Fiddlehead Brewing Company adds Drainage Press to Canning Line
Fiddlehead Brewing Company, located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, is renowned for its delicious beer selection and its commitment to flavor, quality, the community, and the environment. Now Fiddlehead is doubling down on its environmental advocacy and reputation for a quality product by adding a drainage press directly into its canning line.
Humble beginnings
In 2011, Fiddlehead Brewing Co. opened a 3,000 square foot facility in scenic Shelburne, Vermont, just outside of the city of Burlington. In the decade since its establishment, the brewery has seen enormous success, expanding its physical footprint and production capacity to incorporate more production space and machinery. Now beer lovers benefit from its 35,000 square foot brewing space where 8,000 to 10,000 cases of delicious beer are filled each week! The brewery also has a tasting room at its original location for patrons to gather and sample the brew.
The 60-barrel brewhouse is home to a 24-head rotary filler that is capable of filling 250 cans each minute. This allows Fiddlehead to can and export beer to most of the northeastern United States, excluding only Maine. The Vermont brewery has high goals for 2022—they want to produce 90,000 barrels of their craft brew for distribution! The company has invested in machinery to streamline production and maximize its workforce, making this goal well within its grasp.
Quality control is key
During the canning process, occasionally cans are underfilled or otherwise “out of spec.” To meet the brewery’s quality control standards, these cans must be removed from the production line. The rejected product must be destroyed to ensure that only the very best product leaves the facility for distribution to bars and stores. Historically the company had employees manually opening and pouring out beer cans for a couple of hours each shift. This work, while necessary, was both monotonous and impractical.
“Efficiency is important, but we also want our employees to enjoy the work they do. Pouring cans down the drain was not enjoyable, and we knew there had to be a better option for this process.”
Partners in sustainability
That’s when Fiddlehead reached out to WEIMA. The WEIMA E.200 drainage press installation now gives the brewery more flexibility while freeing up its employees to do more meaningful and essential tasks.
The E.200 drainage press was delivered in late 2021 and was quickly and easily integrated into Fiddlehead’s pre-existing canning line. The out-of-spec rejects are now automatically ejected from the conveyor, allowing the rejected cans to fall directly into the hopper of the E.200. The aluminum cans are then hydraulically pressed into round discs, allowing the liquid contents to simultaneously drain from the faulty cans.
The addition of the E.200 to the canning line cleared the employees to do more meaningful tasks while ensuring that only the best beer makes it to the customer’s glass. The ejected discs of compressed aluminum save space on the production floor and make recycling the valuable metal more manageable and profitable.
