Around fifty million pints of beer is expected to go unused if UK pubs do not reopen because of coronavirus.
Pub owners are unable to sell their ale and lagers due to the order to close down their stores.
Chief executive of the Campaign for Real Ale Tom Stainer lamented that the situation is “a very sad waste of all the work and talent that goes into producing great beer.”
“People won’t get to drink it and all those resources have been used up for nothing,” he added.
In his estimates, Stainer suggests that in the each pub in the UK must have 15 barrels stored in their cellar, and there are about 39,000 in the country alone.
Most of these barrels can contain up to 11 gallons each, with some come in nine-gallon casks, and they last for three to four months after delivery.
If social distancing measures remain in place for several more months, most of these stock will have to go to waste.
Keris De Villiers, the owner of the some of the well-known pubs in south-west London says that barrels is worth around £10,000 ($12,500) each, and 1,000 liters more are stored at a microbrewery she and her husband had set up recently.
“We could do takeaways, but that would mean selling beer on the corner of a very small pavement,” she said.
“That wouldn’t be socially responsible, with the need for people to keep their distance from one another. The whole situation is heart-breaking.”
She added, “Our brewer literally talks to his tanks when he’s at work every day. People really care about the beer they’re making. It’s a craft and people are passionate about it.”
Breweries and distributors offered to take their barrels back after the lockdown, with no extra costs to take some of the financial pressure off of small business owners.