Germany is facing a beer bottle shortage following a particularly hot summer. (iStock)
This summer has not been to kind to beer drinkers in Europe.
First there was a CO2 shortage in Russia during the World Cup and now there’s a beer bottle shortage threatening the supply of brew in Germany.
Due to a recent heat wave abroad, temperatures haven’t been the only thing on the rise. The country has also seen an increase in beer consumption. But while there’s no shortage of actual beer, breweries are running low on bottles to put it in, NPR reports.
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Environmentally conscious Germans pay a small deposit on every glass bottle they buy, which they get back when it’s returned to the store. However, bottles are being sold faster than they’re being returned, leaving brewers in short supply.
"We've had a beer bottle shortage since the middle of May," Christian Schuster, from the Greif brewery in Bavaria, told public broadcaster Bayerische Rundfunk. "We can't get hold of used ones fast enough and ordering new ones takes time. I'm having to send my delivery guys out to look for old, empty bottles," he said.
There are about four billion beer bottles in circulation around Germany, and each bottle is reused up to 30 times, according to Inside magazine, an industry publication, NPR reports.
Breweries are making public appeals to thirsty customers, hoping they’ll be inclined to return their empty bottles. Moritz Fiege, a brewery in Mochum, posted one such plea on its Facebook page last month. “Great weather + great beer = serious thirst. The catch: although we regularly buy new bottles, we’re running out. So before you go on your summer holiday, please be sure to return your Moritz Fiege empties. … Make your motto: first the empties, then the holiday!” the post reads.
In order to solve this problem, some breweries are turning to cans, which brewers say is actually better for the beer. “There is no light ingress [with a can] and, over time, there are some oxygen permeations through the lid of a bottle which the can doesn't have," Stone master brewer Thomas Tyrell told NPR.
But not everyone is on board with the idea. Many Germans think the cans aren’t environmentally friendly. They’re also just not big fans.
"I'll only drink beer out of can if there's no other alternative. A bottle is much more civilized," 30-year-old Marcel Hillebrand told NPR. "A can is ergonomically wrong and the beer warms up too quickly. But mainly it just looks cheap. Cheap and a bit trashy."
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Luckily for people like Hillebrand, there are people on the street who spend each day collecting discarded beer bottles to return for a profit, like 29-year-old Georgi Valentin, who’s homeless. “I do this every day. I get about seven euros for a full shopping cart of empty bottles," he told NPR.
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