

Yesterday I had the pleasure of documenting the canning of the first craft beer in New Jersey with Iron Heart Canning. Iron Heart Canning is a new business venture that provides mobile canning solutions helping small breweries to grow their businesses and offer other mediums of serving their beer besides draft and bottles. A lot of breweries are looking into canning as an option these days, draft only breweries like Carton with the help of companies like Iron Heart are able to can up their beer right at the source with no quality sacrificed. I say this because some breweries contract their canning because they don’t have the space for their own line or just cannot afford the system to do so.That being said there is most certainly a void to fill in this country for those that don’t want to contract their beer out and Iron Heart Canning is here to fill it. Some months ago Augie and Jesse put the plans in motion with Iron Heart to have Boat Beer canned for availability at the tasting room. For those that don’t know, Boat Beer is a hoppy session ale for the IPA drinker and those that have had it are probably frothing at the mouth at the picture above. You are not dreaming or hallucinating, Boat Beer is now available in cans and ready for your consumption.

I have never seen the canning process of anything let alone beer. Needless to say I was eager to learn, watch and document.

I saw the design for the can a few weeks ago but seeing 3,000 plus cans was something else.

Tyler Willie from Iron Heart Canning setting up.

Carton Brewings head brewer, Jesse Ferguson was very excited to be canning Boat Beer.

The empty cans waiting to head down the shoot.

The cans are fed through a shoot where they are rinsed, spun around and sanitized.

After that they are sent down the belt where they get a shot of CO2.

Then the can is filled with ice cold tasty beer right from the bright tank.

Canning is a simple process once everything gets dialed in, everything from the CO2 too the fills must be precise to assure you get that perfect can of beer.

Two Jeremy’s in one place, Carton’s assistant brewer Jeremy Watts and Jeremy Costa from Iron Heart Canning checking the weight of a few cans.

Mmmmm, frosty boat beer.

Some cans don’t make it out alive.

Its cool to see recycling taken more seriously these days. These plastic can holders are both reusable and make carrying your pounders easy.

That is a whole lot of Boat Beer.

About 400 cases to be exact.

Thanks to Iron Heart Canning for providing such an amazing service. If any brewery has considered getting into the can game I would highly recommend Iron Heart. Tyler and Jeremy are very knowledgable and want to help as many breweries as they can. As for the Boat Beer, get on down to the tasting room today and this weekend and stock up. There is a two case limit per person and there is no telling how long it will last. We will have a film later next week documenting the process with interviews from Tyler and Jeremy from Iron Heart and Augie from Carton. Cheers.

-Brian