Tulsa Brewery Sees Canned Beer Sales Increase, Opening New Taproom

A Tulsa brewery said it's feeling the impact from a national aluminum can shortage.

Dead Armadillo said some of its cans have been back ordered for months, and this is happening while they are also seeing an increase in demand for their canned beer.

“So everybody has been ramping up and producing more cans. Not to mention coffee, energy drinks, and all kinds of different products that were in cans that were never in cans before," said Tony Peck.

Peck is the owner of Dead Armadillo in Tulsa. He said the e demand for aluminum cans is so high that some companies are getting bumped from production lists. 

“I know there is a list of cans that need to be produced for people all over the country, but it’s a long list to go through, so I think they’re finally starting to whittle through it.”

A recent USA Today article said the problem isn’t an aluminum shortage, it’s a production shortfall and one can company is even building two new plants to try to keep up with the demand. 

Peck said he's been on the wait-list for months. 

“They’re being produced in two weeks that’s what we’re told, and they should be here in January. So, we’ve been scrambling since about August trying to figure out if we’re going to have enough cans to keep producing Tulsa Flag," said Peck.

He said an expansion of their taproom is opening this week and are hoping to get a shipment of cans sooner.

“We’ve labeled over other cans, we’ve found some blank cans they call them bright cans that you can put labels on and we’ve done that in the past, but even those are gone now and it’s really hard to find them," said Peck.

He said the new taproom will be open to the public starting at 2 p.m. Wednesday.