Left Hand Brewing Fires Up a New Brew House
From the Left Hand Brewing January Newsletter:
Brewer's Corner
Our new and improved brew house is now up and running - pumping out 60 Barrel batches in about the same time as the 20 barbell batches took. We are able to take advantage of the improvements to the bottling line implemented in the past 2 or so years.
When I first started back in 1999, our bottling line consisted of the present 12-head rotary filler along with a cold glue bottle labeler, and a relic of our early days: a 4 bottle Meheen (a little better than manually filling) for our 22oz bombers, and a 6-head "Cow" for filling the 750ml Big Bo's. Back then, ALL of the 22oz bottles had to be labeled by hand one at a time in advance of filling. A couple of Summers ago, we obtained conversion parts for our filler and labeler which allowed us to fill all three sizes using one machine set. This not only reduced the labor for us, it increased the quality and consistency of our Beer, and did it much faster than before. What used to take a full day (or more!) could now be done in a few hours with less waste and better worker satisfaction.
The increase in productivity brought some problems of its own. We were used to getting all our cases already built, stuffed, and filled with glass. We would unload the glass by hand sending the empty cases to the end of the line where they would be filled with the finished bottles. This meant keeping a "stash" of cases & glass in each style we would be bottling in the near future. Any leftovers would then have to wait until the next time that flavor was ready for packaging. The space and time this was taking in our inventory would soon become unacceptable. We needed something more flexible.
That turned out to be "Bulk Glass" and un-built cases. Through several experimentations, we arrived at a nearly automatic bulk glass depaletizer, which allowed us to load glass on the line without flipping full cartons, and a fully automatic and customizable case erector. The case erector allows cases to come in to us as flat boxes (almost 700 in the space that 108 occupied originally). The cases are opened, bottom flaps are positioned, glue applied and the case assembled faster than we could unload them the old way. Additionally, a 6-pack "popper" prepares the carriers for insertion into the mother cartons. The ready-to-fill cartons are sent to the packing station where they are filled as before.
The switch to flat cases and bulk glass not only reduced the inventory space, but eased and sped up production. Without all the manual handling of packaging prior to production, the workers are in a much better mood at the end of the day. (Thank YOU!)
With the new brew house more than able to keep up with packaging, we are looking forward to the new-and-improved bottling line in the near future. More automation, faster speed, built-in quality control - all to bring to you more of the quality beers you seem to like so much! And we do to!
'Till Next Time,
Tom Glitzner
Bottling Tech (guru)
