Now Beer This: Craft Beer Needs Your Help

Talking about craft beer normally gets me all excited but I have to admit it’s kind of a downer these days. Every day I wake up and read about another brewery closing and it makes me terribly sad for the future of this industry, and selfishly sad for our ability to easily access top-notch beer. Who wants to go back to the 80s? Not this guy.

COVID-19 has really hobbled a lot of breweries, as you can imagine. Think about it: the main way you make your money is by packing people closely together and having them buy lots of your grog. During a pandemic like this, that’s the LAST thing we should be doing, so business models like that are in deep trouble.

For packaging breweries, those that sell their wares on the shelves of your local stores, this is less of a concern, but those folks are taking a hit, too.

So what can you do to save your favorite industry?

As always, you should support your local breweries. If you have any local breweries, make it a point to check their websites and find out what their current policies are and go patronize them in the way they’re asking you to. Are they not letting folks in but are filling growlers? Good! Order and pick some up. Are they letting folks drink outside? Good! Go do that. Are they letting folks in, but in smaller numbers? Sweet! Grab the Mr. or Mrs. or whatever and go visit. Don’t give them a hard time about doing what they’re doing. Trust me, they’re doing what they think is best and none of them are looking for any more trouble than they already have right now.

For the packaging breweries, switch it up a bit. If you’re a Two Hearted Ale devotee and you buy a six pack of that every week, maybe think about going a little more local with that purchase. TONS of breweries a lot closer to NC than Michigan have TONS of IPAs that are worth drinking and readily available on a shelf near you.

Being realistic, I’m not sure which of your favorites are going to survive this thing, so if you want to keep enjoying their beers, go buy a lot of them now and continue to do so.

Cheers, I guess.

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