“We feel great about Bizarre beer making it to enthusiasts around the country! We hope that the folks who give our beer a try dig what we're doing! Seattle also sees tons of visitors, so you never know who will make it through your taproom some day…” -Derek Brown, co-founder and brewer at Bizarre
For a little local operation, having the ability to package products and send them out to fans from coast to coast can open a lot of doors. It can lead to cross country collabs with far flung breweries, festival invites, and even even attract tourists and travelers to the taproom.
But before any of that can happen, the beer has to make it into a can. For Bizarre’s upcoming Black Nettle — the Stout we’ve been following for the last few weeks — that step in the process is coming up fast!
Like many small breweries around the country, Bizarre doesn’t have the space to maintain their own canning set up. They work with mobile canner — a company that brings an entire canning line to the brewery in the back of a truck. They show up with all the equipment, operators, and even quality control measures to test things like dissolved oxygen levels in the beer.
“We partner with a great mobile canning company in the area called Cascadia Canning. On a canning day, they typically arrive at the brewery at 8:00 am with all of the canning and labeling equipment along with all packaging materials,” explains Derek.
Of course, bringing in an outside company doesn’t mean Derek and his partner Colette Boilini can just kick up their feet.
“Colette and I help at the end of the line by offloading and weighing cans (to make sure they're in spec), adding toppers, and hand loading onto a pallet that we move into our large walk-in cooler before moving on to the next beer. If everything goes smoothly, we're typically done canning by 1:00 or 2:00 pm.”
That’s a serious whirlwind of a day! But mobile canning operations like Cascadia give small breweries packaging options that they just wouldn’t have otherwise. And that means beer fans can sample suds they wouldn’t normally be able to get their hands on.
If you want to taste Black Nettle for yourself, you’ll find it on the Tavour app in the next few weeks. As Derek puts it, “We hope that the folks who give our beer a try dig what we're doing! We definitely appreciate the support from afar.”
At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about — enjoying great beer, supporting small breweries, and having a great time doing it.
Cheers!
