Sweating bottles/cans

[Conan]

What's the best way to keep freshly packaged beer from sweating? We have knife blowers at the end of line and hoped that this would at least get rid of some of the moisture before popping them into the corrugate trays - turns out, the sweat is causing more problems than our rinser. I know we could get polymer treated corrugate trays but we'd like to use up our inventory.

Thanks

[Larry Doyle]

Your bottles/cans are sweating because your beer temperature is below the dewpoint. In effect, your containers are little water generating machines which will continue to do so until the beer temp gets above the dewpoint.
There are several ways to determine the dewpoint. There are meters, sling psychrometers or from the weather on the internet. Remember, your brewery dewpoint can be several degrees higher than the outside dewpoint.

Final beer temps of ~80 degrees (give or take) will be needed to avoid the sweating problem.
Big breweries control beer out temperature by adjusting temps in the final zones of warmers and pasteurizers. I suspect you do not have this equipment.
A more expensive corrugated tray might help but that water has got to go somewhere.
I'm sure someone out there will have a recommendation to solve or minimize the problem.

[Rob Creighton]

Unless you can control packaging area temperature and humidity, you are not going to stop/minimize condensation on bottles. I don't know what speed you're running but your best bet is to get into the cooler with your finished product as quickly as possible. If you are running a line above 30 bpm, you could consider getting a bottle warmer (small footprint compared to a pasteurizer) and warm your product up above the dew point. Have the air knife after the warmer to remove surface water because that is all it does.