We are thrilled to be presenting THE FUTUREBIRDS this Saturday, August 11 at The Ivy Buckhead in Atlanta. The only thing better than watching an incredible live band is doing it with good company and a good beer in hand. Our Pretoria Fields Collective team will be in the house to hear this talented group, and our beer will be available throughout the evening for your (and our) enjoyment. Take a moment to check out their video below, and then follow this link to grab tickets and enjoy the evening with us!

We are up and running smoothly on our Wild Goose Canning Line! Our first run was smooth, but we had Wild Goose technician by our side to walk us through the process and navigate any hiccups along the way. Our brewers, Eric and Kevin, have now studied every square inch of the equipment and are smoothly canning every other week to keep our local package stores (and our tasting room) stocked with 6 packs of our two most popular beers: Skywater Golden Ale and Shoalie IPA.

At the front end of the canning line is a depalletizer that’s made by an innovative company called SkaFab. From the SkaFab website: “Matt Vincent, the third partner in Durango’s largest and most award-winning craft beer brewery, invented and built dozens of devices over the years to help Ska Brewing achieve efficiencies in the brewing, packaging and distribution of their beer. But the strong demand for one of those machines, the can depalletizer—a steel framed machine that automatically lifts layers of empty cans from the pallets they arrive on and feeds them onto a canning line’s conveyor belt—inspired Vincent to start a new company.”

This essential piece of equipment feeds the cans smoothly into the canning line automatically, so that an 8 foot tall pallet of stacked cans can seamlessly enter the line of filling production without concern. After the cans enter the canning shoot, they are purged with CO2 to eliminate oxygen presence inside of the can, and then perfectly filled (4 cans at a time) and prepared for sealing. The lids are placed atop each can, and then they are moved into the seamer to be completely sealed. The brewers continuously check individual cans for proper weight to ensure that the carbonation of the liquid is dialed in and that there isn’t any headspace in the cans. Along the conveyor belt, the cans receive a date stamp on the bottom to note their “Canned on” date, and then get fed into a final machine which lines up 6 cans to receive their “Paktech” topper.

Eventually, we plan to can other styles of beer. As of right now, with the amount of fermentation vessels that we have and our brewery’s capacity of production, we want to be sure to keep all beer in kegs for our draft accounts. This means that we are choosing to release only the Skywater and Shoalie into the market for the first few months of can sales. Have no fear, Stout fans, you will one day be able to purchase 6 packs of Walkers Station Stout.