Lagunitas

This week our brewery tour was to Lagunitas. And instead of focusing on the brewhouse or the whole operation, we focused solely on the packaging line or "bottle shop" as people in the industry like to call it. Just for posterity, here's a shot of the brewhouse.

I'm not the biggest fan of Lagunitas in general but everyone has their own opinions and the fact that they just opened a new brewery in Chicago say that lots of people disagree with me on that point. It was pretty tough to really hear what everyone was saying in the bottle shop since it is a noisy place, but it definitely helped to reinforce some of the concepts that we've been reading about and discussing in class. Some things are just easier to understand when you see them in action and beer packaging is one of them. To that end, I took some short videos to try to help show you all what we saw. I'm sure there are better examples out there if you look so if you're dissapointed with my filming capabilities don't limit yourself. Also, I wasn't able to record everything so there will probably be some gaps in your understanding.

Laguinitas kegs and bottles their beers. To keg the beer, kegs are inverted and moved from station to station of a walking beam system (shown in the video). Each time the beams walk the kegs to the next station, they are attached to a filler head which performs one operation of the cleaning and filling process. Draining, rinsing, cleaning, sanitizing, filling etc. all occur at different stations for different amounts of time.

After the kegs are filled, they have to be shipped and this requires loading them onto pallets. Some breweries automate this process but at Lagunitas, it is done "by hand." Since kegs weigh about 160 lbs, having an employee lift them around is not an option. So this vacuum powered lifter allows people to easily move kegs. It is kind of mesmerizing to watch if you've ever tried to lift one yourself.

The bottling line kind of starts in two places. On one end you have to make the crates and on the other end you have to fill the bottles. To make up the crates, a vacuum pulls the crate into shape, arms close the inner flaps and apply some hot glue. Then another set of arms close the outer flaps and kick the crate out onto the conveyor belt. After all of these steps are done, the bottles drop into the crates.

The day that we were visiting, a bent shaft in the crate erector was giving the guys a lot of trouble. Luckily we saved the day. My classmates are pretty sharp. Not much makes it past them and the guy Jeff is talking to in the foreground is the head brewer so of course everyone wants to look helpful.

On the other side of the bottle shop the bottles are filled with beer. They come in on a linear conveyor, are separated by an infeed worm screw and fed into a starwheel. The starwheel sends them into the bottle rinser where they are inverted (Finger Pointing #1) and rinsed with sanitizer. After draining (Finger Pointing #2), they are fed with a series of starwheels (Finger Pointing #3) into the filler where they are evacuated, purged with CO2, and filled with beer. After filling, the jetter (Finger Pointing #4) sprays a very short pulse of 60 °C water into the bottles. This causes them to foam up ensuring the head space is full of CO2 when the crown is crimped on the bottle.

After the filled bottles are crowned and labeled, they converge with the erected crates at the bottle packer where they are separated into blocks 3x4 and lowered by tulip heads into the crates below them. After the crates are glued shut, they are pallatized and shrink wrapped before sending them to the trucks.

So where do all of those bottles and kegs come from? You're looking at them. Bottles come from the glass manufacturer since we don't use returnable bottles here in the US (unlike the rest of the world). It takes anywhere from 1 week to over a year for a keg to come back to Lagunitas. And lots of them never come back. This is a HUGE problem in the brewing industry. Kegs cost breweries $50-$150 per keg depending on the quality and quantity purchased. Currently distributors pay deposits of $25-$40 per keg to the brewery and pub owners pay about the same to distributors. If a scrap yard is shady enough to pay someone for a keg, that person will make about $40 since stainless steel is so valuable. So every time a keg is stolen the pub owner, loses about $30, and the brewery loses about $80. Between the keg loss, the length of time for kegs to be returned to breweries, and the ever expanding production of the brewery, Lagunitas spends about $1,000,000 per month on new kegs. There's a few of them in the parking lot waiting to be filled.

One big issue at breweries is dissolved oxygen. Oxygen in finished beer will contribute greatly to stale flavor. This comes from staling compounds produced from oxidation reactions of the slew of compounds in beer. Beer is comprised of hundreds of chemical compounds and some of these, once oxidized, are detectable to humans at very low concentrations to the detriment of the overall flavor. To monitor this, larger breweries like Lagunitas has a number of dissolved oxygen meters that check the dO2 at different spots around the brewery in real time. This meter is shows that the dO2 at the entrance to the bottle shop is 13.7 ppb and at the start of the bottling process it is 24.9 ppb. During bottling the beer will of course pick up more O2. Lagunitas shoots for < 50 ppb dO2 in all of their packaged beer. I've seen targets in the literature quoted as 20-100 ppb so they seem to be on track. However, it was a bit disconcerting that levels were already at 25 ppb before bottling even started. There's always room for improvement.

Mid-sized breweries like Lagunitas are caught between a rock and a hard place of some aspects. Here is an exhaust of ~60 °C water from the keg washer going down the drain. At a smaller brewery, kegs would be wiped down with a rag and less water would be used. At a larger brewery, this water would be piped to another purpose. But for Lagunitas, it isn't economical to wipe down kegs nor is it economical to try to reclaim this water. So it's wasted. It's kind of like an effeciency no-man's-land.

Steve is 6'1". This give some perspective on how big these fermenters are. This farm had about 30 of them and I think these are 500 bbl or so. At places like Budweiser, they can be as large as 2000 bbl. That's a lot of beer.

That's all folks. Here a clip of the end of the bottle run. Another day of bottling in the bag at Lagunitas. Time to fix the crate erector and then have a draft beer because now that you know how tough it is to get the beer in the bottle, it's best not to have to open one up.