First We Take Columbus...

Above: Sean Davies, Mark Beery and Vic Schiltz (from left) go through a practice run with Elevator Brewing Company's new bottling line.

Elevator Brewing Company has a clear mission for 2010: Take Columbus.

The recent addition of a mechanical bottling line should help considerably.

“I’ve wanted to do this for a year,” explained Dick Stevens, Elevator owner. “Our goal is to blanket the whole market in the Columbus metropolitan area.”

Elevator beers can be readily found throughout town on tap at bars, but the availability of bottles has been a different story. Up until last week, the Elevator Brewing Company “bottling line” consisted of one man – Sean Davies – and his hands. Davies was responsible for individually filling, capping and labeling each bottle of Elevator beer to be distributed. He typically churned out 35 to 40 cases on a good day.

That rate of production, while impressive for John Henry of the Brewery, simply was not meeting public demand for Elevator beer.

“We have our keg sales, but bars go out of business,” Stevens explained. “Bottle sales are the best way to get our product out there, and case sales have been increasing. In the past because of our hand-bottling methods, we were limited to a small selection of products at specialty beverage stores.”

Last week, the brewery staff finally got its hands on a mechanical bottling line, effectively blasting a hole through the production ceiling.

“I would estimate that we’ll bottle in an afternoon what we used to do in a month,” Davies said. That translates to roughly one case of beer bottled, labeled and packaged per m

inute.

Davies, along with brewers Vic Schiltz and Mark Beery, spent last Monday learning how to operate the machine. Davies loaded 24 bottles at a time to pass through the labeler; Schiltz flipped each labeled bottle for cleaning, then lined them up for filling and capping; and Beery packaged each bottled beer into a case.

In theory, at least.

Labels wouldn’t fasten to wet bottles, and the labeling line frequently toppled bottles before they could make it to the label stickers. Once cleaned, the bottles often misaligned

during filling and capping, resulting in broken glass. At one point, Schiltz triggered the cleaning hose before the bottles had been loaded, spraying water into the air like the Bellagio fountains.

Colorful language abounded. But the payoff will be sweet; soon, bottled Elevator beer will be available at major retailers such as Whole Foods and Anderson's.

Above right: The old "bottling line" at Elevator.