Wednesday, May 19, 2021
“With braked foam”
Brewers are filling their kegs with beer again
Ghost games, gastronomy closed, folk festivals canceled: For many months, draft beer could hardly be served in Germany, and large quantities were even dumped. Now the brewers are starting to fill kegs with beer again, but still very cautiously: the “sword of Damocles of incidences” is looming.
With a view to the restart of gastronomy, the breweries are filling kegs again. “The breweries are well prepared for the restart of the catering trade,” said the general manager of the German Brewers’ Association, Holger Eichele. The draft beer bottlings started about a week or two ago. The restaurateurs and the beverage wholesalers, however, understandably still very hesitantly in most cases. “The draft beer market runs with slowed foam,” describes Eichele. The restaurateurs would have had months of closure behind them, considerable amounts of beverages and food had to be destroyed – an unprecedented crisis.
“We are far from a predictable, reliable return path to normality. We are still in a time full of uncertainty,” emphasized Eichele. The draft beer market came to a complete standstill with the start of the second corona lockdown in autumn. The systems then practically did not run for more than six months. There were only a few fillings in “homeopathic quantities” – small quantities or export batches. “The plants were at a standstill, the market was shattered,” explains Eichele. The brewing industry had recorded growth in sales of bottled beer. However, this could not compensate for the decline in draft beer according to earlier information.
“Sword of Damocles of Incidences”
The brewery customers in the catering and beverage wholesalers would have to master many imponderables themselves. “The sword of Damocles hovers above everything,” said Eichele, referring to the opening steps, which depended on a stable decline in new corona infections. The number of cases could also change again. In addition, there is the weather factor, which is particularly important for outdoor gastronomy. The weather forecast for Pentecost is not the best. Other restaurateurs could not even open due to the lack of outside space. Against this background, customers in the catering industry bought draft beer very carefully and cautiously.
Despite the long standstill in draft beer, Veltins sees no delivery bottlenecks. A company spokesman said that 500 barrels could be filled per hour. If necessary, the capacity “can be increased to a 24-hour filling every 7 days”.
Local can expect a rush of guests
A survey by the market research institute Dimap on behalf of Veltins has shown that restaurateurs can count on many guests after their restaurants have opened. According to this, 36 percent of those surveyed want to visit beer gardens and bars in the first week after reopening, another 39 percent would have it within the first month, as the brewery had announced. “Our restaurateurs see a great willingness in their guests to visit the outdoor restaurants even when the weather is not so good, as for example last weekend in Koblenz,” said Rainer Noll, Head of the Out-of-Home Market at Bitburger Brewery. The hygiene concepts in the catering industry ensured a high level of security.
“We also assume that the demand for draft beer will now rise again,” said a spokesman for the Krombacher brewery. Accordingly, beer is already being filled into barrels again. How big the demand from the catering industry will actually be depends on the further easing measures in the federal states. “We started filling draft beers again a few weeks ago and are ready to reopen the catering trade,” said a spokesman for Anheuser-Busch InBev Germany Holding, to which Becks belongs. “We are currently still seeing subdued demand due to the unclear situation, but we are very optimistic about the future.”
Draft beer is also being bottled again at the market leader, the Oetker subsidiary Radeberger Group. The filling capacities were initially increased to around half of full load in order to replenish their own stocks and be able to deliver. “The further filling planning then depends on the demand of the guests – and thus also of their hosts,” said a spokeswoman for the group. At Warsteiner it was said that draft beer bottling had been ramped up at all locations.
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