Inside Anchor Brewing’s bottle drying system

With a rich history, Anchor Brewing’s roots can be traced all the way back to the California gold rush in the 1840s when German brewer Gottlieb Brekle arrived in San Francisco with his family. More recently, in 1993, the brewery became the first one in the world to have its own in-house distillery, and today the company remains one the most traditional breweries in America.

In the 1960s, Anchor was no more than a primitive small craft brewery, but by 1971 they had one of the most modern small brewery facilities in the world, with state-of-the-art quality control systems in place to ensure that their beers are always pure and fresh, from brewing, through finishing.

Just over two years ago, the company installed an ACI blower-powered drying system to dry 12-ounce beer-filled bottles traveling single file down a conveyor. They needed to have excess moisture blown from under the crown and off the bottle to help keep up with the growing demand and satisfy their labeling requirements. They previously had installed a fabricated rinse and blow tunnel that utilized spray nozzles and compressed air, but the system was both ineffective and expensive to operate, leading to excessive condensation on the bottles.

The new bottle-drying system, supplied by Air Control Industries Inc., is based upon their DRI-Line ‘Jetplate’ system. Comprising facing air-delivery plenums, these are positioned close to the traveling bottles to ensure maximum drying efficiency while simultaneously acting as guide rails to prevent bottles from falling over and causing line holdups.

Anchor Brewing’s Drying System is also complemented by a pair of adjustable air delivery nozzles that provide detail cap and neck drying to prevent moisture retention under the crown tops and ensure secure adhesion of neck labels.

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“We now have substantially drier bottles entering the labeler. Drier bottles require less glue, resulting in less rejects, glue savings and shorter end of day clean up at the labeler’ said Dave Jankowski, Facilities and Maintenance Manager for Anchor Brewing. ‘The crown blower nozzles have reduced the risk of bacterial contamination by eliminating most of the moisture under the crowns which usually contain a small amount of beer foam.”

“All the other vendors we contacted said we lacked adequate room to install an effective bottle blowing system. ACI provided us with equipment that was both flexible and capable of meeting our needs. It has run problem free for over 2 ½ years, and I’d highly recommend ACI to anyone looking into a bottle or can drying system” he added.