WE GOT A CANNING LINE!

South Lake Brewing Company recently added some exciting new equipment to our production facility — a canning line! While canned beer has been at the forefront of our business since the early days, canning beer without our own line was a more complex process. 

Purchasing our own canning line has been a long-term goal to increase beer production and keep up with growing demand. The demand for canned beer has grown considerably over the past year due to the pandemic and increase in at-home consumption.

“Before the pandemic, beers were canned once a month. Now we’re canning multiple styles throughout the week. With the canning line, we’ve now doubled the amount of cans we produce prior to the pandemic,” SLBC Co-Founder and Head of Brewing Operations, Chris Smith, said.

The previous canning process required a mobile beverage canning service called The Can Van to be brought in on a biweekly or monthly basis. While The Can Van was a great partnership, the downside was the beer that was ready to be canned had to sit and wait for canning day.

Multiple tanks were frequently held up that could have otherwise been used to produce another batch of beer. Once emptied, those tanks needed to be cleaned and brewed in as fast as possible to keep up with production.

Having our own canning line will allow us to turn around tanks 20% faster meaning a higher volume of beer produced per week. The new canning line was purchased from Alpha Brewing Operations in Nebraska which also produces the tanks and brewing equipment we use in our production facility. The new line will also allow us to can smaller quantities of experimental beers and exclusive beers released only to Bär Society members and Bear Box subscribers.

“Purchasing it was all about being as efficient as possible with our time and the beer we’re producing. It allows us to be a lot more flexible with when we’re canning and how much we package,” Smith said.

Setting up the new line was no easy process, but the ops team worked out the kinks and it’s now running smoothly. The first beer canned on the new line was Marlette Sunrise — our fan-favorite blood orange blonde.

You can catch the SLBC team in action packaging beer and using the canning line when you visit the brewery. Be on the lookout for experimental beers and special releases made possible due to our new canning line!