Today, Crown is an $8 billion dollar company operating 154 plans in 42 countries. While their focus has shifted somewhat—they now manufacture one out of every five beverage cans used in the world—they still produce crown caps.  So you can imagine my excitement when I got a chance to sit down with two of Crown’s top executives to learn about the canning process.

Jan Dunphy (Director of Sales) and Andy Navarro (Director of Customer Technical Services) took time out of their busy schedule at the Craft Brewers Conference in San Diego to share how they’re helping Craft Brewers convert to cans with solutions that fit the craft community’s size, style, and budget.

Working with Craft
Today Crown works with nearly 100 Craft Breweries throughout the country, including Stevens Point, Sly Fox, and Wachusett. But what’s impressive about Crown isn’t the number of small breweries they work with, but the level of involvement they have in the process and the changes they’ve made to their business in order to accommodate the needs of Craft Brewers.

While working with cans is more efficient from both a cost and environmental perspective on a long-term basis, the conversion does take some getting used to noted Navarro. Understanding the differences in format—cans have a larger printable surface area than standard bottle labels—and the printing process itself is critical to the success of the converting from bottles. ”The biggest piece of the puzzle that craft brewers need to understand is the artwork process,” said Dunphy, “we try to walk Craft Brewers through that process and make it as easy as possible.” The process of ordering cans with new artwork takes about six to eight weeks, though Crown works closely with their brewery customers to ensure that process happens as efficiently as possible.

Similarly, Crown is working hard to decrease the minimum batch size that Craft Brewers need to order. While most can manufacturers have minimum order sizes akin to multiple truckloads, Crown has scaled that requirement to meet small brewers’ sizes and budgets. “We can easily do less than a truckload,” said Navarro, “it’s a 10-pallet minimum run and we also do half-pallets since some of our customers have told us that half-pallets are easier to work with.”

When we talked about Crown’s strategy for working with Craft Brewers and the next steps they planned to take, it was clear that they understood the community culture just as well as they understood the technical aspects of canning. ”We’ve decided to take the smaller orders, to work more closely with the brewers throughout the process, and we’re seeing how we can help them grown and get there with them” said Navarro. ”Personally, I love the enthusiasm we get from these Craft Brewers,” Dunphy said, “they’re entrepreneurs who have this great passion for what they do, and we’re here to help.”

If the praise we heard for Crown from brewers at the conference is any indicator, Crown’s pay-it-forward philosophy will continue to help them succeed.

Night Shift Brewing was founded in 2011 by three friends who turned a passion for nocturnal brewing into their profession. Started as a hobby in their Somerville kitchen, they now brew at their nanobrewery in Everett, MA. Fusing unique ingredients into an array of rich, complex flavors, Night Shift is creating some of the most innovative and memorable craft beer in the world. I caught up with Michael Oxton, one of the brewery’s co-founders, to talk about their recent success, unique beer, and spirit of innovation.

Q: How did you decide to transition Night Shift from a hobby to a real brewery?

A: The idea of starting transitioning Night Shift from a hobby to a real brewery started around batch 3! I’m only sort of kidding. We fell in love with brewing almost as soon as we started it, which was right out of college in 2007. Even then, talks about someday owning a craft brewery had already begun. We go more serious a few years later, once we were producing great beer that tasted as good as the stuff on the shelves. Our homebrew system was fairly advanced, and we took the process itself very seriously. We also got a lot of great feedback from tasting parties we held, and that encouraged us as well.

I’d also say that we all have that “entrepreneurial spirit” or whatever you want to call it. We wanted to be our own bosses, be directly responsible for our own company, grow something from nothing. That appeal was enormous to us. As daunting as the task seemed, it was also unbelievably exciting, and allowed us to apply (and develop) so many different skills. And, of course, we’ve still only just started.

Q: What makes Night Shift different from other breweries in the Boston ecosystem?

A: Night Shift Brewing is different for a number of reasons. First of all, we’re completely our own operation, and we started our brewery from scratch. As opposed to contract brewing (which is a great option, just not what we’re doing), we own our facility, and do everything in-house. Because of that, we control every step of the process and are able to get really creative. Yeast selection, especially, is important to the flavors we are creating; with our own brewery we are in total control of which yeast gets used, exactly how much, and the entire fermentation process that follows.

Having our own brewery also allows people to visit it and see where the product is made. We have a tasting room set up where guests can sample beers, talk with the brewers, and buy merchandise, growlers or bottles. We also offer tours of the facility to anyone who’s interested.

