Inside a Brewery: Packaging

"And there she goes again, with one of her weird-ass mixed drinks."

Until I do a bit of travel, I've been stalling on getting another "real" job . . . especially in light of my poor job-luck in this city. At some point I want to make something more potion-related into my work, but at the moment, I'm sticking for safety with a gig I've had for several years at a company that makes one of today's most popular "potions" --- beer.

Not in the brewing department itself, sadly, my position is a humble packaging temp at Craft Brew Alliance (formerly Widmer-Redhook). I usually work the Depalletizer, an easy task supervising the machine that loads bottles by the thousands daily onto the very head of the conveyor assembly. Robot Supervisor sounds a bit more dramatic than a mere temp, does it not? Here's a peek inside my territory.

Above and below, the robotic Depalletizer machine.

The beginning of the whole bottling operation: Hundreds of brown vitreous vessels waiting on the accumulation belt after being swept from the pallet. Like marbles, they naturally form a honeycomb or "closest-packing" stacked matrix under pressure:

The Combiner is kind of beautiful, with its many little belts, each all set faster than its neighbor to create a speed gradient that funnels bottles into a single line (the Filler, after all, can only handle a single row of bottles at once):

Like a serpentine river of brown glass, the running belt to the Filler hauls ass along its track at 550 bottles per minute. The Filler is what counts number of bottles filled, and we have quotas to meet, so I had better keep that belt full or let them know otherwise why. A catcher trough and chute collect errant bottles for recycling, since downed or chipped bottles are a danger:

Meanwhile, upstairs on the bottling floor, bottles are being filled by the thousands every hour. If we ran continuously, it would only take about 1.3 days to fill one million bottles of beer. Of course, we're often "down" for repairs on a machine, cleaning, changing beer batches or bottle types, swearing loudly, etc. etc., so we don't actually run continuously. Still, the factory runs round the clock in three shifts, except on Sundays. Filled bottles on accumulation belt await case-packing:

At the farthest other end of the line right across from the Depal, the Palletizer machine is placing filled, sealed and stamped bottles of beer on pallets . . . one every few minutes! This is also a beautiful machine to see in operation, but really, the whole thing is cool to watch:

Whups! A mixed pallet! I believe this is the only time I've seen this, in all my years here. We might've run out of boxes, or it's headed for the same destination . . . For whatever reason, they decided it didn't matter. Green and yellow signifies special Timbers edition Hefe boxes, Widmer's Hefeweitzen being the Portland Timbers' official beer:

As of a year now, they've put in a new can line next to the Palletizer. A vast litter of cute pink cans funnels from a Depal similar to mine downstairs to a separate filling operation, in this case running an order of Virtue Rose:

Cider, anyone?

I've lost track of how many different varieties of alcoholic drink we run through this place. Some of them really do have the quirkiest names, to the sardonic amusement of us workers. Perhaps this one would not be amiss in an attempt to make butterbeer?

Aaaaand regardless, Yours Truly ends up with greasy Snape hardhat hair (after pretty much every shift). Sheesh, I look like I'm a scruff in my early 20s here, not a spinster pushing 40. . . .

You know it.

Still . . . there are compensations.

The breakroom always features several beers or ciders on tap. Alcohol is strictly forbidden on shift for obvious reasons --- broken glass in all directions, forklifts, finger-eating conveyor belts and suchlike --- but a drink is permitted once a shift is over. Typical of a potions lover, many times I've mixed tap selections with each other or with whichever Gatorade concentrate is available at the pump to create some truly odd concoctions of occasionally unpleasant hue, if refreshing:

"Just call it grog!!!"  For some reason, there's a big glass vase in the cabinet along with the cups. Post-shift, my coworker buddy just goes straight for this flower growler:

Beer: the potion of the masses! Makes the world go round, and stupid people act even stupider, but keeps smart people from getting too uptight. Try our new flavor, yet another fruity IPA, and be sure to drive safe!