< PreviousCRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2020 8 and cans go directly into the corrugated trays 12 per tray. Palletizing of trays and stretch wrapping of pallets are both performed on a palletizer from TopTier. A concurrent stretch wrapper, the TopTier machine is optimized for palletizing and wrapping loads as the load is built, so loads are stabilized during the palletizing process. Empty film rolls can be replaced in less than 30 seconds. And advanced film management technology developed by TopTier means that the rate of film dispensed is accurately controlled by precise load cell feedback in combination with proprietary algorithms to assure load stability. Bottling line upgrade Now for the bottling line upgrade. Designed and integrated by Van Zyverden, Inc., that firm determined that the most economical way to increase the speed of the bottling line and include the new canning line was to combine the two. This allowed both lines to fit in the new packaging hall and share some container conveyors, a combination bottle and can depalletizer, case conveyors, and the TopTier palletizer. Van Zyverden provided Altstadt with turnkey installation that included electric, line controls, sanitary piping, and rigging. One thing that was retained in the bottling line is the Leibinger bottle filler that got things started at Altstadt a few years ago. It’s capable of speeds as high as 12,000 bottles/hr. But it never had a chance to run much past 6,000 bph because the operations upstream and downstream of the Leibinger machine were not optimized or automated. Now that they are, Altstadt is running 12-oz bottles at 8,000 bph and aims to reach 11,000 as soon as some additional adjustments are finalized. As was mentioned earlier, the same Uni-Pak depalletizer used for cans is what depalletizes glass bottles. Harper says it only takes about 30 minutes to make a change from glass to cans or vice versa. The bottles run through a pressure- sensitive labeler from P.E. Labellers. It applies paper labels supplied by Resource Label. Next is a laser coder from Domino that puts lot and date code information on the bottle. The bottles run single file into the Leibinger rinser/filler/ crowner. A Filtec inspection unit kicks out any bottles with improper fill levels and then comes case packing on a system from Climax Packaging Machinery. Feeding this machine from a mezzanine level above are a pair of machines from Wayne Automation. Both offer reliability and ease-of- operation features to help make the automation upgrades a smooth transition for the bottling line. The first of these mezzanine-level Wayne machines is a WMCE Vertical Case Erector. It’s an all-mechanical-motion system that erects corrugated cases and hot melt glues the bottoms. The highly reliable upright case discharge simplifies conveyance to the next Wayne machine, the BCI Basket Carrier Erector/Inserter. The BCI outshines similar equipment The WMCE Case Erector (far left) sends cases to the BCI Basket Carrier Erector/Inserter on the right so that the carriers can be inserted into the cases. The servo-driven paperboard carrier inserter (above) picks up four carriers at a time and maintains control throughout the process of inserting the carriers into corrugated cases. Altstadt.indd 8Altstadt.indd 82/21/20 8:46 AM2/21/20 8:46 AMAltstadt.indd 9Altstadt.indd 92/21/20 9:11 AM2/21/20 9:11 AMCRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2020 10 because carriers are opened upright and inserted into the case on one compact system. Six-pack paperboard carriers are erected and transported onboard to the inserter section. The servo-driven inserter head picks up four carriers (two per side) at a time and maintains control throughout the insertion process. The use of servo-controlled motion on the BCI enables it to achieve the speeds needed while bringing greater repeatability, better management of paper quality and variability, and ease of maintenance. The cases then slide down a conveyor connection to the main floor and the Climax case packer, which fills two 24-count cases per cycle. Then the filled cases enter a Wayne WTS Case sealer that closes the top flaps and glues them shut. Mounted near the case sealer is an ink-jet date coder from Domino. Now that the dust has begun to settle after the recent flurry of installation and upgrade activity, Harper looks forward to rolling out the new cans. “We’ll hit Dallas