We’re also a nanobrewery, which is vastly different than the larger Boston breweries. Because we only produce about 450 bottles per batch, we’re able to get that much more experimental with our recipes, and also tweak recipes from batch to batch.

Q: Talk about your sales and marketing plan; how are you planning to grow over the next year? Over the next 5 years?

A: As a tiny brewery, our sales and marketing strategy is slow but steady growth. Because we’re self-distributing for now (i.e. I drive around Boston and drop off cases of beer to liquor stores, bars andrestaurants), our geographic territory is somewhat limited in range. But, we see this as a good thing. The goal is to maintain a very “local” focus for now, establish a strong presence at the 20 or so accounts we sell to, and slowly expand from there. Once we’re in a position to do so, we’d like to upgrade our brewing system from 3.5 barrel production to 15 or 20 barrel production. At that point, we’ll likely need to start using a distributor (if we aren’t already) and we’ll be able to reach more than just the Greater Boston community.

That being said, we’re really committed to keeping our local presence as strong as possible even as we expand. We source from local businesses like Taza Chocolate and Mem Tea Imports right now, but would love to source from even more. We’d also like to get further involved in community events and programs, and become a more established part of the local economy. Just takes a little time.

Q: As a startup brewery, how does digital media fit into your marketing plan?

A: Digital media is an especially integral part of our business, as it seems to be for almost any startup these days. Brewing and bottling beer is of course our priority; it’s how our business stays alive. However, our brand becomes so much more through the use of digital media. I hardly use Facebook or Twitter at all anymore for personal use (I actually don’t even have my own Twitter account), but I use both on a daily basis for Night Shift. There’s just no easier way to reach a such a wide audience and share your brand’s identity, whether it’s a news announcement, a random photo from the brewery, or a survey we’d like some feedback on. Our slogan, “Share the Night,” came from a Facebook survey that landed us 38 different slogan suggestions. And all it took was 10 minutes of my time to set that up… you can’t beat that kind of efficiency.

Or take our launch parties, for another example. With the help of Pintley, we hosted two launch events that, combined, gave us over 70,000 unique exposures on Facebook. Again, you can’t find an easier, more effective way to reach such a wide audience.

Q: In what ways is Nigh Shift innovative? How are you doing things differently?

A: I hope that we’re innovating on a number of fronts. Our beers, first and foremost, are specifically meant to be innovative and memorable. We’re trying to create and produce flavors that you don’t often find in a beer (and sometimes anywhere) without sacrificing the beer’s quality itself. Like wine, beer can be incredible complex and intricate, and paired very well with food. A lot of people don’t realize that, so we’re trying to create something that helps promote that understanding. We all also really enjoy cooking, so there’s a culinary element to our recipe and beer creation that I think is fairly unique. That’s partly why we use so many unorthodox ingredients – they add complexity and uniqueness to a beer’s flavor, and when they’re done correctly, the taste is that much more interesting.

I also think, relative to our size (which is very, very small), we’re innovating the way our business is branded, marketed and sold. We’ve put so much time and effort into the small details—our logo, label design, label material, website, blog, marketing material, T-shirt and glassware selection—that I’m not sure you often see from a business of our size. The sacrifice is that we’re often working 100-hour weeks, night and day shifts, but I hope we’ll see a payoff for all the work. The beer market is a great one, but also incredibly competitive, so we want to come out of the gates stronger than most would expect from a 3.5 barrel brewery run by three twenty-somethings. You often hear that quote, “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” We’ve tried to apply that to our brewery; from the very start, we’re treating it like the business we want it to be in 2-3 years.

Q: Now that you’ve launched, What’s next for Night Shift?

A: What’s next for Night Shift? On the beer front, a lot. Without revealing too many details, I’ll say that we have a quad and a sour—neither yet released—that have been aging for about 2 months now. We’ll launch both of beers over the coming month or so, and I’m really excited about how both are tasting. We also have a number of other beers-in-waiting that will hit the market as summer rolls in. Hint: habanero peppers.

We also plan to do a lot more with our brewery itself as the year goes by—we’d really like it to become a fun, interactive destination for both the local and tourist community. Also expect more to happen on our blog, including many more guest bloggers. And we’ve got more merchandise plans in the works. I could go on forever about future plans, but I’ll instead just say that we constantly expect a lot from ourselves, so anyone following us should do the same. Anyone with questions or comments can always contact us directly at info [at] nightshiftbrewing [dot] com.

We're BFFs, okay?

If you haven’t seen them already, sometime today or tomorrow you’ll notice beer locator buttons like the one pictured below on beer pages around the website. Clicking one of these buttons will help you discover where that beer is available in your area, both on tap and at bottle shops and liquor stores.

