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One of Australia’s largest brewers is tipping 90,000 kegs of beer down the drain.
The amount to be emptied is equal to 7.8m pints, 10.5m schooners, 11.8m stubbies, or 1.8 Olympic swimming pools.
Lion said it credited venues for $25m in untapped kegs. A spokeswoman said that 23 March, the day the lockdown restrictions were first announced, was “the most gut-wrenching day our industry has ever seen”.
The great pouring out is not restricted to Lion. Carlton & United Breweries, Australia’s other major beer company, also collected untapped kegs and is now facing the prospect of tipping them out. Both companies distributed growlers to pubs when the lockdown was first announced, to allow venues to on-sell tap beer as takeaway after the Australian Tax Office waved the excise.
At microbreweries across the country, kegs are also being emptied.
Bridge Road Brewers in Beechworth, regional Victoria, has collected more than 700 untapped kegs and credited pubs the value, in a deal that national sales manager Brad Bryce admits is better for the pubs than it is for the brewers.
The quarantine beer will re-emerge in three years, considerably stronger.
“We are looking at a lot of stock at the moment that is slowly going out of date, so we are going to give it to Corowa whisky and they are going to turn it into whisky,” Bryce says.
