Northeast Ohio’s craft brewers say they’re facing significant uncertainty amid the Trump administration’s tariffs on the key ingredients in a can of beer: aluminum, steel and barley.
President Donald Trump has implemented a sweeping 25% tariff on imported aluminum and steel. Trump also imposed – and then quickly rescinded – tariffs on Canadian barley, which is used by many local brewers.
Many Northeast Ohio businesses are bracing for the impacts of the tariffs. For Dave Sutula, head brewer of Royal Docks Brewing Co. in Canton, the sheer unpredictability has made it difficult to purchase materials and plan for the future.
Ultimately, they may have to raise prices, he said.
“I'm terrified,” Sutula said. “The only strategy is getting up in the morning and going to work, opening up your email with bated breath, and see what happened today.”
Royal Docks is a mid-size brewery that produces 5,000 barrels of beer per year, 3,500 of which are distributed to stores and other businesses, Sutula said. Nearly 70% of the beer is distributed in aluminum cans, so the new tariffs on aluminum and steel have hit the business particularly hard, he said.
“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.”
Uncertainty over tariffs has also caused “daily disruption” at Fat Head’s Brewery in Middleburg Heights, said Julie Hanson, director of procurement.
A regional brewery, Fat Head’s produces 50,000 barrels of beer each year and distributes cans of its beer in six states, Hanson said.
“We've seen change after change, after adjustment after adjustment, after disruption after disruption,” Hanson said. “The potential for it to change tomorrow is pretty high.”
There are more than 440 craft breweries in Ohio, according to the Ohio Craft Brewers Association. The OCBA released a statement in March opposing the Trump administration’s new tariffs.
“Ohio craft breweries are responsible for more than 12,000 jobs, but significant increases in business costs due to tariffs could result in workforce reductions as small breweries budget for rising prices,” officials said in the release. “These cost increases also have the potential to cut into the millions of dollars of local charitable giving that Ohio’s small breweries commit to each year.”
Craft brewers can’t plan ahead
The ongoing uncertainty over tariffs has caused suppliers to change prices frequently, making it difficult for brewers like Sutula to set prices.
“I would love to go out there and say, ‘Listen, I'm going to add a dollar to every six-pack that I have and know that that's going to cover me, or at least cover me enough that it makes sense to continue doing what we do.’ But I can't tell you that,” Sutula said.
Instead, Sutula has to make his best guess and potentially absorb costs if suppliers end up raising prices, he added.
Anticipating the aluminum tariffs, Fat Head’s and other breweries purchased thousands of cans to try to get ahead of price increases, Hanson said.
“We front-loaded cans, more cans than we needed over the past two months, and practically filled every square inch of our building with cans,” Hanson said.
Smaller breweries that don’t have the means or space to plan ahead like this will likely be hit the hardest, Hanson said.
Potential tariffs on barley and malt are also causing concern, Hanson said.
Fat Head’s and Royal Docks both use Canadian-grown barley. While additional tariffs on food and agricultural goods from Canada have been paused for 90 days, brewers are concerned they might be brought back, Sutula said.
“All of our base malt and a good deal of the rest of the barley that we use, even if they're American maltsters, it's grown in Canada,” Sutula said. “American barley is going to go to the people with more purchasing powers. The smaller breweries would bear the brunt of that, likely.”
Making European beer in Northeast Ohio comes with a price
Switching to all American-made materials would be difficult, if not impossible, for craft breweries, both Sutula and Hanson said.
Some brewers got into business to bring European beer to their local region, Sutula said. Tariffs on European goods are now putting that goal up in the air.
For example, Fat Head’s specializes in Hefeweizen, a German-style beer, Hanson said.
“We have an open fermentation system, which is unusual for a brewery in the United States, and we really are committed to using German malt to keep that process trying and true to the German beer recipe from ages ago,” Hanson said. “However, yes, that malt will be tariffed, and we will, as a company, have to make a decision: Do we continue to use this traditional German malt for this traditional German beer? Or is the tariff going to prevent us from doing that?”
Royal Docks also produces European beers, including recently released a Czech pilsner, Sutula added.
“I guess we could isolate and become a little less global in our thought processes as brewers and manufacturers, but I don't know, that's sort of why I got into this, because … I can compete with the Czech Republic in my backyard,” Sutula said. “There's not an American equivalent for everything.”
Fat Head’s has tried to get ahead of the challenges by procuring supplies from more local vendors, Hanson added.
But that strategy won’t work for all products.
“We may end up deciding to retool some recipes, but I genuinely cannot see us retooling our, one of our flagship traditional German beer recipes,” Hanson added. “That's when you run into questions regarding quality, tradition, things like that.”
Hanson and Sutula agreed that small to mid-size brewers, especially ones that distribute, will be the hardest hit by the tariffs.
“I think that you'll see some smaller breweries who, again, maybe they don't have the space, maybe they do not have the capital, maybe they did not have the purchasing power to weather the storm,” Hanson said.
While Ohio’s largest breweries, Great Lakes and Rhinegeist, will still be affected by tariffs, they have more purchasing power than smaller businesses like Royal Docks, Sutula said.
“The guys, somewhere in the middle, are probably the hardest hurt, and that includes pretty much all of the breweries in Ohio,” Sutula said. “[Great Lakes and Rhinegeist] have a little more buying power than we do. They're a little more entrenched in the market. They're not going anywhere anytime soon. If I put a dollar extra on my can of beer, it's different than what they're going to have to do, which is put on 50 cents.”
Hanson encourages people to recycle aluminum cans, as that could help offset potential increases in price due to tariffs.
