bulk glass vs prepacked

[lhall]

Hi all,

We are making the jump from getting our glass prepacked into our carriers and cases, to getting glass in bulk and doing the assembling ourselves. Can someone who has done this before comment on the pros and cons of bulk glass?

[Fred Scheer]

glass

Hi all,

We are making the jump from getting our glass prepacked into our carriers and cases, to getting glass in bulk and doing the assembling ourselves. Can someone who has done this before comment on the pros and cons of bulk glass?

HI Linus:

I think it will cost you more $$$$$$$$$$$$$ assembling all the
bottles, six packs etc. youself. Time is money........

Just my 2 c

Fred

[frigatebay]

I've contract brewed with 3 diff breweries and all used bulk glass. My simple calcs say its definitely cheaper if you have an affordable employee doing it. I wouldn't pay my brewer to do it but if you've got that guy that helps out on bottling days, general warehouse help they are who I'd use

[beertje46]

We do some building ourselves. Unless you are buying a case erector, carrier builder/stuffer, etc. it never made sense to me from a labor stand-point.

Pros:
Flexibility

Cons:
Labor cost
Storage of carriers and MC
Tying up money on returnable pallet deposits
Storage of returnable pallets


You must have bought a forklift since I was there last.

[Fred Scheer]

bottles

I've contract brewed with 3 diff breweries and all used bulk glass. My simple calcs say its definitely cheaper if you have an affordable employee doing it. I wouldn't pay my brewer to do it but if you've got that guy that helps out on bottling days, general warehouse help they are who I'd use

You get what you pay for.......................

Good luck

[Fred Scheer]

another post

We do some building ourselves. Unless you are buying a case erector, carrier builder/stuffer, etc. it never made sense to me from a labor stand-point.

Pros:
Flexibility

Cons:
Labor cost
Storage of carriers and MC
Tying up money on returnable pallet deposits
Storage of returnable pallets


You must have bought a forklift since I was there last.

exactly my point

[frigatebay]

Maybe I'm missing something but the prices I've been qouted for getting prepacked bottles are way too high. Maybe brewery help make less around here but its definitely cheaper from my experience.

[MatthewS]

As a new Start up?

We are in the process of deciding this and many others things...

Any idea how long it takes to build packaging for say a 20BBL batch; say 260-275 cases? I wonder if the extra cost is worth since we are fairly lean on people. (just the two of us for now)

[leftnutbrown]

Prep Time For 20 Bbl Batch

Hi All,

At our brewery we bottle about 1200 cs a week, and we build all of our boxes. It takes 3 guys about 8 man hours to build 1200 boxes and fill them with 6-pk's. It not the funnest job in the brewery but everyone helps out during the day. Also, 2 guys can usually build 270 cs in about 3 hrs. Hope this helps.

[beermaker]

We have used bulk glass from the start and until we figured out the best way to have our 6 pack carrier built we assembled all of the packaging material prior to bottling. We use a fully enclosed 6 pack box not just a 6 pack carrier and then of course 4 of those go in a case flat like you would use for 12oz cans. The trick on our style of 6 pack carrier is the “auto bottom” so when you pop the thing open its ready to use. This works well for us but we are running around 50 cases an hour with 2 guys on a 4 head Meheen so at that pace its not so hard to build as you go.

Michael Lalli
Krebs Brewing Co.

[realale]

bulk glass no problem

Linus

we here at real ale have been dealing with bulk glass since the beginning(11 years). My advise is to make sure that you only deal with the 1/2 height glass pallets. There are two sizes 1/2 height (5 layersX440 bottles/layer) and full height (9 layers X 440 bottles/layer). The deal is it is that unless you have an automated depalletizer, you should not consider the full height pallets b/c you will have to stand on a ladder and pull the glass down by hand. With the 5 high you can us your meheen picker plate and just pick 16 bottles off at a time until you get to the bottom. (it seems tricker than it really is to get the bottles to line up with the picker plate, but my best advise is to not think about it too much, just lock in the first 4 bottles and then lean the picker plate to the right, grab 4 more then to the left ,4 more and then back to the right. It looks and sounds much more complicated than it really is and remember do not think about to much)

As far as mother cartons and case boxes go, we pack about 500 cs a day and we are able to keep up with the meheen. We bought a top case sealer (tape) and we are able to run our boxes through it upsidedown and have it seal the bottom of the cases and then we manually flip open the carriers and stuff them into the mother carton. We usually build up about 100 cases at the end of the day so that the morning crew can walk in and get started, at least until the coffee kicks in.

We are in the process of hooking up a case erector, six pack erector and six pack stuffer along with a drop packer, so that we can get our line speed up to meet the demands of our "new to us" 16 valve filler, so i will keep you updated as that project progresses

Make sure when you order your mother cartons that you specify that you want " nuna tabs" which are the small pieces of cardboard that are not cut away that will hold the case minor and major flaps back after it is erected. That is really important b/c without them the boxes are hard to handle.

Feel free to e-mail me directly with any questions, brad@realalebrewing.com

The one thing you can count on it that it will save you a bunch of money and in my opinion it is not really that much work, especially if you consider without a case unpacker how much work is involved in pulling your glass out of your cases in order to get them filled.

best of luck to you, see ya in denver?

brad farbstein
real ale brewing co

[lhall]

Brad,

Thanks, as usual you are a wealth of information. We received our bulk glass and packaging materials last week and we'll try it out this week. One of the reasons I'm doing this is to save money, also to better keep up with our inventory - our cartons were being prepacked by a subcontractor of our glass supplier, and keeping up with inventory was next to impossible. At least if I decided to prepack cases again I can find someone local to do it, like Goodwill down the street, and keep up with inventory of packaging materials better.

[lhall]

like a bunch of monkeys humping a football..

that's what it looked like today as we began trying to use bulk glass. The wiggle and don't think too much method didn't work for us, probably because we are using Heritage bottles. But we rigged up a jig to pull 16 bottles into a square where the Meheen gripper could get them. I guess it will just take some getting used to.