Getting into canning

[Kael Plummer]

Hi all!

I currently bottle my brews and do bottle priming. I'm looking to move to canning but have no idea on what setup I need to get started.

The videos I've seen have had carbonated beer going into the cans.

Does anyone have any tips or setups that I should be looking at.

Thanks!

 

[Mark Ibbotson]

Hi Kael,

Like everything, the best place to start is what your budget is. If I were you and are only starting out, my suggestion would be to skip the original Cannular machine and get the new Semi Auto Model.

I recently upgraded from the original manual seamer to the semi auto one, once I got it dialed in it is very very consistent with the seam. The last keg a canned there were no slow bleeders.

Filling cans themselves is another entirely different issue. I started with a bottling gun, which was initially fine. However filling was inconsistent from style to style. You would loose a little carbonation from filling and sealing, and coming from the tropics as soon as the weather warmed up it was nigh impossible to control the flow rate to stop the beer from expressing its CO2 from the heat.

To resolve that I bit the bullet and bought a counter pressure can filler, which fills like a dream. When I do a canning run i tend to weigh random cans for consistency checks and they are all within 1 gram +/-

Possibly a little long winded of a response, but that is a summary of my canning journey to date

 

[Gollywog]

Mark,
This counter pressure can filler you bought, was that the one from Tapcooler?

 

[Mark Ibbotson]

Sure is,

I bought it direct from them. Expensive but worth it for me. Especially in the middle of summer. Its pretty easy to clean and maintain. Very Reliable, I dont have foaming issues. When I fill I tend to bleed the pressure from the keg and set the regulator to around 5 PSI which pushes the beer through quite nicely.