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A New Problem Is Brewing in the Beer Industry: One Million Kegs Are Going Stale
- anguswithgusto 7y agoHey, I'll drink it?
- wyxuan 7y agoMy liver is indestructible!
- vaxman 7y agoCovid-19 is linked to AKF (search). As an older hacker (not a Boomer), I can tell you that the kids who setup microbreweries back in the day first tried to escape into project management and then wound up...not-in-tech.
- yellowapple 7y agoMy liver ain't, but my brain doesn't care.
- themark 7y ago“Executives say draft beer typically stays fresh for between two and six months.” Need to work on this.
- Janinda 7y agoIt’s a science problem. More specifically, chemistry.
- i386 7y agoI own a brewery and distillery. All of our beer is refrigerated to keep it fresh.
- Janinda 7y agoI owned one too. Hopefully, your entire supply chain from brewery to consumer takes the same care you do. And that your total package oxygen numbers are low. Good luck. It’s getting rough out there.
- synaesthesisx 7y agoMost craft beers, especially those high in terpenes (dry-hopped IPAs come to mind) have flavor drop-off relatively rapidly and are best consumed fresh. Monkish, Fieldwork, Other Half, Tree House etc are some of my favorites but they’re usually bursting with flavor the first two weeks or so. “Drink Fresh”
- seibelj 7y agoPeople in my office (well, formerly) have been buying kegs straight from the breweries. They were intended for commercial and now are sold to consumer and delivered by the same trucks.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- boomboomsubban 7y agoUnless it's a local beer, they were buying straight from the local distributor. The major breweries do not ship their product to bars.
- rawoke083600 7y agoWe here in South Africa, we have actually banned the sale of alcohol and cigarettes while in lock-down for almost a month now.
- tempsy 7y agoThat sounds like a terrible decision
- sjwright 7y agoThough the social results will be fascinating... I'm sure there are researchers salivating over this opportunity.
- wolco 7y agoThat seems like a bad idea. Many people will die without any alcohol. Forcing people inside and then stopping the sales of cigarettes seems like it would create more agression in the short term.
- Janinda 7y agoI can’t read the article due to the paywall, but I hope it went into the science around heat and oxidation as well as the regulations preventing breweries and distributors from buying back the kegs. Maybe it even offered a glimpse of hope from post-processing via distillation
- XiS 7y agoArchival version https://archive.fo/poekb https://archive.fo/poekb
- wiredone 7y agoTime for the US to get into the vegemite business
- userbinator 7y agoThey are also sending beer that is expired or can’t be distributed to a nearby craft distiller to be turned into hand sanitizer. That's an excellent solution, as the demand for the latter has definitely been going up rapidly in the past little while.
- Scoundreller 7y agoThere’s really no shortage of ethanol. Gasoline is usually 5-10% ethanol. And with demand on that in disarray...
- URSpider94 7y agoThere have been issues in that many ethanol producers are not licensed to produce medical-grade ethanol, which is what’s required for hand sanitizer. So it hasn’t been entirely straightforward to convert biofuel or drinking alcohol production over.
- jessaustin 7y agoI can see why sanitizer used in a hospital would have to be "medical-grade", whatever that means. Why would any other sanitizer need this? If the fluid was safe to drink (most alcoholic beverages are sold for this purpose), why wouldn't it be safe to rub on hands?
- buckminster 7y agoI don't know about medical-grade but it's usually illegal for a brewery to produce alcohol strong enough to be useful as a sanitizer.
- jessaustin 7y agoThread parent referenced a distiller. Distillation is the process that turns fermented products into sanitizer and other wonderful fluids.
- URSpider94 7y ago
- nimbius 7y agosimple solution: convert it to malt vinegar. this is a natural process caused by introducing a vinegar culture into the beer. then, sell it to the food industry or divert it to your food holdings (hot sauces or snacks.) this can also be distilled into acetic acid which is used in everything from solvents to cervical cancer screens and the production of precursors for polyvinyl acetate.
- pugworthy 7y agoI appreciate your second paragraph. That said I couldn’t help think, “A New Problem Sours the Malt Vinegar Industry: One Million Kegs Are Sitting Idle“
- toyg 7y agoVinegar can actually get better with age.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago"It's not idle, it's appreciating."
- nimbius 7y agoIt is also trivially easy to turn your old beer into gourmet vinegar :) https://preserveandpickle.com/how-to-make-a-vinegar-mother/ https://preserveandpickle.com/how-to-make-a-vinegar-mother/
- onion2k 7y agoThat would ruin all the beer barrels though, which would be an expensive mistake.
- ac29 7y agoKegs of beer are stainless steel, is vinegar strong enough to ruin that?
- jacknews 7y agoBeer baths? Good for the skin.
- gumby 7y agoMy son in college (well in his apt with his gf, taking classes online) could easily take care of one before it expired. Hell, we could too. In Germany we had the “beer man” who would drop off beer weekly and collect the empties. This should be adopted in the USA.
- welder 7y agoGermany is mostly pils, heff, and radler. The USA has more beer variety, maybe it's more difficult logistically? Companies in the USA do have a beer man, never heard of individual houses hiring one.
- sl1ck731 7y agoI think there are a few varieties of regulations across different states regarding the shipment of alcohol. I'm not sure how far they go with respect to "last mile" delivery but it could be an inhibitor in something like this. For example, I can't purchase wine to be delivered to my home over the internet in my state.
- veggieburglar 7y agoThere are more than a few varieties of regulations in the alcohol business. It’s such a jumbled mess, especially for interstate commerce. Check out freethegrapes.org, they are an industry advocacy group and are sure to have an ongoing lobbying action in your home state to permit direct wine shipment. There’s only a few holdouts still, although many states make it prohibitively cumbersome and expensive for small alcohol businesses to open up direct shipping, even if it may be legal.
- jbigelow76 7y agoThe USA has more beer variety, maybe it's more difficult logistically? No, it's just that for as much that has changed in America since its founding, being a bunch of Puritanical tight asses is still kind of encoded into our societal DNA.
- 7y ago
- loeg 7y agoThe local breweries in the Seattle area have been collaborating with the restaurants doing delivery for weeks to offload their keg stock. We've been getting growlers basically at-cost. (WA relaxed liquor laws during the SAH order so regular food deliveries can also bring you alcohol.)
- mirimir 7y agoFree beer? Maybe structured to generate tax credit.
- bryanbuckley 7y ago"I volunteer!" I gasp. “I volunteer as tribute!” (AL located currently)
- yellowapple 7y agoYeah, if any breweries or restaurants or what have you here in Reno are facing this issue, I'd be happy to help "store" some of it. Know quite a few buddies here in town who'd likely feel the same.
- mister_hn 7y agoWhy don't they give the for free to charities?
- erikig 7y agoI will instantly register as a beer accepting charity if this happens :)
- skilesare 7y agoTogether we can solve this problem.
- annoyingnoob 7y agoI can has Cheezburger?
- ClikeX 7y agoThe beer supplier for my local pub actually came by to empty the kegs. They're taking it all back to get get converted into hand sanitizer. Which is a great solution. As for the pub, they're offering takeout of their normal menu. As well as sell craft beer packages.