Fans of Big Grove Brewery will be able to take some of its locally made beer home with them in time for this holiday weekend.
For most of the past week, Big Grove employees in Iowa City have prepared for the company’s first big push of cans onto store shelves.
“We had pretty good demand for our beers on the draft side, so we felt like there was definitely going to be some demand in packaged as well,” Head Brewer Andy Joynt said.
Big Grove released a smaller batch of cans in April with a double dry-hopped brew called First Launch. But come Friday, the brewery will have four of what Joynt called its core beers on store shelves.
The release will include its Arms Race Pale Ale, the Big Grove Brewery IPA, its West Main Wheat beer and cream ale Boomtown Premium.
“We hope to roll with those all the time. We’d love to add some seasonals and one-off beers as well,” Joynt said.
The cans should be available at major wine and spirit sellers in the Iowa City and Cedar Rapids markets, such as Hy-Vee, John’s Grocery and Benz Beverage Depot, he said.
“We need to kind of get a feel for what the demand is and make sure we can supply it. ... We’ll slowly expand as we feel we can fill the demand,” Joynt said.
The company installed a canning line in April at its Iowa City Brewery and Taproom, 1225 S. Gilbert St. The brewery received a large shipment of custom-designed cans earlier this month.
The cans came in by the pallet load with each pallet holding about 8,169 cans, Joynt said.
Once employees load a pallet into the canning line, a machine called the “depalletizer” sweeps row after row of the cans onto a conveyor system. The cans are cleaned, continue down the line and are filled 12 at a time before being individually sealed. On Tuesday, when Joynt showed off the line, he said the machine was filling about 60 cans a minute.
More craft breweries have moved to cans rather than bottles for their retail sales, according to the Colorado-based Brewers Association.
“I think for a long time there was some hesitation to go into cans for craft brewers because there was this stigma that cans were cheaper beer,” he said. “As a packaging option, it’s really superior in a lot of ways because no light is getting in there, no oxygen is getting in there once you seam it, and it’s lighter as far as shipping goes.”
When its cans hit shelves, Big Grove will join a list of other Iowa craft breweries that distribute to retail stores. Those other breweries include Coralville’s Backpocket Brewing, Toppling Goliath Brewery in Decorah, Firetrucker Brewery in Ankeny and Confluence Brewing Co. in Des Moines, among others.
http://www.thegazette.com/subject/n...e-cans-coming-to-stores-this-weekend-20180524
For most of the past week, Big Grove employees in Iowa City have prepared for the company’s first big push of cans onto store shelves.
“We had pretty good demand for our beers on the draft side, so we felt like there was definitely going to be some demand in packaged as well,” Head Brewer Andy Joynt said.
Big Grove released a smaller batch of cans in April with a double dry-hopped brew called First Launch. But come Friday, the brewery will have four of what Joynt called its core beers on store shelves.
The release will include its Arms Race Pale Ale, the Big Grove Brewery IPA, its West Main Wheat beer and cream ale Boomtown Premium.
“We hope to roll with those all the time. We’d love to add some seasonals and one-off beers as well,” Joynt said.
The cans should be available at major wine and spirit sellers in the Iowa City and Cedar Rapids markets, such as Hy-Vee, John’s Grocery and Benz Beverage Depot, he said.
“We need to kind of get a feel for what the demand is and make sure we can supply it. ... We’ll slowly expand as we feel we can fill the demand,” Joynt said.
The company installed a canning line in April at its Iowa City Brewery and Taproom, 1225 S. Gilbert St. The brewery received a large shipment of custom-designed cans earlier this month.
The cans came in by the pallet load with each pallet holding about 8,169 cans, Joynt said.
Once employees load a pallet into the canning line, a machine called the “depalletizer” sweeps row after row of the cans onto a conveyor system. The cans are cleaned, continue down the line and are filled 12 at a time before being individually sealed. On Tuesday, when Joynt showed off the line, he said the machine was filling about 60 cans a minute.
More craft breweries have moved to cans rather than bottles for their retail sales, according to the Colorado-based Brewers Association.
“I think for a long time there was some hesitation to go into cans for craft brewers because there was this stigma that cans were cheaper beer,” he said. “As a packaging option, it’s really superior in a lot of ways because no light is getting in there, no oxygen is getting in there once you seam it, and it’s lighter as far as shipping goes.”
When its cans hit shelves, Big Grove will join a list of other Iowa craft breweries that distribute to retail stores. Those other breweries include Coralville’s Backpocket Brewing, Toppling Goliath Brewery in Decorah, Firetrucker Brewery in Ankeny and Confluence Brewing Co. in Des Moines, among others.
http://www.thegazette.com/subject/n...e-cans-coming-to-stores-this-weekend-20180524
