President Donald Trump’s trade war has led to higher costs for certain goods in the U.S. Products like aluminum, steel and barley have all faced tariffs in recent months – three key components in producing a can of beer.
That’s led uncertainty to brew among Ohio’s craft beer makers. Dave Satula, head brewer at Royal Docks in Canton, sells cans of beer to stores and small businesses. With tariffs on aluminum and steel in place, he’s struggling to plan for his brewery’s future.
“Fifty-five to 60% of my revenue is up in the air,” Sutula said. “That is scarier than knowing what the tariffs are actually going to do to you: having no idea at all.”
Anna Huntsman with member station Ideastream Public Media interviewed Ohio brewers like Sutula about how they’re faring amid the changes. She sat down with the Ohio Newsroom to share her reporting.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
On the imposed tariffs and their impact on breweries
“Aluminum and steel, those are tariffed right now, 25% across the board, regardless of what country it's being manufactured in. So those are the big ones that the brewers I spoke with are concerned about.”
“Now, you also mentioned barley, and most brewers in Ohio use barley that is grown in Canada. It might be manufactured and malted in America, but most is coming from Canada. And as you might recall, Canada had some big tariffs right off the bat. Now those have been actually paused for 90 days. So at this point, they're not super concerned about the barley tariff, but all of this kind of is constantly changing.The main sense that I heard from brewers is that it's hard for them to plan. It's nearly impossible for them to even set their prices for the next few weeks or the next quarter.”
On how breweries are trying to prepare
“Something that some of them did is they actually front loaded purchasing their cans. So when they started to hear talk of tariffs, especially around aluminum, I spoke with people at Fat Heads Brewery, a regional brewery [that] distributes in Ohio and five other states. They're based in Middleburg Heights in the Cleveland area. They bought hundreds of thousands of cans and they told me they filled every square inch of their store with these cans just trying to get ahead of potential price increases.”
“But of course, they mentioned not every brewery is gonna be able to do a preventative measure like that. Smaller breweries likely can't afford to do that. They don't have the space to do something like that, so that is one thing that they've tried to do. They are also brainstorming in other ways, but again, so much is always changing that there's really no set in stone way that they can prepare.”
On the size of Ohio’s craft beer industry
“There's more than 440 craft breweries at this time, according to the Ohio Craft Brewers Association. And so it is a big industry. It has been growing now in the past few years, and unfortunately has been going down as beer sales are going down. So, you know, brewers have talked to me in my previous reporting about [how] there's so many other choices for people when they're looking at the aisles in the stores. You see craft beer and then you might see a seltzer and then you might even see a lot of non-alcoholic options that people are enjoying. And so people's tastes are changing. So it is kind of an industry that has already been adapting to changes. And so this has just thrown yet another wrench in that.”
On potential for innovation
“It's something that the brewers I spoke with are thinking about. Julie Hanson with Fathead's Brewery mentioned that they're trying to get more local focus, so switching to some more local suppliers, trying to distribute more locally and things like that. They mentioned some other ways in the industry that people are trying to brainstorm how to get ahead of this and maybe innovate a little bit. But of course, those things take time. And the brewers also mentioned to me [that] there just simply isn't an American replacement for everything. When we talk about aluminum, there's very little aluminum production in the United States.”
“But also you have to think about it this way. A lot of these brewers got into business because they wanted to bring European style beer to Ohio, to their backyard. So for example, at Fat Heads, they specialize in Hefeweizen, which is a traditional German beer. And Hanson at Fat Head says you can't just immediately switch that. Everything is just kind of in flux.”