first and then HEB, which could involve up to 250 stores,” he adds. ● Can Handle Solutions What makes you more upset than cans falling out of a carrier? Not much. Roberts PolyPro’s dependable can carriers make it convenient to pick up and carry 4-packs and 6-packs without cans hitting the floor. The carriers hold cans securely and their easy release design makes removing cans hassle-free. Roberts PolyPro can carriers feature two small retention tabs that when pressed allow for cans to be easily released. This eliminates the struggle of pulling cans from carriers that use a complete 360 degree plastic ring. For more information, call us at 800-269-7409 or email robertspolypro@promachbuilt.com RobertsPolyPro.com A G R E A T W A Y T O CARRY HOME A SIX-PACK Shown here is the decline conveyor on Altstadt’s upgraded bottling line that takes cases filled with six- pack paperboard carriers from the overhead mezzanine level down to the case packer on the main floor. Altstadt.indd 10Altstadt.indd 102/21/20 8:49 AM2/21/20 8:49 AMCan Handle Solutions What makes you more upset than cans falling out of a carrier? Not much. Roberts PolyPro’s dependable can carriers make it convenient to pick up and carry 4-packs and 6-packs without cans hitting the floor. The carriers hold cans securely and their easy release design makes removing cans hassle-free. Roberts PolyPro can carriers feature two small retention tabs that when pressed allow for cans to be easily released. This eliminates the struggle of pulling cans from carriers that use a complete 360 degree plastic ring. For more information, call us at 800-269-7409 or email robertspolypro@promachbuilt.com RobertsPolyPro.com A G R E A T W A Y T O CARRY HOME A SIX-PACK Labeling technology Compact, modular and highly accurate: the KRONES Autocol makes craft brewers more flexible when labeling cans. Brewing Solutions Offering a suitable brewhouse for breweries of all sizes – from keg-focused solutions to automated brewhouses. Thermal product treatment A smaller varient of the VarioFlash B flash pasteurizer is the perfect fit for smaller breweries aiming at best quality beer. Looking for the latest craft brewing solutions? Meet KRONES and W.M Sprinkman at CBC 2020 in San Antonio, Texas. Stephen O’Sullivan Krones, Inc. 414-409-4280 stephen.osullivan@kronesusa.com http://www.sprinkman.com/kronesNAbrewingsystems Altstadt.indd 11Altstadt.indd 112/25/20 11:43 AM2/25/20 11:43 AMCRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2020 12 Automatic full- pallet infeed capability ahead of the empty-can depalletizer is a recent addition to the range of equipment made by Ska Fabricating. Allagash was the first to install it. Shown below is the brewery’s flagship beer in both 12- and 16- oz formats. Like plenty of other craft brewers, the folks at Allagash Brewing Co. watched with interest over the past few years as aluminum cans grew in popularity across the country. Wondering if it was a container format that they, too, should have in their portfolio, the Portland, Maine, firm invested in a small, in-line, five-head filler and seamer to “dip our toes in the market,” as Engineering Director Sean Diffley puts it. He continues. “We’re very quality conscious here at Allagash, and we wanted to make sure we could produce a quality product in a can before investing heavily in canning operations. Total dissolved oxygen remaining in the can, that was the measurement we were focused on. We wanted some prior knowledge of canning before adding on to the building and putting a high-volume can line in.” What happened? Predictably enough, cans took off. Consumers, retailers, and wholesalers all responded enthusiastically, to the point where the five-head filler just wasn’t able to cut it anymore. “So we pulled the trigger on a can line that runs 300 cans/min,” says Diffley. “It handles 12-, 16-, and 19.2-oz cans. It’s in an 8,000-sq-ft expansion to our bottling hall. That allowed us to reposition the secondary By Pat Reynolds, VP Editor Emeritus ‘Quality Conscious’ Canning This Portland, Maine, brewery decided to “dip our toes in the can market” by installing a small filler/seamer. It quickly became clear that a 300 cans/minute line was going to be required. Allagash.indd 12Allagash.indd 122/21/20 1:24 PM2/21/20 1:24 PM13 packaging equipment of the existing bottling line so that both canning and bottling lines run parallel and they merge at the full case conveyors. Due