Want to know what it takes to get craft beer from the kettle to the liquor store? Looking to earn some free beer? Odyssey Beerwerks in Arvada needs a few good volunteers.

A few days each month, the brewers at Odyssey Beerwerks put out the call on Facebook looking for volunteers to help put their tasty beers into shiny cans. DrinkDenver answered the call and at 8:30 AM on a snowy Monday morning reported for duty at the brewery near I-76 and Sheridan.

Two of us volunteers arrived on this snowy day to work. Head Brewer Josh Van Riper says he needs about three people to run the canning line. With the two of us and some help from Beerwerks’ Karen we began to supply the thirsty masses with Odyssey’s Heliocentric Hefeweizen. The cans are topless, but already have the Odyssey beer labels on them. Our job is to fill them with beer, seal the lid on top of the can, then organize and snap on the six-pack lids and pack them in cases on a pallet. It may sound complicated, but it’s really not.

First, the cans are set on a mini-assembly line with six fillers. Three fillers pump out CO2 and the next three pour in the beer. The cans are filled with CO2 to force out the oxygen. One of us set up the cans on the line and pressed a button to start the CO2 and beer. The next person put the lids on the cans and put them into the sealer. The third person takes the sealed cans and sets them in a sink full of water. Not only does the water clean off any beer spilled on the cans, if the cans float in the water slightly below the water’s surface, they have the right amount of beer in them. Cans that sink to the bottom are too full and cans the float above the surface have too much air. Those cans would not be put into the six-packs.

There are some hazards. The person filling the cans needs to check each empty can to make sure there are no existing dents or cuts. The person putting on the lids has to be careful not to put two lids on one can. For sanitary reasons, people cannot touch the insides of the cans or the bottoms of the lid and any lid that falls on the counter or floor cannot be used either.  After a few runs to get the hang of it, things are running smoothly. Josh does stop us a few times to tweak the fill lines. Then we run into a problem with the lid sealer. It is pushing down too hard on the cans causing dents. Josh makes a few more adjustments.

From here on out, we start humming along and the next three hours fly by. When Josh stops us at 12:30 PM, we had canned 90 cases of beer. We are rewarded for our efforts with two six-packs of hefeweizen and two drink tickets. Karen also brought some homemade chocolate brownies full of chocolate chips for breakfast. Not a bad way to spend a morning.

If you would like to volunteer to can Odyssey’s beers, “like” the brewery’s Facebook page to receive canning announcements. There are two  four-hour shifts, 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM and 12:30 to 4:30 PM. After canning dates are announced on Facebook, private message the brewery with your email and phone number to set up your session. The brewery is located on the north Denver/Arvada line in the Goldstrike Business Park. You can find Odyssey beers in six-packs all over the Front Range.