Patrick:
This is gonna hurt you, bud… but it’s best you heard it from me first. I’m not the only casualty of the novel coronavirus. It’s latest victim: CRAFT BEER!
Above: Prohibition-era dumping… it’s as much a travesty now as it was back then.
Even though liquor and grocery stores are seeing increased sales of beer in cans and bottles, shuttered bars and canceled events have created a backlog of draft beer at America’s assortment of craft breweries—most of which don’t sell to grocery stores, and normally rely on draft beer sales at their high-margin taprooms and brew pubs to bolster bottom lines.
With the absence of sales at bars and restaurants, beer distributors nationwide are sitting on stacks of unneeded kegs slowly approaching their expiration dates. And lots of breweries are confronting the inevitable and dumping unsold reserves directly down the drain. These are scenes reminiscent of Prohibition… all I can hope is that you get your hands on as much of the hops as you can, before the suds end up in the sewer.
—Jesse