Fourteen Hour Days

It’s no surprise, to either Tony or myself, that our days in the brewery are getting longer. As the sun lingers in the western sky a little more each day, heralding the oncoming Summer – and maybe a return to semi-normalcy – we also find our days stretching little by little.

But a fourteen-hour canning day was unexpected. I’d only read about absurdly lengthy canning days, and it always seemed it was due to there only being one person doing the task.

It couldn’t be helped, seeing as how there’s always new things to learn on our Wild Goose machine, and this was our first experience doing 12oz cans on it. We take what we know of the machine, as well as what others have taught us, and apply it. What weights to go by, our personal preference on can fills, and what can actually be sold as viable product all go into deciding the final product. There’s always loss when we dial in for a new beer type on the machine, but we usually manage to get everything up and running fairly fast.

Of course, the day we try to can two new (for the machine) brands in a new size can (for the machine), we run into issues we have to stop and troubleshoot, which slows everything down.

Smaller can sizes meant I, as the in-house Can Weigher(tm), had to seriously adjust to keep up with the flow of things coming down the line. And even though we achieved a good rhythm of cans going through the labeler for the Pils canning, with the help of some Bob Marley in the background, it seemed the labeler had had enough by the time we got around to canning Holly Beach Wheat.

With several people assisting the machine components and ensuring cans don’t tip over or get jammed up somewhere, it’s inevitable that we’re only able to move so fast. A long day was expected, but once we hit the twelve hour mark, we resigned ourselves to just Doing The Thing and getting the product packaged.

And holy MOLY what a package it is! The cans are simply beautiful. The gold foil on the Pils cans shines in the late morning sun. The copper foil on the Holly Beach Wheat makes the lettering and painting simply pop. Stop by this weekend and grab a 6-pack of either for $10 and enjoy it. These beers are sure to welcome you to the shore and remind you that Summer 2021 is just around the corner.

A beautiful day down at the shore – perfect for picking up a 6-pack of this crisp Belgian Wit style beer

Don’t you wish you were here?! Grab a 6-pack for your favorite person (or yourself – or both)!

See you soon!