiss beer produced on a GEA AromaPlus system. “We couldn’t tell it was de-alc beer,” notes Gary. “It was cloudy and the clove and banana flavors were intact.” Soon after, Gary shipped kegs of Central City IPA and India Session beer to GEA’s Hudson, WI pilot facilty for a test run through an AromaPlus membrane system. “Without any tweeking, the product was fantastic.” That test convinced Central City to add this technology to their brewery.

Fast installation and easy commissioning A modular, skid-mounted fabrication allows AromaPlus units to be easily installed in existing facilities. And plug-andplay design with user friendly controls means breweries can start producing product with minimal delay. “When we introduced the de-alc beer to the market, I didn’t know what to expect,” states Gary. “It’s been received fantastically.

People can’t believe how good it is. Consumers haven’t had a choice. Now, we can give them one and change their minds about de-alc beer.”

G-B-PMMI-2021

To get involved in the growing market for dealcoholized beer like Gary did, contact us at sales.northamerica@gea.com or call 715-386-9371. It’s an easy and cost-effective way to expand opportunities for your craft brewery.

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Access our Product Specifications and CAD files at Product MasterSpec® The Product MasterSpec® section, 235239 Fire-Tube Boilers, will now help designers quickly add necessary descriptions, specs and easily access CAD files and PDF drawings when specifying Hurst’s products, providing them with a tool that saves them time and money.

STACKMASTER SERIES Integrated Economizer Package

For more information about Hurst Boiler’s new specification section on MasterSpec® go here: https://www.hurstboiler.com/boilers/boiler_auxiliary_equipment/masterspec

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