Using other breweries kegs

[dereknobleluke]

for me, its pretty easy.
I get back a load of kegs. as we unload them and clean them and fill them, there are ALWAYS other people's kegs mixed within.
I know what brands my distributor carries, so the next time they come down, if these "foreign kegs" are part of their distribution world, I send the empty keg back with them and get the deposit for it.
If these foreign kegs are sold by another distributor, I simply take it to a bar that has my beer and that foriegn beer on tap. I swap foreign keg empty for my keg empty (consulting with the bar owner of course...)
If these kegs are not sold within my area I call the brewer and ask them if they want me to ship their keg back to them. Any brewery has a FED EX account. EVERY BREWERY has extra cardboard boxes aroung
915.5 gallon kegs fit in boxes plastic cups are sold in...). I called up Sierra Blanca Brewing in Moriarty New Mexico last year. I told the nice lady I had one of her kegs. She asked how I got it. I told her my RI distributor gave it back to me. She was baffeled how her keg got out here...couldn't help her but offered to ship it back, at my expense, and when she got it, she could send me a check for the deposit and shipping charge. It cost $53 to ship. When it got there, she hand wrote me a check for $83 with a little note that really showed me how much she appreciated my morals and brewing comraderie regarding other's property. If EVERYONE followed this, it would be a great brewing world.....

[monkeybrewer]

i dont know

still seems like a lot of extra work for a brewery who can't keep a handle on their kegs or distributors...IMHO
Cheers

[Larry Doyle]

I know that Miller accumulates AB kegs and ships them back to AB when they have a sizeable amount. Many of these kegs are discovered after they are filled so Miller also incurrs the loss of its beer. I don't know how the money works.

I also have been told by knowledgeable people that AB merely slaps a paper AB label on foreign kegs and ships them out. If this practice has changed or if I am wrong, let me know.

[Alon]

Percentage of keg loss

So on a monthly or annual basis, what percentage of kegs are you loosing, say for a 1000-2000 bbl house?

Can you incur the loss of the keg from the distributor? How do you deal with them?

Thanks

[Larry Doyle]

for me, its pretty easy.
I get back a load of kegs. as we unload them and clean them and fill them, there are ALWAYS other people's kegs mixed within.
I know what brands my distributor carries, so the next time they come down, if these "foreign kegs" are part of their distribution world, I send the empty keg back with them and get the deposit for it.
If these foreign kegs are sold by another distributor, I simply take it to a bar that has my beer and that foriegn beer on tap. I swap foreign keg empty for my keg empty (consulting with the bar owner of course...)
If these kegs are not sold within my area I call the brewer and ask them if they want me to ship their keg back to them. Any brewery has a FED EX account. EVERY BREWERY has extra cardboard boxes aroung
915.5 gallon kegs fit in boxes plastic cups are sold in...). I called up Sierra Blanca Brewing in Moriarty New Mexico last year. I told the nice lady I had one of her kegs. She asked how I got it. I told her my RI distributor gave it back to me. She was baffeled how her keg got out here...couldn't help her but offered to ship it back, at my expense, and when she got it, she could send me a check for the deposit and shipping charge. It cost $53 to ship. When it got there, she hand wrote me a check for $83 with a little note that really showed me how much she appreciated my morals and brewing comraderie regarding other's property. If EVERYONE followed this, it would be a great brewing world.....

Shouldn't you be charging the full price of the keg rather than merely the deposit amount? If you pay full price for new kegs it seems to me that you are taking a big loss every time you "return" a foreign keg and receive only a deposit amount.

[dereknobleluke]

for me, my swapping of my shells within the trade is easy--I am already going to the accounts anyway. Why get caught up in the paper work?

As far as the "full price" vs "deposit price"--the lady paid me the shippnig cost plus the deposit cost. It was up to her if she wanted to spend the $83 to get her keg shipped from RI to New Mexico. But the keg was embossed. I also told her that if she didn't want to pay for getting her keg back I would pay her $60 for the keg. She wanted the keg back. So I shipped it, up front, and trusted that she would pay me back when it arrived. And she did. and Karma is good...

[timbro81]

I've heard that the brewing industry is 99% asshole free. This seems like a pretty basic test to figure out where one stands.

Tim Brophy

[lhall]

hmm

Larry Doyle, it's funny you made that claim that AB just slaps a sticker over other breweries' kegs and ships them back out. I would have said that was BS, because the last thing that AB would need is a lot of negative PR if such a thing actually happened.

And then I got a pallet of our Yazoo kegs back that were "lost" and ended up at a keg refurbishing company. I paid them the deposit on each and paid for the freight to get them back. And look what I found:

That's a Bud Light sticker and that big barcode is not ours - it reads "ABI - 8017C - 015". So you were right, our clearly marked keg had a Bud Light sticker and a ABI barcode slapped on it.

[yap]

I guess ABI falls into the "asshole" category that timbro was mentioning...

Linus, any thoughts to calling them and yelling at them or is it not worth the trouble...

[a10t2]

I guess ABI falls into the "asshole" category that timbro was mentioning...

Linus, any thoughts to calling them and yelling at them or is it not worth the trouble...

But AB has what, probably a thousand or so distributors in the US alone? It's a guarantee that some of them are going to be bad eggs.

I'd wager the corporate office cracks down on this kind of thing when they find out about it. Receiving stolen goods is a crime in a lot of places, and whatever else you may think of AB, they have good lawyers.

[Larry Doyle]

As Augie Busch and Emilio Interbev would probably say: "Do as we say, not as we do."

Most likely this practice has nothing to do with distributors. It happens at the brewery when filled, foreign kegs are found prior to shipping. Rather than remove the keg from the line or pallet and dump the beer they slap on a chintzy little label and send it on its way. I'd do the same thing.

[monkeybrewer]

everyone's doing it

If everyone is doing it, is it really a problem?
Cheers

[yap]

If everyone is doing it, is it really a problem?
Cheers

If everyone in your brewpub was stealing glassware from you everyday...would it really be a problem?

[monkeybrewer]

not necessarily...

If they were leaving glassware behind everyday as well...no it wouldn't be. I think that's the fair analogy...
Cheers

[yap]

If they were leaving glassware behind everyday as well...no it wouldn't be. I think that's the fair analogy...
Cheers

what if they were taking your glassware and leaving you glassware with another brewpubs name on them so every time you got these "new" ones you had to scrape off the old name. and maybe the glassware they were leaving was a slightly different size or made of plastic instead of glass? maybe the glasses they are leaving are so dirty that it takes your kitchen 2-3 times as much work to clean them as your own glasses...none of this would get on your nerves after a while?

lets get real hypothetical for a moment. say you have 100 glasses and the brewpub down the street has 100 glasses. this "swapping" back and forth happens all the time but never exactly at a one for one rate every time. between the two of you there are still 200 glasses but the distribution is never exactly 50/50. next thing you know you only have twenty glasses and the other guy has 180. Sure the rest will eventually make their way back but that doesn't do you any good if on that day there are 30 people in your pub and only 20 glasses!

If i have 100 kegs and 10 of them get "lost" and other people fill them and put them back in the chain sure they may make it back to me eventually. but say in the meantime i end up with only 5 kegs of someone else's that I put back in the chain. I'm down 5 kegs but i've got beer that I need to get out the door....looks like i'm buying more kegs....

sure it all works out "in the end" but in the meantime i have to keep building up my float with additional keg purchases that i may not need.

unfortunately i think we are straying too far from the original post so i am going to leave the conversation at that...