Anyway when I first started working there I was surprised at the amount of wastage. They seem to enjoy throwing away the alcoholic beverages they bottle... (just a note they bottle probably more than half the beverages you see at bottle-o's). Now as I was saying they throw alot of stuff away. Along the production line there are certain machines:
a filler (fills bottles and puts tops on them)
the pasturiser (cleans the bottles)
the labeller (labels them)
the 6pack machine thingy
the packer (puts 6 packs into cartons)
and then a machine that stacks cartons onto palletes (usually between 90-110 cartons on a pallete) this thing is sometimes called the palletiser
This is a photo of the pasturiser, its hard to see it inbetween all the conveyer belts that carry the bottles around.
All along the line the bottles are being checked for weight, and to see if the labels are on correctly and a bunch of other things I am not entirely sure of yet. If there is the slightest thing wrong with a bottle they get kicked out by a machine and then put in big bins (located all around the place). These are finally emptied down this thing (often with 200+ bottles being thrown down it at any one time)
I usually cant see whats wrong with the bottles but you gotta dump them anyway. One side is for clear glass and the other is for coloured glass.
This is the view when you walk down the stairs and see where it all comes out:
OK. now that that is all out of the way and you understand a little bit about the brewery. Here is the good bit. I filmed 35 seconds showing what happens to the contents of the bottles after they are thrown down the chute. This happens around 10+ times a shift. You hear all the bottles being smashed on the way down and then the stench of beer or bourbon and cola watfs across to where I work. Enjoy.
