The Great Beer Dumping Has Begun

It’s the temperance movement all over again. Coronavirus shutdowns have disrupted supply lines, changing buying patterns and forcing brewers worldwide to start dumping their no longer viable beer.

Sad…no?

Thanks to the mandated closure of bars and restaurants due to the coronavirus pandemic, draft beer sales have come to a virtual standstill forcing brewers around the nation to start dumping their beer.

Charleston, South Carolina brewers told Fox 6 that they may soon have to dispose of full kegs of beer that have gone stale in distributors’ warehouses…

COAST Brewing, who has been brewing organic craft beer from its Charleston Naval Shipyard location for 13 years, is facing something new…disposing of beer that it used to struggle just to produce enough of.

Craft beer is defined by its commitment to freshness, and now beer, primarily beer brewed for keg sales, is going bad at breweries or distributor warehouse everywhere and needs to be disposed of soon, somewhere and somehow.

“This is new to us,” COAST Brewing Company’s co-owner Jaime Tenny told Fox 6 News. We’ve never had to deal with dumping beer before.”

“We’re looking at a lot of kegs in my distributor’s warehouse that are getting to that point where we to look at options, and the top option is to dump it all. “Actually, there are no (other) options. Our beer usually doesn’t last longer than a month… 60 days is really the max.”

Reminiscent of the temperance era, brewers have begun dumping their beers. Portland producers have already sent around 20,000 gallons of beer (about 1,300 kegs’-worth) to one Oregon wastewater treatment facility and that’s just the beginning of what is expected to be a tsunami of wasted beer in the Pacific Northwest.

In fact the COVID-19 shutdown has made the predicament so common that the Brewers Association, the country’s largest craft brewery trade group has published a guide outlining the best practices for dumping beer.

And with the pandemic shutdown heading into its second month, US brewers are facing increasing stiff headwind beyond untapped kegs with imminent expiration dates…

“We need relief on the back-end, too,” said Tenny, who was looking into options for reconstituting any wasted beer as sanitizer. “I’m hoping there will be a spoiled beer tax credit.”