Maybe it's time to go old-school

When the group is going one way, turn around and go the other

This is just something that has been on my mind. When I opened the Palisade Brewery in 2003, the used equipment I bought came with a Meheen bottler. I had been thinking about canning, but no one was doing it, that is until I heard about Oskar Blues who had started packaging the same time as me. Well, I already had a bottling machine so I stuck with it. Canning took off.

Now everyone cans and I don’t blame them. It’s a great package: really just a small keg for beer and better for the environment too. But getting shelf space anymore is almost impossible and the numbers you need to do to be successful at packaging are almost unattainable for most breweries.

Some years ago we were visiting a niece who lived in a tiny village in Germany. There were two breweries in the town, both about a couple hundred years old. They sold beer like milkmen used to in the middle of the twentieth century. They would pick up your empty bottles and leave full ones at your back door. I thought, “man I wish we could do that in the states.”

So now I’m thinking this might be a good solution for small breweries. While we can’t typically leave beer on peoples doorsteps, why can’t we bottle the way they do in Germany?

If you are a small brewpub you could either build a simple counter-pressure bottler or there are commercial fillers and crowners that are pretty inexpensive you could purchase to set up a bottling operation. You can also purchase bottles with painted brewery labels on them, similar to growlers, so you don’t need to apply labels or peel them off when they are returned. For example if you decided to do a run of your IPA, simply run off a few pages of address stickers on your computer printer that say IPA and whatever else you want to add. These are then placed over the top of the bottle, which would look cool, and let your customers know what’s inside the bottle.

Your customers would pay a deposit for the bottle (which would cost you about $1.35 each depending on quantity purchased). When they want more they bring back the empties, eliminating the deposit on the new bottles they take. A simple bottle washer could be made with a pump and a glass rack typically used in dishwashers.

Does this sound like a hassle? Yes it does, but don’t write off the idea yet. You would only sell the beer out of your brewery. This increases traffic through your door. Without selling to a retail outlet there is no delivery cost, better inventory management, and you are selling at retail instead of wholesale. In addition you are creating a truly craft product that enhances the image of your brewery and will definitely set you apart from everyone else.

And finally, this is really the way it used to be, whether beer or soda pop. Empties always went back to the manufacturer and there was almost no waste. This is needed now more than ever in the world, so why not lead the pack?