Wynkoop perfects small-batch canning process with two-piece labels

Wynkoop Brewing Company has been canning its beers for the last four years, but there's a catch. 

In order to get aluminum cans printed with the requisite label from Broomfield-based Ball, breweries need to order 95,000 cans. One of Wynkoop's small batches is 5,000 to 12,000 cans worth of beer. That's a pretty wide chasm.

"If you're a bottler, you get a brown bottle and a label and you don't have a minimum," says Marty Jones, Wynkoop's Conductor/Idea Man.

Jones says the solution was simple: blank cans with two-piece stickers that are on everything from hot sauce to mayonnaise, with the brand on the front and the ingredients and everything else on the back.

Armed with hand-canning technology, a labeler Wynkoop acquired from Englewood-based Danny Cash Hot Sauce, and "rustic," no-frills labels from local printer Quad Seven, staffers canned and labeled a small batch of the brewery's Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout (an April Fool's joke turned real) in February, then released Colorojo Imperial Red in June.

"This method has completely opened up our world to putting seasonal beers out," says Jones. He says Wynkoop was the first brewery in the country to submit a two-part can label to the federal Alcohol and Tax and Trade Bureau. "Now we can put out small seasonal batches like bottlers can."

Up next in the sticker-clad cans: the locally beloved Patty's Chile Beer, named for Westword's Patricia Calhoun, in August, and pumpkin ale in the fall.

Contact Confluence Denver Innovation & Jobs News Editor Eric Peterson with tips and leads for future stories at eric@confluence-denver.com.