There’s a Million Cans of Beer on the Wall for Taxman Brewing

29 Aug There’s a Million Cans of Beer on the Wall for Taxman Brewing

by Mark E. Lasbury for Indiana On Tap

People love to use numbers as a sign of success. The bigger the number, the more successful you must be. I think it’s arbitrary; you can be good and never achieve big numbers, but there are some numbers that mean something. I heard about one in the last few days that  impressed me. Taxman Brewing in Bargersville just canned the 1,000,000^th beer on their own canning line. Can you guess the beer that had the 1,000,000^th can?

Even more impressive, they had been canning for 18 months with a mobile canning service before they made the leap and invested in their own Wild Goose WGC250 system, able to move at an impressive 45 cans/min. Since getting their own line just 16 months ago, they have been cranking out the cans at a rate that 63,000 cans a month. And all of this from a brewery that still self-distributes.

That’s a bunch of cans, especially since they have been ramping up the number lately, so these months it could be well above that number. Colin McCloy, co-owner and Chief Production Officer said, “Bringing our canning in-house has not been without challenges, but it has been great to have the added flexibility and additional control over our packaging. Hitting our one millionth can was very exciting for the entire team, looking forward to two million!”

image credit: Taxman Brewing

The canning line was put into operation in April of 2017, as the volume of canning had demanded that they have their own equipment in order to save money. Even now they are getting ready to upgrade their own system in the next couple months so that they will be able to package even more beer. Taxman is adding a depalletizer to get cans on to the canning line more efficiently, a Pak-tech applicator (to put those annoying 4-pk. can toppers on), and a hold conveyor to allow the canner to work at maximum efficiency. It’s a nice problem to have – needing to can more beer.

Now that Taxman is canning 3-4 days a week n the high season, it isn’t surprising that they have hit a million so soon. Heck, they’re predicting a two millionth can in just over a year (October, 2019). Their can provider (Ardagh) must be salivating at the prospect. By the way, the 1,000,000^th can was Gold Standard, from somewhere within batches 753 to 755. Don’t go looking, there’s no golden ticket under the pressure sensitive label.

Congratulations to Nathan, Leah, David, and everyone at Taxman. This is one of those numbers I think matters. Walter and I still like drinking at the brewpubs just because the choices are so varied and the food is so dang good, but when we travel, we are sure to take some Taxman cans and bottles to the out of state breweries we visit. It’s nice to know that we had a role in getting them to their 1,000,000^th. Grab some Taxman cans soon and help them hit 2,000,000 ahead of schedule.