SALMON ARM, BC – Barley Station Brew Pub has announced that its five beer brands – Canoe Creek Pilsner, Talking Dog Wit Beer, Station House Blond Ale, Sam McGuire’s Pale Ale and Bushwacker Brown Ale – are now available in cans for take-home purchase.
Officially brewed under the name Shuswap Lake Brewing Company, the beers were previously available on tap and in growlers, but as owner Stu Bradford notes in a press release, “we felt that there was even more we could do with a canned product.”
The release goes on to give more details about the unique solution Bradford found to having to make a large investment in thousands of cans:
The initial drawback to canning was of course having to print minimum orders of 150,000 cans of each beer style. With 5 of their own house beers that meant committing to 3/4 of a million cans, something most brew pubs don’t need to inventory due to the production size of the brewery. The answer, Bradford thought was to print labels for each style of beer and label the cans before or after filling. A trip to the Craft Beer Conference in San Francisco this year for more information on this process left Bradford realizing that no one had been doing this yet. All of the label producers at the trade show were excited to hear that someone was attempting to go this route but they hadn’t heard of anyone labeling beer cans yet.
Bradford then began researching label applicators and producers before teaming up with Precision Label out of Calgary who produced the labels and was then able to obtain a more reasonable amount of blank cans through Cask Brewing Systems, the supplier of the canning equipment.
Cans of all five house beers are available now at the Brew Pub, where they sell for $11.99 per six-pack.
Congrats!!
I introduced Fort Garry Brewing to this concept in late 2007, they had great success with marketing promos for special festivals, and contests and their 473ml cans. They have even done pull and peel contest labels with perforation. Back in Sept. of 2006 I sat in Doug Saville’s office at Fort Garry discussing the contract for his 6 & 12 packs. We had general conversations and then asked him about his can supplier: “Why can’t they be like Sterling” he exclaimed. He told me his problem and we discussed options and I offered that tidbit, the light bulb went on and he was a Sterling customer for life. “Sterling providing value at every opportunity.”
Note: Fort Garry initially had headwind with the recycling collectors as they had issues with the adhesive on the cans and concerns about not getting credits arose. A simple solution of label stocks and adhesives made everyone happy.
Best of luck