Uncategorized, cans
There’s nothing like seeing a heap of fresh Pirate Life beer hit the canning line and turning into beer ready to drink. Our canned beers are fresh and full of bright beer aromas. Cans don’t let light through like bottles do, so even sitting on a shelf in a store, our canned beer is still unaffected by UV light. Cans also have an internal coating so there’s no tinny taste. They’re kind of like mini kegs.
Cans are also better for the environment. We can fit 100 cases of 355ml cans on a standard pallet. With a normal skinny craft beer 330ml bottle, we’d only fit 70 cases on a pallet and it’d weigh 95kgs more. Because we send our beer out all over Australia, we like to keep the weight and size down. Cans are also easier to stack, chill, squash, recycle, take to ‘no-glass’ events, you name it.
We use our locally made cardboard cartons to hold the 6-packs. They’ve got a few cool modifications like a cut away carry handle. We didn’t have to use plastic reinforcing in the handle because cartons of cans are lighter. With cartons across the arms or holding them like suitcases, it’s really easy to carry 2 cartons of beer.
Red even streamlined the design so we use less glue, the boxes are still strong, but you can fold them down when they’re empty, so they’re easy to pack flat in the recycle bin.
Back to the stainless steel bling, the canning line is from Calgary, Canada and it’s a pretty fancy unit. Brewer Jack knows what all the buttons on the screen do and he’s got the line filling and sealing 35 cans a minute. That’s 2100 cans or just shy of a pallet, an hour. Quick canning means less aroma gets lost while the beer is being filled. The line also does a pre-rinse, post-rinse and dry cycle so the cartons stay dry and don’t sag. It’s great way to get our beers out to our customers in the best possible condition.
