Small Business Brewery Perspectives on Potential Aluminum Tariffs

February 19, 2025

Emily Halling, Adam Jagunich,

TWO HARBORS Minn.– Castle Danger Brewing is a larger facility in Two Harbors, producing nearly 25,000 cans of beer daily.

And with that significance, the idea of a potential 25 percent tariff increase is on their radar.

“So right now, immediate impact, we’re not experiencing immediate impact. It really depends on your supplier. Our aluminum supplier uses primarily U.S. steel, so we’re not experiencing any current pricing increases. We don’t expect any Q2 price increases. Beyond that is unknown,” said Max Pittman.

The Director of Operations at Castle Danger Max Pittman said the last time aluminum tariffs was enacted in 2018, it did not impact them.

“More of the constraint on the supply chain through COVID was our biggest, our biggest crunch and biggest challenge. So, it was more of a supply and demand issue than it is the tariffs for us,” explained Pittman. “No matter who is office, we work with our suppliers. We stay in pretty good communication with them. We reset our prices annually on all of our commodities. Whether it be grain, aluminum, paper board, we work with our suppliers pretty closely. We look for best market prices annually, and we reset those prices anytime we get to mitigate any issue with price increases.”

Castle Danger isn’t alone when it comes to having minimal impacts with aluminum tariffs.

Bryon Tonnis CEO and Director of Brewing Operations at Bent Paddle in Duluth said in a statement,

“The last time tariffs were enacted on aluminum, the effect was minimal because Canada and Mexico negotiated the deals to lift the tariffs quickly.
We currently hope this will also be the case this time around. We are told that if they go through, we could see a multiple cent per can increase. To put it into perspective, 2 cents per can increase would add over dollars to production costs this year.”

Both Pittman and Tonnis went on to say that at the end of the day, the most helpful thing you can do with the tariffs is continuing to support local breweries.