New equipment 2018

Oh, I have a brewers notice, and am professional. I was just stating it was highway robbery to homebrewers.

 

When you include freight costs to a lot of shops not close to a distribution point, that price sky-rockets. Not sure how some of these places are justifying such low shipping costs, but to each their own to gain a customer. Obviously midwest & morebeer get probably some of the best discounts in the cost per bag dept, so can offer lower costs to customers. Plus have distribution points next door to their warehouse helps more. A shop that has to pay $250 in freight for a pallet of grain...plus all the time that goes into orders, invoicing, unloading, storing, etc...plus probably getting the same per sack cost you're paying, well then it's not really highway robbery.

It's not just classes, it's being able to compete with the Amazon price wars. A place like Keystone or Grape N Granary or a plethora of other shops that have long been backbones for homebrewing in regions could see closures before long if homebrewer's attitude towards them is that price point defines the shop.

 

Well, I canned up my first homebrew Sunday, and it went pretty smoothly! Couple of tips: prepare to get sprayed with beer. Prepare to multitask. It’s easier with more people.

I started with an assistant. My wife. but she had to take care of a couple of sick kids, so I did most of the .5bbl batch solo. With two people, one can operate both filler heads and the other can seam. My solo method was using the first filler head to purge, then the second to fill, Always having a can under each head. By the time I had seamed, rinsed, and dried a can, the next one was just about full. It was relatively quick, but tiring work.

Overview of my jenky filling station.


Doing a little QC.

Overall, the seamer was the most pleasant part of the process. Quick and slick. I’ve got a lot of ideas of how to improve the next run,
filling-wise. All the cans looked great, without any leakers! But as promised, I had to get objective proof...so I took them into work today...


Here’s the readout from the X-ray that analyzes can seams. You can kinda see the saw-cut cross section of the can in the foreground.


Here's an evaluation sheet I filled out, to let you know how the seamer performed (first run on the thickness gauge was uncalibrated. Sorry!).

Basically the thing performed flawlessly. Textbook can seam.
As of now, I would definitly recommend this to any homebrewer. It’s expensive for sure, but a great club buy. Or, if you are in my situation, with a bunch of old, excess homebrew stuff you don’t use, start posting on craigslist and saving up!

 

Setting up a filler station like I did makes thing go much more smoothly as well.

I tested my seams as well, and saw nearly identical numbers.. I love this machine.

 

Started work on the new automation software for the new brewing system.

 

Sounds like bottling...I'll keep my cornies for normal homebrew quantities

 

Yeah, not a fix-all solution, but it’s definitely got its place! Obviously, the upfront cost is the big difference from bottling.

My problem was the bottleneck at consumption. I needed a second chest freezer to store all the kegs on deck. Now I’ve got some extra space in my basement.

Also, I hate filling growlers - the waste and mess. Or all the prep work to prevent it ie. dropping the pressure of the kegs and pre-chilling the growlers. Also cleaning out the growlers and having to keep track of them. Now, if I’m going to a party, I can just fill a quick six pack and seam it up. Quick co2 purge and it’ll last way longer than a growler.

I’m finding other uses too that I hadn’t originally thought of. I started canning up my yeast harvests. I’m also thinking of grabbing some late runnings wort, boiling it, and canning it up for future starter juice. Also, you just know that when the summer rolls around I’m going to be canning up some Mojitos and Mai Thais for the beach

I should mention that I work for a canning brewery that produces hundreds of QCd cans daily, so my packaging costs are zero, which definitely adds to its value for me

 

Nope just you! Just got a vacuum sealer so I can start buying bulk hops so maybe that'll be me in the next year. Not sure why I wait so long to save myself some money.

 

S*** got sideways in here. To the OP, just picked up a slightly used keezer and Johnson controller for $100. So pretty stoked on that.

 

I currently have about 17 lbs of hops in my freezer (~30 varieties).

 

Ya man. Picked it up off a buddy who turned pro. Kinda funny caused I asked him if he’d ever homebrew again and just gave me that look and said he practically lived at the brewery!

 

Impressive! Sitting on 1/2 pd. each of galaxy, enigma, Medusa, Bru 1, mosaic, and el dorado off yvh myself.

 

Still working my way though my Brewery automation, brewhouse is still 4 months out.