Continued...

Total distance shipped: 9050miles (each way) as the gull flies.

Elapsed time from brewing to tapping: 60 to 90 days.

Elapsed time from tapping to empty:  as little as 2 hours!

Price of the fee to get a container ship through the Panama Canal: approximately $150.000.

Our Intrepid Research Assistant, Rebecca Davis reports:  there is a TON of different tariffs that boats pay to get through the canal and it varies for the type of boat, tonnage, water displacement, and on and on…” Rebecca continues:  “I did locate a great site about the Panama Canal at www.pancanal.com that has all sorts of information about the canal itself and how it works, the history, and such. I thought it was pretty fascinating! I think that you may enjoy browsing it if you have a few minutes someday. Some interesting facts that I found also are the largest and smallest tolls ever paid for the use of the Panama Canal. Highest was paid by the Crown Princess cruise ship- $141,344.91  The smallest paid by Richard Halliburton in 1928 was 36 cents in order to swim it!!!”

Ed Carfora, the beer impresario (who arranges for such events as Chimay arriving in Boise) emailed Rebecca:  I suggest you check with some of the shipping companies like Hapag-Lloyd.  However, don't call the transport a boat when talking to them or in your article (you will get razzed hard!!!); it is a ship. Boats are much smaller.

Okay, fine, it’s a ship.

Ed continues to educate us:  “Shipping cost averages $15.00 per keg round trip- 20 kegs per pallet- 20 pallets per container- ours would be one of hundreds of different containers per ship, Cost includes extra fee for below waterline container storage for quality’s sake.  By the way, our next bottling leaves the plant on April 14th and the next on May 12th if you want to put an actual trail on a shipment.”

How excellent is that?  The beer is basically kept in natural refrigeration the entire transport time.   Eva Gjersvik of the Hapag-Lloyd shipping firm in Hamburg forwarded our request for detailed information to Marco Tripmaker, who wrote to Rebecca with the following:

Dear Rebecca,

Hope to helping you with the following information. In our Pax service the ships travel from Antwerp via Halifax, New York, Norfolk, Savannah, Panama Canal, Los Angeles to San Francisco.  The distance is around 8980 sm.   Including calling the ports the trip takes 23 days from Antwerp to San Francisco.  The fee for Panama Canal is roughly 150.000 USD. The canal saves more than 14.500 kilometers instead of going around South America.

best regards
and happy easter

marco tripmaker
hapag-lloyd
hamburg

We are now busily tracking down whether it is $150 toll (seems low) or $150,000 (seems high) to get a freighter through the Panama Canal.  So, we’ll see what we can do about getting updates on this next shipment to leave the old country as it progresses 9000 miles Westward, toward an inevitable rendezvous with our smiling and enthusiastic customers!

To see our 7-day Keg Forecast click here