Commissioning a canning line with first runs and seam checks

Installed is not commissioned

Installation means the machine is in place, wired, plumbed and turning. Commissioning means it does its job to a specification you have written down and can prove. The gap between the two is where most small breweries lose their first few thousand cans.

The supplier's technician will set the machine up, but they are setting it up for a generic beer and a generic can. Your beer, your carbonation, your can ends and your cellar temperature are particular. Commissioning is how you find out whether the line suits them, while the technician is still on site and the warranty clock has barely started.

The same discipline applies here as for the brewhouse. Our brewhouse commissioning checklist covers the hot side. This guide is about the cold, fast end.

Before any beer goes near it

• Utilities. Confirm compressed air pressure and quality, CO2 supply pressure and flow, power supply stability and drainage. A filler starved of CO2 at full speed will purge badly without telling you.
• Cleaning. Run a full CIP cycle through the product path and check every dead leg for residue. New equipment carries oil and swarf from manufacture.
• Documents. Collect the seam specification for your can ends from the end supplier, the change parts list, the manual and the recommended spares. Ask which settings the technician changed and write them down.
• Water runs. Fill and seam cans with water first. It is cheap, it shows fill consistency and it gives you cans to tear down for seam checks without wasting beer.

Seam checks on every head

The double seam is the line's most important output after the beer. During commissioning, tear down cans from every seaming head and measure seam thickness, seam length, countersink depth, body hook, cover hook and overlap. Check for wrinkles in the cover hook too. Every figure must sit inside the can end supplier's specification.

Do this at the start, after adjustments and again after a long run when the machine is warm. Settings drift as rollers and chucks bed in. Keep the teardown records with dates and head numbers, because they become the baseline that tells your crew what normal looks like later.

A visual check for sharp seams, cut-overs or false seams on every few cans should become routine from the first beer run. A seam that looks odd is a reason to stop, not to finish the pallet.

First beer runs

Use a beer you know well and can afford to sacrifice some of. Chill it properly, because warm beer fobs in the filler and drives up oxygen. Run short batches and measure:

• Fill weight from every head against your declared volume.
• Dissolved or total package oxygen in cans from every head, compared with the bright tank.
• Carbonation in the can against the tank, to spot CO2 lost in the filler.
• Foam on the can as it reaches the seamer, which affects both fill and oxygen.

Adjust one setting at a time and rerun. If oxygen readings are high, look first at purge times, undercover gassing and the delay between filler and seamer, which our guide to oxygen pickup in packaging explains in more detail.

Train the crew while the technician is there

The people who will run the line every week need to change parts, set it up, clean it and do a teardown themselves before the technician leaves. Ask the technician to watch them do it, rather than demonstrate it again. Write a one-page start-up checklist and a one-page shutdown checklist in the crew's own words.

In consulting work we often see lines commissioned by one enthusiastic person who then leaves. Two people trained is the minimum.

The sign-off

Agree in advance what a passed commissioning looks like. A sensible sign-off includes seams inside specification on every head, fill weights within your tolerance, oxygen pickup at a figure you are willing to sell, a full CIP proven and a crew who can run all of it. Hold back the final payment, if your contract allows, until those are met.

Then hold your first commercial run back for a few days and taste it against keg beer from the same tank. If you have not yet decided between formats, our comparison of cans and bottles may help.