The Cannery in Ballard?

Wow - they managed to open with zero fanfare. Love the idea of "crowlering" / canning stuff that's not packaged. Interested to check this place out ... gotta hit that and Ballard Beer Company.

 

I walked in briefly last week. Just looked like a low key bottle shop that just had cans and I think some taps. It looked promising

 

Wait, wasn't this space occupied by a brew shop before? It's right by the Kicking Boot place I think.

 

i stopped by last weekend and they were not canning...decent bottle (or can i guess) selection in the fridges though. very nice guys, looking forward to getting cans from them and love the idea.

they also told me they want to keep pricing comparable to growler fills so something in the $10-$15 range per sixer which i was VERY surprised by and excited about!

 

Save your time..

 

That's a bummer - the location and the idea of focusing on the neighborhood has potential.

What's the critique - subpar service, bad tap selection, pricing? They don't put their taps online which is one reason I haven't gone. I like to have an idea of a few things that will excite me before I head to a place.

 

Let me make sure I'm understanding this premise: it's a bottle shop that only sells cans, and they will put whatever beer they have on tap in cans?

 

You've been gone a long time. The future is pretty rad, no?

 

Had komputater issues. Was following some threads on my phone, but had never entered BA into my phone. So, when the Komputater went down, I had no way to access any of my passwords or anything.

Back OT, while it fundamentally seems no different than a growler, I wonder how breweries feel about this? With this format, "packaged" beer is being made available, beyond a breweries control. As an example, what if a place like this got a keg of PtY, and folks started sending cans all across the country, wouldn't that tend to piss RR off? As a consumer, I like the idea, but I could see where some breweries might not be into it so much.

 

Sounds better for the beer over a reusable glass bottle that is difficult to clean and sports an imperfect seal.

 

As I understand it, they are using a Crowler machine, which uses 32oz cans. Sierra Nevada and/or Russian River tweeted about canned PtE on the Beer Camp tour bus last summer (the bus had a Crowler installed), so I'm sure a meme is loaded and ready to go should your PtY prediction come true.

 

THIS would be very good for camping..not having to guiy those fancy $60 flasks

 

So it only does 32oz cans? That seems to kinda defeat the purpose of canning beer in the first place, to have easily portable single servings of a given beer. I'd probably be more inclined to get 4-6 12oz cans of something not brewery packaged, so that I could stick 'em in the fridge, than to buy a single-use 32oz can that I have to finish once I open it. Still love the basic idea though.

 

One other benefit would be, presumably, a bit better long term stability than a growler. This, of course, presumes they're getting stuff that's special enough that you'd want to get a crowler even if you weren't going to drink it right away. I doubt that will happen with this place. Another benefit for the more casual consumer is no need to remember a growler and, hey, novelty: GIANT CAN!

Something similar was the initial plan of Tavour; we're going to get special stuff that isn't packaged, package it, and sell it to you. They did an early run bottling Hop Venom and RPM. The promise for something like this is incredible and seems to be a win win for brewery and consumer. Small breweries have an outlet, other than tap room, for more "experimental" stuff and consumers not near said breweries have a way to get their stuff.

 

Total speculation on my part, but I think 32oz is probably the sweet spot for a single non-resealable container (2 pints is both sharable and crushable solo), since the Crowler is not really designed for volume canning. A size that's more conducive to 4 or 6pks is probably exactly what they were looking to differentiate from.