By Friday, craft beer fans will be able to pick up fresh cans of the Clearwater Honey Cream in Pair O' Dice Brewing Company's tasting room. That's thanks to a recent addition to the Clearwater brewery's facility: a Wild Goose semiautomatic canning line.
To meet customer demand, Pair O' Dice has been canning its award-winning honey cream ale and flagship red IPA, Hot Bet, since 2015 through the assistance of a mobile canner. The new canning system (set to be commissioned this week) will have the brewery creating 28 to 31 cans per minute, plus improving its packaging process, quality and flexibility — meaning seasonals and limited-release beers will be canned in the future.
According to head brewer Ken Rosenthal, who founded Pair O' Dice with his wife Julia, they're excited to expand their packaging operations.
"We had to earn our canning line," Ken said in a statement. "It's just Julia and I. We don't have big investors behind us telling us what to do, but that also means we don't have access to a lot of extra cash flow for capital expenses."
Pair O' Dice distributes its beers, brewed with hard-to-find hops and Florida ingredients (think Plant City strawberries and Haines City orange blossom honey), in eight counties, including Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco. The brewery also has can placements in supermarkets and retailers like Total Wine, Publix and Whole Foods Market.
