Mar 26, 2021 — Kegs have been out, canned beer in, during pandemic

When the pandemic dried up the demand for beer at customer-limited bars and restaurants, local brewers had to shift focus to sales at grocery stores, pharmacies and packaged liquor stores.

That meant selling a lot more beer in cans than in kegs.

Sun King Brewing Co., one of the largest Indiana-based breweries, typically cans about 60% of its beer for sale at retail stores. The other 40% is sold by the keg at bars and restaurants.

Last year, Sun King sold about the same amount of beer as it had in 2019, but 95% of that beer was sold in cans.

“What happened for Sun King was pretty much an industry-wide standard,” said Clay Robinson, co-founder of Indianapolis-based Sun King. “Even smaller breweries that hadn’t canned before were putting their beer in cans.”

That shift showed up in increased alcohol sales across the board at retail stores, according to Newark, New Jersey-based National Retail Solutions, which sells point-of-sale systems to inde...