Ask The Brewmasters

Question for the Community-

What range of fill level or fill weight do you consider acceptable variation on your filler?

While working to adjust fill levels on our Comac 10-2 Microbrew (underfilled 16oz cans and overfilled 12oz cans), I noticed a frustratingly large variation in can weights. Weighing finished cans to check against my calculated target weight, I saw a range of about 10g. Since my target weight (and correlated headspace) ranges were 5g windows, this seems unacceptably high. 

The biggest outliers could be tied to a specific fill head not smoothly releasing every can, but there was still a good range unaccounted for across all fillheads.  How narrowly is anyone able to dial in fill levels and what steps did you take to reduce variation?

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Kelly White
Country Boy Brewing
Georgetown KY
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Hello Kelly,

There are a lot of variables that can affect fill levels. Your 1st question is what should the fill level variation be and that is an answer you need to get from Comac, the order confirmation documents and or operations should provide this information. Once you have the vendors info you will need to adjust your testing criteria to match their spec. I doubt they provide this in grams.

Are you checking weights after the filler before seaming to confirm that the loss is isolated to the filler and not a combination of filler / seamer. There are many variables that can have an affect on the till levels. I would recommend making one adjustment at a time and then doing a fill check to monitor the changes and continue with this process until you are able to identify the cause for your fil level variations.

I would be happy to jump on a call with you are the team to review the current setup and discuss possible adjustments.

Cheers,

Darin Bertsch

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Darin Bertsch
President
Craft Brewery Solutions LLC
Waukesha WI
(262) 888-3401
darin@craftbrewerysolutionsllc.com
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Hi Kelly,

We run a Comac 14-2 (with its own host of issues, but I won't get into that). Our tolerance for 330ml cans is +/- 5ml, but our average for each run is usually between 1-2ml of the target volume, normally over not under. 

Have you tracked this trend across individual filling heads? We've found that irregular filling can often be solved by changing the springs in that filling head. That said we do have 2 heads that historically have always underfilled a little bit despite overhauling the springs and gaskets.

Have you tried checking volumes before reaching the seamer?  We've also noticed that our can volumes are remarkably regular before the seamer and that a lot of variation results from foam getting spun out of the can as it rises up into the first op. 

Settings-wise we're just using speed, filling time, deco, and bowl pressure to control can volumes, but it hasn't required much tweaking to be honest. Generally just going with lower speed and more of everything else in the beginning of the run until the equipment cools down. 

Cheers,

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Francesco Mayell
Lead Brewer
Brixton Brewery
London
02036098880
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