to labor restrictions we don’t run both lines simultaneously—not yet, at least. But there’s room to split the end-of-line equipment eventually. “We installed the new line ourselves and provided our own integration services. But Ska Fabricating Products provided a lot of help in terms of line design. We also bought our conveyors through them, including the ionized air twist-rinser.” Both the conveyors and the rinser were made by A&E Conveyor Systems. The can depalletizer is from Ska, and just ahead of that is a piece of equipment from Ska that bears serial number one. Pallet infeed system “It’s a pallet loader,” says Diffley, “that lets us queue up a full pallet of empty cans in an infeed system that will then automatically index that next pallet into the depalletizer rather than waiting for a fork lift driver to do it. It’s one more way of making sure we keep the filler running and don’t starve it of cans somehow. We were the first to install one of these systems from Ska.” The KHS Innofill Can C filler was selected, says Diffley, for several reasons. First, both the filler and the seamer are made by KHS in Wisconsin. That made it easy enough for Diffley and colleagues to reach mechanical, electrical, and controls technicians at KHS to absorb information from them first-hand, something they greatly appreciated being able to do. There was also considerable flexibility on the part of KHS to build equipment having whatever footprint and number of filling and seaming stations that Allagash wanted. It was a KHS 27-6 system that Allagash selected—27 filling nozzles and a six-head seamer. Also in place is an automatic can-end feeding system from CSW. “It holds something like 15,000 ends and feeds them to the seamer automatically,” says Diffley. “Otherwise an operator has to put a sleeve of ends into the seamer every two minutes or so.” Full cans are inspected by a Heuft Prime X-ray system The 27-valve filler (below) plays a key role in permitting Allagash to reach its 300 cans/min operating speed. An automated end feeder (left) frees up operators to perform more meaningful tasks than putting a sleeve of ends into the seamer every few minutes. Allagash.indd 13Allagash.indd 132/21/20 1:24 PM2/21/20 1:24 PMCRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2020 14 and date coding on the bottom of the cans is done by a Markem-Imaje ink-jet coder. “We have their ink-jet coder on our bottling line as well as on the low-speed canning line we installed, and we’ve been very pleased with both,” says Diffley. “The Markem-Imaje coders seem able to operate efficiently in the slightly wetter environment that you’ll find in our brewery. Our cans are a little wetter because we actually warm our beer in a double heat exchanger and add yeast and sugar before filling so that the beer is conditioned in the can as opposed to force-carbonating the beer. It’s a way of carbonating naturally in the can, which gives you a better mouth feel to the beer.” Borrowed from Belgium Allagash is one of a handful of breweries that carbonate this way. “It’s a traditional Belgian way of bottling that we just moved across to canning,” says Diffley. “When I mentioned to most of the companies whose filling systems we were considering that we fill at upwards of 24 degrees Celsius--when most beer is filled at three to four degrees Celsius—some balked. But fortunately the KHS engineers were willing to work with us on it.” Most of the cans Allagash fills are printed by the supplier. But for smaller-batch beers, unprinted bright stock is ordered and those cans go through a Model Pro-516 high-speed wraparound pressure-sensitive labeler from Pack Leader. At this point cans are multipacked in one of two ways. Most of the 16-oz cans run through a PakTech system for application of a plastic handle that groups the cans into four-packs. The four-packs then Shrink Sleeve Solutions Incredible flavor demands the perfect can. Shrink Sleeve equipment | ContraCt DeCorating | CraF t Beverage info@tripack.net | 866-900-1255 | tripack.net SeeSee uuS at Booth 1110 5 Choose Quality. Appreciate Precision. Meet Passion. p p p PW202003_tripack_brewSplmt_islandBLD.indd 12/19/2020 12:16:09 PMAllagash.indd 14Allagash.indd 142/21/20 1:26 PM2/21/20 1:26 PM15 are conveyed into a tray packer from Design Machine & Manufacturing that puts six four-packs into a corrugated tray. The 12- and 19.2-oz cans, on the other hand, usually are multipacked