Magic Hat and bottling videos

One of the rarities of a brewery tour is the bottling line.  Generally, the tour is on a Saturday when the production facility is down, which makes it legal to walk through.  Besides, bottling lines tend to be very noisy as well. We've seen running facilities a few times, usually in places where the tour is looking through a window rather than walking through the brewery.

One such tour was Magic Hat Brewery last June.  We were driving through Vermont on the way to Ben & Jerry's, a sign for Magic Hat appeared in my path.  Hard not to stop.  The tour was self guided through a carnival-like hallway with video on very beery topics and memorabilia.  It ended with an overlook of the brewery in production.  Convenient and I hit next on the video that explained that beer is made from four ingredients.

Our pictures from the Magic Hat bottling line are included in this post.  Below are links to videos that have crossed my beer reading over the past few months.  Each video covers a different angle of running a production bottling line.

First is Troeg's that shows a standard, full production bottling line in motion.

Second, is Brooklyn Brewery's  video showing how to finish a bottle conditioned beer--in this case, bottles of Brooklyn 1.  Besides an extended explanation by Garrett Oliver, it's interesting for highlighting the challendges of not only a 100% bottle conditioned beer but also corked and caged bottles.  

Third, Jolly Pumpkin's video shows the bottling of La Roja.  Bottling at home like a homebrewer, the amount work that is needed for a small or fledgling brewery is apparent.

And, finally, the new canning line at Oskar Blues putting out their Deviant Dale in 16 oz tallboys. This one shows the machine going in for the first time, and the joy of a faster, high quality, lower effort fill seems to just radiate from them.  16 oz cans are my favorite packaging at the moment, so I hope more breweries head this direction.