The New Beer Finder Button

This data comes from a variety of sources, including Tap Hunter’s location information, Pintley’s check-ins, and the breweries themselves. When you look at a specific location, we’ll even tell you where the data is coming from and when the beer was last seen, so it’s easy to know how up-to-date the information is. We’re about half way finished with our data integration with Tap Hunter, meaning that you’ll see even more beer availability information in the next few weeks.

We’ll be submitting an update to the iPhone App Store tomorrow and to the Android Market early next week, so you’ll have access to these features on your phones as well! Here’s a look at what the new screens will look like:

The Beer Finder Map

The Beer Finder List

As the Beer Finder feature rolls out, please feel free to drop us a line and let us know how it’s working for you.

Cheers from Team Pintley!

Today, we’re pleased to announce the first of several changes to the program that will make it even easier to win free beer. Yes, that’s right. More prizes and more free beer!*

Seriously, guys, we love giving away free beer…

More Free Beer Prizes!

This month, we’re giving away even more prizes! The prizes for this month are:

1. One Grand Prize: Craft Beer for a Year - Awarded as a $500 pre-paid gift card to a random Pintley user.
2. Fifteen Leaderboard Prizes: Craft Beer for a Month - Awarded as a $45 pre-paid gift card to each of the Top 15 users on the leaderboard as long as those users have earned at least 20,000 points during the month.

*As usual: no purchase necessary. A purchase will not increase your chances of winning. See Official Sweepstakes Rules and Points Program Terms and Conditions for complete rules and details.

Win a Free Trip from Zephyr Adventures!

This month, we’ve also partnered with our friends at Zephyr Adventures to give away a Free Active Beer Tour to Yellowstone and Grand Teton from July 20-25. To enter, just complete the online registration form and Tweet about the giveaway.

Enter to win a a six-day trip hiking, biking, white water rafting, and drinking great beer in and around Yellowstone and Grand Teton courtesy of Zephyr Adventures!

Tips for Earning Points

You’ve asked and we’ve answered. The improved Points Page now features tips for how to earn points, including a full list of all the brewers who are currently offering points bonuses.

As always, if you have questions about the new points changes, please feel free to drop us a line.

Old Man Winter Must Be Getting Pretty Old...

It’s time to announce the Free Craft Beer Winners for November and December!

It feels funny that the first real day of snow in Boston didn’t occur until yesterday, compared to last year’s insane amount of snow.

Nevertheless, we’re finishing the last of our winter warmers and announcing the the winners!

Congratulations to everyone who won during November and December! For those of you who didn’t win, keep your eyes peeled; today we’re announcing even more chances to win free beer!

November Contest Winners

1. Evan M.
2. Daniel W.
3. Kyle F.
4. Justin C.
5. Tyler C.

December Contest Winners

1. Justin C.
2. Adrian G.
3. Kyle F.
4. Daniel W.
5. Tyler C.

November & December Sweepstakes Winners

1. Peter A. - November Winner
2. Mark - December Winner

You should have an email with information on how to claim your prize soon. Dont forget to email us or mention us in a Tweet or Facebook post including pictures of you with your prizes so we can feel wam and fuzzy about all of the awesome beer we’re helping people discover.

Be sure to check your Points Opportunities page for new opportunities that we’re constantly adding!

Cheers!

Tim

…

Now that we’re all on the same “Milk-Stout-on-nitro-is-fantastic-and-as-creamy-as-it-gets” page – something wonderful has happened! Left Hand has become the first American brewery to bottle a nitro beer. We’ve all seen it in cans with Guinness, but this is a fully legitimate US owned craft brew coming to your fridge full of that creamy, nitrogenated goodness. To give all of us uneducated American drinkers the full effect, they’ve been running a campaign teaching everyone how to properly pour a Nitro pint, since it is actually different than how you pour an average beer. In a gesture of true devotion to everyone properly enjoying this stout, Left Hand has even put a QR code on the bottle, linking to this video:

Equally as amazing as the reality of packaged nitro Milk Stout itself, is the fact that they’ve managed it without the use of a “widget” like what you find inside of the Guinness cans. It’s a pretty amazing technical feat, that apparently took them a few years and a few hundred thousand dollars (!!) to accomplish. Worth it, in my opinion. They even managed to keep it a secret until they announced it at GABF this past September, 2011.

This isn’t entire breaking news, but I just heard about it tonight, so I figure some other folks must have missed it, too! Starting this week, the bottles will be released in cities throughout the country. Chicago gets lucky first…but check out the rest of the release dates below!

