Packaging equipment is expensive regardless. Cans are lighter and already mentioned properties. Labels are preprinted (good and bad). Beer keeps better in them.
Check out the documentary “Beer Culture” you can find it on you tube. There is a great explanation of the trend towards canned beer by Oskar Blues, which was the first craft brewer to can their beer. Better for the beer for freshness, easier to transport 100 cases of cans per pallet vs. 60 cases of bottles which will reduce shipping costs. Many other benefits explained in the film.
On a side note a small local brewer started up on my town recently and they can all of their beer, but the do it through a contract canner. The guy shows up with a canning machines to the brewery and they can it and palletize it on the spot.
A lot of small breweries sub out their canning to mobile canners.
Beer cans have always been lined. If they were not people would have been poisoned by the aluminum. Remember the old Keystone commercials “specially lined cans”? I always got a kick out of them.
Here is an article about beer cans that if you can wade through the long wind explains it http://allaboutbeer.com/article/canned-mythology/ [quote]Had aluminum cans lacked such lining, it’s unlikely canned beer—canned anything, really—would have taken hold in the marketplace: Over time, the aluminum would have poisoned one consumer after another. As it stands, hundreds of millions have consumed beer from aluminum cans and lived to tell about it.[/quote]
I spent a day on the canning line at Finch back when they used volunteers on canning day. The equipment was a nightmare - it kept breaking down and was super finicky. It was an older set of canning equipment and there was basically just one guy who knew how to fix the stuff that kept breaking. A recipe for disaster!
It was intensely fun, but it turned into a 12 hr day, the end of which involved a fair amount of drinking.
Oh, the point of my story - I can totally understand why a small brewer would want to subcontract that part of the process.
Same here on the Snake River and other “recreational” rivers in my area, no glass allowed. There’s a surprising number of good craft beers available in cans locally, though.[/quote]
The entire world is someone’s recreational area. After fixing dozens of flat tires on my bikes, most of which were caused by glass in the road, I’m ecstatic to see less bottles and more cans on the shelves of the liquor stores!
I spent a day on the canning line at Finch back when they used volunteers on canning day. The equipment was a nightmare - it kept breaking down and was super finicky. It was an older set of canning equipment and there was basically just one guy who knew how to fix the stuff that kept breaking. A recipe for disaster!
It was intensely fun, but it turned into a 12 hr day, the end of which involved a fair amount of drinking.
Oh, the point of my story - I can totally understand why a small brewer would want to subcontract that part of the process.[/quote]
Can fillers are by nature finicky. You are rapidly filling a carbonated beverage under high speed with no counter pressure.
It takes some knowledge and a lot if experience. Your beer needs to be at constant level of carbonation and temperature. Too much carbonation and you have excessive foaming. Too little and your beer is flat.
Seamers are usually quite reliable.
Small breweries usually do not have multiple people mechanically inclined.
I love it. I can’t bring bottles to the park for kickball league and one tires of PBR.
