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WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH, N.C. (WECT) – In the last year, the nation has dealt with plenty of shortages including gas, baby formula and even teachers. Now, your beer could be in trouble.

It’s not the beer itself that’s in short supply. Carbon dioxide, also known as CO2, is used in nearly every step of the beer-making process.

“We use it to push our beer once it’s in the kegs for our draft system,” said Wrightsville Beach Brewery’s head brewer, Chris Zirnheld. “We use it to carbonate the beer, so (that is) the bubbles that you’re experiencing. We also use it to transfer from one tank to another to get it off of the yeast or the hops, we don’t want to get the clear beer.”

Each summer, many plants shut down for routine maintenance. That doesn’t usually lead to issues; however, problems at an additional plant exacerbated the strain.

“There was an infection at a plant and a lot of their CO2 got infected with bacteria, so they had to shut down to clean all that out,” explained Zirnheld.

Brewers aren’t the only ones seeing problems. A district manager for Arc3 Gases tells WECT that they’re in short supply as well, meaning any of their clients could be facing problems.

Zirnheld says Wrightsville Beach Brewery took steps during the pandemic to become less reliant on CO2.

“We installed a nitrogen generator,” said Zirnheld. “With that, we’ve been able to purge our tanks with Nitrogen instead of CO2, so we naturally generate that here instead of having to rely on another company.”

On Wednesday, the brewery plans to also switch to using spunding valves, which Zirnheld says will lead to a smoother carbonation in the beer without using CO2.

The good news is he says the changes won’t affect the beer’s taste.

“CO2 is used a lot for purging tanks to get oxygen out of it, which leads to a cardboard flavor,” said Zirnheld. ”Using nitrogen has helped push out more of that oxygen than the CO2 did, which has kind of led to less spoilage down the line.”

In a constantly evolving industry, Zirnheld expects other breweries to make similar changes.

“We were one of the first smaller breweries to implement [nitrogen generators],” said Zirnheld. “The spunding valves that I mentioned earlier? There’s been a lot of talk about people doing that. When I just bought mine, a lot of places were out of stock. Nitrogen generators are probably one of the next things brewers are going to start looking more into.”

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