Mobile canning helps craft brewers during pandemic

Matt Kriewall vigorously wipes clean the counter of his Rally King Brewery taproom as it opens for business.

One of his bartenders pours the golden liquid into a goblet, a rich beer head forming as bubbles of carbon dioxide gas rise to the surface.

It is a cool, relaxed fall afternoon as customers are served chilled craft beer in the small northern Colorado town of Fort Collins.

The coronavirus pandemic and subsequent restrictions on public gathering restrictions threatened that peaceful scene until Kriewall came up with a crafty idea to boost sales for his brewery.

"Our particular brewery does about 95 percent of its sales outside of the taproom here. So if we are shut down, distribution is not enough to keep us alive. We had to have some sort of a packaging service to get us out into the community and to keep selling beer during the pandemic," Kriewall says.

His solution? Hire an on-demand mobile canning service provider to come in and put his beer into aluminum cans for sale to customers who were no longer allowed to drink in the taproom.

The relationship with Rhoadey Canning Solutions also helped develop a new tradition in the craft brewery. "We yell beer. Every time a case gets filled, we well beer. Matt, will you give me a beer," Peter Rhoades, owner of Rhoadey Canning Solutions, says during a canning run.

Kriewall says Rhoadey Canning Solution mobile plant may only be six-foot long, but its impact was immense for Rally King Brewery.

"Rally King Brewing is a small brewery in Fort Collins, and during the pandemic we survived because of mobile canning, because of to-go beer. We were shut down for a period of time, and the only thing that we had to actually sell was cans of beer out of our fridge in the front," Kriewall says.

The melodious clink of glasses, followed by a leisurely, deep drink marks the end of a successful canning run. Very soon, Peter Rhoades is taking his compressor out of the brewery.

But he needs help to push the mobile canning plant into the back of a trailer, where they tie it down tightly. He introduces himself now that the canning equipment is quiet.

"My name is Peter Rhoades, I am the owner of Rhoadey Canning Solutions out of Fort Collins, Colorado. And we have a mobile canning operation designed to support small and medium producers for beer, mead, cider, wine, coffee, sparkling water with hemp. A number of different products."

In the nearby taproom, Christopher Barker sits with his dog as he and a friend clink their glasses in a silent toast before they sip their craft beer.

Barker's dog appears at home in the taproom, sitting next to glasses of beer. And Barker seems to take comfort from holding his beer glass on the table.

He says public health restrictions may have denied him the opportunity to gather with friends in the taproom, but being able to come to the brewery to buy canned brews enabled him to, at least, see familiar faces doing the same and with each other well at a social distance.

"The sense of normalcy that was provided by just being able to come and grab the favorite neighborhood beer and just have some downtime, you know, even if alone, with your friends – it reminded you of the community that was about to come around the corner again," Barker says.

An air compressor that is part of the mobile canning plant makes a sharp noise as it expels excess on being uncoupled form the system.

Nearby, three yellow nozzles shoot water jets to clean aluminum cans before they are filled with craft beer. Kriewall is on the other side of the mobile canning plant with a colleague, grabbing freshly filled cans of beer dripping with condensation and wiping them dry before putting them in paper crates.

The craft brewery owner becomes meditative and emotional as he describes the psychological and financial turmoil that engulfed him at the height of the pandemic.

"The scariest thing, professionally, was the unknown. There were businesses that were being closed, shut down. People's livelihoods taken away. That's really scary," he says, his voice breaking as he struggles to overcome his emotions. He takes a long pause, with his eyes tearing up. "There were, yes, lots of sleepless nights," Kriewall says.

A customer puts a six-pack of Rally King Brewery's flagship been on the counter and swipes her credit card to pay for it as the brewer continues to benefit from canning the product.

Rhoades, the owner of the mobile canning plant, says he worked hard to find ways to help craft brewers to survive the pandemic to protect his investment and friendships he developed.

"We actually offered our services for free to the community to keep ... to help keep them in business. And we partnered with a local can house to sell them cans at cost," Rhoades says.

The strategy has paid off for his company. Rhoades says demand for his services is keeping him busy as chilled beer cans roll out of the mobile canning plant.

His supporting staff often must step in when his day job prevents him from supervising canning operations.

"Since the pandemic started, Rhoadey Canning has seen an increased uptick from last year of another 25 percent – capturing the customers that we...that were new to us last year, as well as new customers that have seen the value in the service that we provide," Rhoades says.