There’s a mystery brewing in Atlanta: who stole two truckloads of SweetWater beer?
Fans of the local brewery’s summer flavors may have a harder time finding it at the store after the thefts early Tuesday. And if you do find some of the “hot” beer, SweetWater wants to know about it.
Nearly 3,300 cases — or 78,528 bottles — were on the two trailers, ready for delivery to retailers, according to SweetWater. But in a bold move, someone hooked up tractors to the trailers and took off. That much beer is about a five- to seven-day supply for SweetWater and retails for about $90,000.
“This takes us down to incredibly low inventory,” Tucker Berta, SweetWater spokeswoman, said Tuesday afternoon. “We’re going to have to work overtime to keep these beers on the shelf.”
There aren’t cameras in the front-loading area of the Ottley Drive brewery, Atlanta police said. Thanks to GPS systems, employees and police were able to find the two trailers, one on Camp Creek Parkway and the other on Southwoods Parkway. But neither contained any beer.
Some bottles, roughly a third of what was taken, were later found at a Clayton County warehouse, Berta said. Police in Atlanta and Clayton County were investigating, but no arrests had been made late Tuesday.
For beer lovers, the story gets even worse. Even though thousands of bottles were recovered, no one gets to drink it.
“It’s the saddest thing,” Berta said. “That goes into recycling. At this point, we can’t sell it. We can’t say what happened to the beer since it left our dock.”
Sweetwater is asking its consumers to be on the lookout for the stolen beer. The Summer Variety packs, for example, won’t be the typical variety of 420, IPA (India pale ale), Goin Coastal IPA and Take Two Pils, will be dated Sept. 20 or Sept. 21, Berta said.
“They won’t be variety packs,” Berta said. “They will just have one type of beer.”
Anyone with information on the missing beer is asked to call Sweetwater at 404-691-2537 or email social@sweetwaterbrew.com
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