Deschutes starts to can its beer

Deschutes Brewery, one of the last local breweries to turn to metal packaging, for the first time is putting some of its products in cans.

Mirror Pond Pale Ale, Pacific Wonderland Lager and Fresh Squeezed IPA are now available in 12-ounce cans at the company’s brewpubs and tasting rooms in Bend and Portland, the brewery announced Monday. The brewery starts shipping canned products to distributors nationwide Feb. 19.

All three beers remain available in bottles. Brewery spokeswoman Valerie Cunningham said Monday that other beers will be canned, but not immediately.

The new Deschutes canning line, a project that cost $5.5 million, was installed in a new mezzanine area of the production brewery at SW Simpson and SW Colorado avenues. Planning started in May; concrete for the mezzanine was poured in November, and the line was commissioned Jan. 22, she said. The system components came from vendors in South Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Minnesota and Massachusetts, Cunningham wrote in an email.

“We built our line to include the best equipment from the top manufacturers,” she wrote.

The Deschutes Brewery canning line can produce 250 cans per minute; the brewery has canned more than 2,400 barrels of beer in two weeks.

“The goal was 400 barrels in the first week,” Cunningham wrote. “We beat that!”

— Bulletin staff report