When it hits Boston on February 9th, be sure to stop by the Craft Beer Cellar in Belmont, MA to join Chris Lennert of Left Hand Brewing for the East Coast kick off! I’ll definitely be there, probably picking up a whole case…

Stone recommends drinking each year of their Vertical Epic series on 12/12/12. Fine. I’ll do that. But only because I have a few other bottles stashed away for the occasion. Until then, why not pop open a bottle of the recently released 11/11/11 and celebrate the date that has only half of the numbers that are used in binary code?

So, what happens after the 12/12/12 is released? What about 13/31/13? Let’s just call it January 31, 2013 because someone forgot to carry the one or something. Or maybe in a few hundred thousand years the Sun’s gravitational pull on the Earth will weaken and our planet’s orbital path will increase in circumference from 584 million kilometers to 663 million kilometers, thus necessitating the need to add an extra month into the year. Math!

Stone seems to be onto something here. If John Cusack’s character taught me anything in the 2009 movie, “2012”, it’s that the Mayan calendar ends on 12/21/12. Some would say that day is the end of days. Others would say that the Mayans were just too lazy to keep the calendar going. Me? I believe anything John Cusack says. That means you have nine days to recover from the inevitable hangover that you get from drinking all eleven versions of the Vertical Epic on 12/12/12 and “borrow” a plane so you can fly under tumbling skyscrapers and do some sweet barrel rolls like you have been training for all your life by playing entirely too much Star Fox.

Start getting friendly with your local craft brew store owners and maybe they might share some of their secret stash of previous Vertical Epic series with you.

Your Tamagatchi Has More in Common with Beer Than You Think...

Hark! Fellow malt and hops lovers, I’d like to give myself a proper introduction. If you follow Pintley you’ll likely hear me ramble on this blog more in the immediate and no-so-immediate future, so for now you’re stuck with me. With zero credentials, other than because I said so, I will be writing about beer-related events, tasting thoughts, dream interpretations, and so on. My name is Jason Jammallo, and I love craft beer.

Homebrewing also happens to be one of the other loves in my life (please don’t tell my girlfriend). Do I dibble-dabble in the art and mad science that is brewing? Do I dip my toes into the ocean of pride and frothing enthusiasm that comes with artfully-crafted homebrew? Do I sing Justin Bieber songs in the shower when no one is listening? Yes, yes, and yes. What better way to start writing for Pintley than to give its users a self-indulgent peek into what I think is the ultimate pinnacle of beer nerdery, nay, beer nerderiety.

Have you had a beer you absolutely loved, but there was one aspect of it that you wish you could change if you had the chance? Stop being so lazy and do it yourself! Make that beer that you have always had in your head as the end-all of beers. My goal with this post is not necessarily to educate readers on how to homebrew, but rather to get at least one person interested in learning more. So why should the average craft beer drinker consider making their own? Homebrewing is all about experimenting, sharing, problem-solving, tinkering, improving, and friends. More importantly, did I mention you are making beer?

Let’s keep this simple. Have you at one point in your life made a pot of tea, boiled pasta, and owned a Tamagatchi? Congratulations, you have the prerequisites required to make your own beer. Remember the part about the tea? Stay with me here. Steeping a tea bag is synonymous to mashing grains for beer. Mashing is the process in which enzymes have a massive party and convert the starches in the crushed grain into sugars. The slurry of water and grain is then drained after a period of time into a kettle where it is then boiled in order to concentrate, caramelize, and break down the oils in the added hops in what is now called wort. Sure, there are other reasons to boil the wort, but then my pasta analogy goes out the window and I am all out of analogies.

Tamagatchi, Tamagatchi. I love you. But what I love even more is yeast (please do not tell my Tamagatchi). Just like that tiny egg-shaped digital pet you had in the 90’s (admit it), you need to keep your yeast happy and healthy in order for them to live long and prosper. Yeast, when added to your wort once it has cooled after the boil, will eat the sugars in the wort and create a waste product that we imbibers like to call alcohol. Boom. You just learned about fermentation. You’ve been educated.

In closing, I’d like to mention that I’ve left out probably almost every single important detail about brewing. Remember when I said this was going to be a self-indulgent ramble? There you go. Although I probably talked more about how splendid Tamagatchis are rather than brewing, consider making the jump to making your own beers. Head over to your local homebrew shop to see what it’s all about. More people out there brewing means more delicious beer recipes being made, and who knows, maybe one day that homebrewer will scale up into a micro-brewery. Maybe one day your beers will end up on Pintley. Maybe one day I will be able to keep my Tamagatchi alive for more than 2 days. Maybe.