Does Dogfish head hand fill their bottles?

[Tweek]

I got a couple bottles of the 120 from Hopjack13, btw you are tha man hopjack! Im looking at them and one is way more into the neck than the other. very wierd. O yeah the short fill is going to be yours Stodbrew :p

Anyone else notice this phenomena?

[batkins]

As far as I know, they are not handfilled.
I remember hearing that they changed to a newer bottle filler, when the 90 started going in 12 oz. bottles. That also led to the change from bottle conditioning.
Cheers,
Bill

[Stodbrew]

Originally posted by Tweek
I got a couple bottles of the 120 from Hopjack13, btw you are tha man hopjack! Im looking at them and one is way more into the neck than the other. very wierd. O yeah the short fill is going to be yours Stodbrew

Anyone else notice this phenomena?

At 20% alcohol, that's ok with me. :D Even after that I might be sleeping wherever it is I'm drinking it!

[hopjack13]

those two bottle may have came from two differnt parts of the country, i had two differnt trades going on . one came from PA and the other from maryland. maybe you got the two differnt ones......or someone tampered with one, i didn't notice hmmmm . let me know so i can get mad a someone! if it is indeed tampered with. but if it was im sure it not their fault, cuz i trade with these people regularly and they have always gone above and beyond the call of duty. i trade with good people, like newportstorm, he's the man!!! also my buddy batkins gets me good northwestern stuff! im not going to name everyone but let me know how they turn out!

oh damn! i forgot batkins! did you get any 120 yet??? im getting more (for a beer i don't really enjoy i sure am getting a lot of it lately, it's good to barter with;) ) pm me if you still need some! sorry..i can't believe i forgot you man!

[BluesHarp]

Originally posted by Tweek
I got a couple bottles of the 120 from Hopjack13, btw you are tha man hopjack! Im looking at them and one is way more into the neck than the other. very wierd. O yeah the short fill is going to be yours Stodbrew :p

Anyone else notice this phenomena?


I'v noticed the same thing with their Midas Touch Golden elixir on the shelf at my local store...

[sallad]

hey tweek, i'll be sure those olde schools are all at the same level for ya, even if it means i have to take a sip or two out of them first!! :)

[chazwicke]

I'll be out in Ocean City again this Saturday and will pass through Rehobeth. I had lunch at Dogfish Head last Saturday. I may stop by for lunch again and I'll Inquire, if so, about the bottling. Their main brewery is not at athe pub site anymore. Enjoyed a pint of the 60 minute. They had their full range on tap but I was driving home (2 1/2 hour drive) and I figured I better not get into the higher alcohol beers.

[newportstorm]

With the growth and distribution that DFH has experienced, it's hard to imagine they'd be bottling by hand. But even larger breweries that use nice bottling lines, like a Krones, still occasionally get a short-fill. And unless it's very obvious or someone is right on top of things, they can slip by into cases. I've gotten several over the years - maybe an ounce or two. Nothing to fret over. Then again, with 12 oz. bottles of 120 Minute going for $7-10 each, 1 or 2 ounces can seem like a lot! ;)

Cheers!

[brewmonkey]

Fill levels are extremley difficult to control on an automated line and you are more likely to find a short fill from there vs. a hand fill. For the most part the fills are accurate, but the line is uaully moving rather fast and short fills will happen. The method for removing short fills from a line is to eyeball them and that is usually done by the bottling crew not the brewers. Short fills are pulled after crowning and either destroyed or given to the workers to take home.

Before you freak out, they are destroyed due to ATF tax issues. If the bottles leave the brewery the appropriate tax must be paid, even if the beer is given to staff. Most give them to staff however.

[chazwicke]

This is interesting. Back in the late 1970s I toured the Anheuser Busch plant in Williamsburg. I recall quality control people on the bottling line pulling bottles and throwing them into huge plastic dumpster size carts. There were hundreds of broken bottles in the carts. I remember thinking how much beer and bottles were wasted. I have heard it said that AB spills more beer in one day than some brewerys brew in a year. Wonder if they recycled the broken glass. This was a long time ago but I remember they also had bicycles to get from one part of the brewery to another. The bottling line was impressive. in fact I remember being impressed with the whole tour. The Williamsburg plant was new at the time and was my first major brewery tour. Meridian has mentioned the tour at Old Dominion in Ashburn ( which is 10 minutes from my house) it is an impressive tour too. It has been a while since I actually took their tour but it was informative and the beer samples were good too. Catamount in Vermont used to have a nice tour and Yuengling has a good one. I toured Blue Grey in Fredericksburg two saturdays ago. It is a small brewery making a couple good beers and a couple fair beers. I have toured many, many breweries and a few of the tours really stood out. Greene King in Bury St. Edmunds UK was a nice tour too.

[chazwicke]

I can only imagine what my friends, family, & employees think when They are showing their vacation pictures of the beach, Europe, their cruise or whatever and I am showing pictures of bottling lines, mash tuns, heat exchangers, fermenters, grain mills and the like.

[barley ben]

Sounds like my kind of vacationing. If only the girlfriend thought the same!

[threecb]

Ahhh, that IS my kind of vacationing! Luckily the wife is game.

When I toured Steam Whistle in Toronto, they had QC at the end of the bottling line pulling short fills. The tour guide made a joke about them being for the employees...maybe it wasn't a joke!

[Theakston]

Sam from DFH came to RFD this summer as part of the Smithsonian series. He's a really entertaining guy. In his "history of the brewery" speech he talked of a semi-manual bottling line that they had bought on the cheap for the 75 cl bottles. One of his brewing assistants lost a finger in it!

Anyway I think they sold that contraption (to mackenzies brewhouse in PA if I'm not mistaken). Now they seem to do all their beers in the standard bottles and I would guess that this is fully automated. If your bottle was the bigger size it would have been off of the old line I guess. I purchased a 75cl bottle of 120 minute this Summer, so some of the large ones are still around (still haven't had the courage to open it!)

[chazwicke]

One of the most entertaining tastings I have been to was the Brickskeller tastings with Uli Bennowitz of Weeping Radish fame ( I was just there after Christmas). He tells of the obsticles he overcame when building his brewery. Hilarious tales. He has hosted a couple of the Bricks tastings

[Tweek]

Originally posted by sallad
hey tweek, i'll be sure those olde schools are all at the same level for ya, even if it means i have to take a sip or two out of them first!! :)

LOL! Thanks Man!