Tyler took this picture today and I think it's pretty cool. And, I've never really gone through the canning process so as we're (hopefully) embarking on a new canning line, I might as well reflect on one of the last times we'll use our first-born:
What's shown on the table makes up about one row of a pallet (seen in the background). The total height of each pallet we make is 9 rows.
(I'm about to go really in depth in our canning process. Some might appreciate it, others, not so much)
Each one of the cans is manually dunked in a bucket of sanitizing solution and hand/placed up a fill/co2 extension. A button is pressed to begin a process of co2 purge, followed by a fill, which takes about 12 seconds. It's then removed back down the extension, pulled out, and set on a table.
The next person in line takes a lid out of a small sanitizer-filled bin. The lid is placed on the top of the can, and set onto a piston. You then press a button with your other hand, and the piston raises the can into a fast-spinning chuck, pressing the lid down, and spinning. Two air-powered pieces then move in independently and seam the lid to the edge of the can. The piston lowers, and you take the can off (about 10 fall-offs per session dent cans, our friends like that). You then dunk the can in clean water and set it on a steel "drying" table. They can't be too wet or they'll soak the case pack, and fall apart within the pallet.
The third person has the easiest job. Their main function is to take the cans on the table (we don't usually let them accumulate like the pic, but Matt was talking to the electrician), shake any excess water off, put them into the case which you just folded up, put a "keep refrigerated" sticker (new) on, snap on the 4-pack holders, slap on the expiration with a gun, and stack the case on the pallet. Their secondary job is to de-palletize the huge stacks of cans we get. That involves a huge plastic bag and a ladder. All the while they keep the canners stocked with supplies like cans, lids, water, sanitizer, massage for back knots, whatever. You don't really get to rest much, but it's slower paced than the mad rush of canning. We rotate after each row, which is about a 25 minute session.
A whole pallet takes about 4 hours if worked straight. And when I say straight, I mean the third, "packaging" person will take the last few cans out of the can bag, put them in the sanitizer bucket, and replace it with a new bag so the canning people don't skip a beat. As you can tell, we want to minimize time spent canning, it's not the most fun part of the job. In a given day, we'll do between 1.3 and 2.5 pallets per session, so with the 2 hours for set-up, clean-up, and screw up, we're typically at it for 6-12 hours.
Our distributors then come pick these pallets up, along with pallets of kegs, take them to their warehouse, then they're off to the store/bar. Our highest volume distributor goes through almost 130 cases/week nowadays. We currently have 5 active distributors. Needless to say we're REALLY, REALLY, REALLY anticipating the new canning line getting up and running. You can only put so many hours on what's essentially an assembly line without getting antsy for change. Our electritian is coming tomorrow to hopefully power us up, and if everything goes perfectly (odds approx 0.012%), tomorrow could be our last super-manual canning session.
To celebrate (although we'd be doing it anyways), we'll be slow-cooking some meats in the smoker all day, so hopefully we'll cap everything off with some smoked ribs, chicken, or brisket marinated/basted in some Cran.
We'll try to take pictures along the way, but there's only so many times you can instagram a 12 head seaming mechanism before it becomes an unhealthy obsession. To many, I'm sure that number hovers around 0. It definitely get our juices flowing though. Getting the first can off an automated line has been something of a white whale since Downeast's inception. I'll be satisfying beyond the obvious ease of packaging.
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