That’ll do, pig
Sorry, Pig – the party’s over.
Makers of the Party Pig, the pressurized, plastic mini-keg that’s been used by smaller breweries and home brewers alike over the past 23 years, announced Friday that they’re discontinuing production.
Locally, both Budge Brothers and English Setter have been selling their beers in pigs, as have a handful of regional brewers including Rocky Coulee in Odessa, St. Brigid’s in Moses Lake and Laht Neppur in Waitsburg.
(We old-timers recall them being pioneered around these parts by Hale’s, one of the original Party Pig customers, when they were still in Colville.)
“We sold a ton of them,” says Budge co-owner Brad Budge. “We have a lot of upset customers.”
The 2.25-gallon pigs include a pressurized pouch that expands inside the container as beer is dispensed, keeping it fresh and carbonated for weeks after it’s tapped. New pouches are required for each use.
The problem is the cost of materials has been increasing, while demand among breweries has dipped, says Lowell Whitney, president of Golden, Colorado-based Quoin Industrial.
“The guys who were selling it were doing well with it, but breweries had to go to more conventional packaging to get into the larger distribution chain,” Whitney says. “As they grew, a lot of them went to cans. We helped them get big, but once they got big, they moved on.
“The people we dealt with over the years were some of the nicest people you could imagine,” he adds. “It was a tough decision. The margins were just getting so thin that we had to ask ourselves, can we keep doing this?”
Quoin has about six months’ worth of back inventory to still sell, Whitney says, but the pigs and their parts will be gone after that.
Budge is pulling the plug on its pigs now and starting to search for alternatives, says Brad. There’s a somewhat similar container called the Tap-A-Draft, but that requires the use of carbon dioxide cartridges, which is less convenient.