Crowler Shortage
In case you haven’t heard, Crowler cans (32 oz. size) are temporarily out of stock at many suppliers in the US due to the rapid increase in sales of to-go packaging of beer. We asked Jake Sinkler at Oktober Can Seamers about this major dilemma and he gave us an update from what they are hearing and seeing, since a large number of small-scale breweries are depending on this format of packaging to keep revenue coming in and beer going out during this time of to-go and delivery sales during stay-at-home orders across the nation.:
“We typically sell Crowler cans, but have sold out for the moment. We have an order placed that is (as far as we know) set to arrive in early April, but also we have a ton of 24 oz. cans and other sizes. The Crowler can is great, but there are plenty of ways to keep selling beer to-go.
We have plenty of inventory to build new seamers for customers, and have ordered new parts to keep up with the increased demand. If a brewery is struggling to find Crowler cans, we sell additional tooling sets for our Model 7 can seamers so they can swap their Model 7 – G (Crowler Seamer) to seam a different size and keep on selling.
We don’t want to pretend to be the experts on taproom profitability, especially during a strange time like this. We’ve been seeing a lot of breweries partnering with delivery services to boost take-away sales, and offering specials for customers who come in and grab beer. Really we’ve just been trying to do our part to keep buying as much beer as possible and get as many seamers into the wild as we can.
Canning your beer is really simple, we have videos on our website to show you how to do it: https://oktoberdesign.com/info/. My best advice is to CO2 purge, bottom fill, cap on foam, and don’t do any “extra credit;” each operation only needs to be run once. We use a beer gun, which is super helpful.
I think that it’s important to point out that we’re here to help. We know that to-go sales are imperative right now, and we’ve heard from our customers that our seamers are helping them pull through. Let us know what you need and we will try our best to make that happen for you.”
