Craveworthy: Mobile beer canning

Canning beer isn't a trendy hipster thing, argues Dan Blatt of Buckeye Canning. "The can is really taking off as the superior vessel in beer packaging," he says. The solid structure means no light or oxygen can seep in and potentially spoil the beer, and aluminum cans are recycling-friendly. So as local breweries-Elevator, Four String and Seventh Son, to name a few-turn to the can to move their brews from tap to shelf, they also turn to Blatt's mobile canning business to save time and space. "We're in and out of there like we were never there," Blatt says, adding Buckeye Canning also offers warehouse space to store pallets of beer. The process itself is pretty easy. "We have this equipment that's mobile," says Blatt, who loads and unloads equipment off a truck. "The brewery lets us know when the beer's going to be ready, and we hook up our canning line to the bright tank. And that's really it." The mobile machine can turn out 100 cases in an hour. In its first year, Buckeye Canning had hoped to can 500,000 beers. By their one-year mark in September, they'd hit 925,000. Coming up, Buckeye Canning will be working with area breweries like North High and Yellow Springs. "The list keeps growing and growing," Blatt says.