What the hell is going on with this bottling line at Freetail? Back on December 13, this photo was posted to our Facebook, announcing the physical arrival of our bottling line.
And yet… no Freetail bottles grace the shelves of our new merchandiser. Instead you can find bottles from great craft breweries from around the country, but that wasn’t really the point, was it?
The biggest delay we are facing, is the arrival of a commercial grade air compressor that is required for the operation of the bottling line. We ordered one back on December 14 that was supposed to have a 7 day turnaround time, yet we haven’t seen it yet and the vendor we ordered it from is unable to either a) contact the manufacturer to get an update (well, they’ve been sending messages to the manufacturer, but haven’t heard anything back) or b) cancel the order… so we are in hurry up and wait mode. If you happen to work for Quincy Air Compressor… hurry up and make our unit!
The good news is that I have a shipment of bottles arriving today that I’ll at least get to label in advance of our first bottling. Those of you who are fans of the crooked, bubbly nature of our hand-applied labels will be disappointed to learn we also have a new labeller that will result in nice, straight, evenly applied, professional looking labels going forward.
I’ll definitely keep everyone updated on the status of bottles and the first release, both on my personal twitter (@beermonkey) in addition to the Freetail twitter (@freetailbrewing) and Facebook feeds. The good news is that the first release will include a few bottles. Look for Three: Anniversary Ale, Old Bat Rastard, PirateTail V and one of our IPAs all hitting the shelves at the same time.
Until next time.