in 12-count paperboard cartons on a QuickFlex 300 System from Graphic Packaging. Two cartons are then put into corrugated trays on the DMM traypacker. “The cost of the DMM machine was attractive,” says Diffley when asked what led to that firm’s equipment being selected. “But a lot of their competitors at the same price point were only able to do 15 trays per minute. We needed 21 trays per minute, so that made DMM even more attractive.” Hytrol case conveyors after the DMM machine link up with an existing spiral conveyor that leads to the overhead case conveyance system. Eventually the filled cases wind up back in the vicinity of the depalletizer and move into a Top Tier palletizer with an integrated stretch wrapper. Diffley arranged this end-of-line section in such a way that both the bottling line and the canning line feed into the same palletizer/ stretch wrapper, depending on which package format is in production. The top Tier system, he adds, is a concurrent palletizer/stretch wrapper. “It applies stretch wrap as it builds layers,” says Diffley. “It’s a pretty slick system.” In looking back at the brewery’s entry into cans, Diffley sums it all up this way. “There was good planning and we had good vendors to work with. It’s paying off well.” ● The QuickFlex 300 System is used frequently for cartoning of 12- and 19.2-oz cans. Allagash.indd 15Allagash.indd 152/21/20 1:28 PM2/21/20 1:28 PMCRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2020 16 Rhinegeist knows all too well that patience is often required when brewing high-quality craft beers, a process that can take anywhere from two to four weeks. But the Cincinnati-based craft brewery can throw some of that patience to the side now that it has been able to shave at least a week from its brewing process after investing in a vertical disk stack centrifuge system to filter its beers. The new centrifuge has helped the company boost throughput while improving the consistency and quality of its beers to meet increasing production demands. Rhinegeist has experienced exponential growth since it opened in June 2013. The craft brewery initially produced 11,500 barrels of beer that year and four types of beers. Today, Rhinegeist makes more than 100,000 barrels of beer and about 150 types of beers. They include seven beers available year-round, including Rhinegeist’s popular Truth IPA and Uncle British mild ale; seasonal offerings, such as its Kalmer Kölsch and Calfé coffee milk stout; and limited editions, like the Alpha Squid hazy imperial IPA and Bogbeast, a wheat wine ale aged in Scotch barrels. The company distributes its beers to grocery stores and restaurants in Ohio, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Tennessee. That growing demand prompted Rhinegeist to install the AC 2000 centrifuge from Flottweg to bring speed and efficiency to its filtration process. After primary fermentation is complete, the beer is pumped to the centrifuge to separate the yeast, hops, proteins, and other particulates from the liquid. Once the mixture reaches the bowl of the centrifuge, the distributor gently accelerates the bowl to full speed. The product enters the disk pack, spreading out into many thin layers. The centrifugal force expels the solids to the edge of the bowl. The collected solids then run off through a separate outlet. Meanwhile, the clarified liquid flows from the disk stack to a peeling disk, where it is discharged from the centrifuge via a centripetal pump under pressure to a Brite beer tank for carbonation and packaging. By Maya Norris, Managing Editor ProFood World Speeding Up the Brewing Process Rhinegeist Brewery upgraded to a vertical disk stack centrifuge that speeds up its brewing process while enhancing product quality and consistency. Since using the AC 2000 centrifuge, Rhinegeist has been able to shave at least a week from its brewing process. Rhinegeist.indd 16Rhinegeist.indd 162/21/20 1:31 PM2/21/20 1:31 PM• Air Compressors • Vacuum Pumps • Nitrogen Generators • Piping Systems • Nationwide Sales & Service Air, Gas, Vacuum and a WW hole LL ot MM ore!! OptimizeAuditDesign & Install Service & Support Monitor CCaallll 886666--554466--33558888 oorr vviissiitt wwwwww..aa tlascopco.com/brewery The Connected Efficiency Journey 7963_Air Gas Vacuum Flyer.indd 17963_Air Gas Vacuum Flyer.indd 110-02-2020 18:23:2110-02-2020 18:23:21 Rhinegeist.indd 17Rhinegeist.indd 172/21/20 1:33 PM2/21/20 1:33 PMNext >