Relaxing in the yard with a cold beer on a hot summer day is basically as American as apple pie. But supply chain shortages related to the pandemic have made IPAs, ales, and stouts in short supply. There have been reports recently about alcohol shortages in Ohio, North Carolina, and Vermont, but now, another state is struggling to keep beer in its breweries and on its shelves. Read on to see if your state is experiencing a beer shortage, too.
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Small-time breweries across Colorado are having a hard time keeping their shelves stocked.
iStockColorado's bustling brewery culture has been hit hard by the pandemic: Nearly three dozen breweries have closed down in the state in the last 18 months, reports The Colorado Sun.
That's part of the reason for the state's beer shortage, but a bigger part seems to be linked to a beer can shortage. The Durango Herald says that local Colorado breweries, including Ska Brewing Co., Steamworks Brewing Co., and Carver Brewing Co., have all struggled to can their products.
The shortage has been especially felt among these smaller brands because they don't make the volume sales that brands like Molson Coors or Budweiser do.
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Most of these breweries have relied on mass can supplier Ball, which can't keep up.
Trong Nguyen / ShutterstockThe Ball Corporation, headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, is responsible for producing about a third of the world's aluminum cans. A 2016 Denver Post article on the company estimated that they produced around 6 million cans a day.
But during an earnings call in February, the company's President Daniel Fisher said, "We see demand continuing to outstrip supply well into 2023," meaning it's unlikely that aluminum can production will improve anytime soon.
"We are capacity constrained right now," Ball CEO John Hayes said on the same call. "The reality is we don't have the cans to supply those people that are looking to go into it."
The company is looking to add three new plants to produce 6 billion more cans in the next few years.
But smaller Colorado breweries, which depend on Ball, say their orders have been bumped to the back of the list in favor of massive orders from major beer suppliers.
“Your bigger producers, your large domestic breweries got first right on a lot of (the cans), and unless you were ordering a sufficient amount from Ball, you kind of got put at the back of the list,” Charles Talbott, the operations manager of Talbott's Cider Company in Palisade, Colorado, told The Colorado Sun. He said he doesn't believe his company will receive a delivery of cans from Ball until 2022.
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The pandemic put added pressure on canning companies.
diy13 / ShutterstockIndustry leaders say that the pandemic—combined with a shift in consumer tastes—has compounded the problem.
For one, consumers have been picking can-packaged beverages over bottled beverages for a while now. In the last several years, major alcohol brands, including Anheuser-Busch, Budweiser, and Smirnoff, have introduced alcoholic hard seltzers sold in six-pack aluminum cans. And during the pandemic, breweries also pivoted from kegs to bottles and cans to serve a growing at-home drinking market, putting canning companies in a position where supply could not keep up with demand.
“It’s not necessarily a beer can shortage more than an increase in demand for cans,” David Thibodeau, president and co-founder of Ska Brewing Co., told The Durango Herald. "This all happened at the same time people were stocking up their pantries. It was like the toilet paper shortage.”
Steve Findley, the executive director of the Colorado Beer Distributors Association, said many major brands are feeling the can crunch, too. “My members carry all the major brands—Miller, Molson Coors, Anheuser-Busch imports, and also crafts—and we are seeing a lot of out-of-stocks lately," he told The Colorado Sun.
Now, many smaller brewers have been forced to adjust their production timelines, Patrick Jose, head brewer at Carver Brewing Co., told The Durango Herald.
“Every time we want to get something, we hear: ‘We can get it to you, but it’s going to take about eight weeks,'" he said.
Now, beer prices are rising as a result.
iStockDue to the beer can shortage, Talbott told The Colorado Sun he was put in a difficult position: let gallons and gallons of his product go to waste, or go with a costlier alternative can supplier. “Anytime you let something sit for that long, you … can have issues,” Talbott said of his cider stored in the tank, which forced him to choose the latter.
Now, the cider company's cans come from an international supplier instead of a domestic one and they're wrapped by hand in a waterproof label, which more than doubles the cost. To make up for it, Talbott and many other Colorado brewers have had to raise the price of their products.
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