The beer industry's main trade group, the Beer Institute, noticed the problem in the past few years as it saw more brewers reporting missing kegs, resulting in an industry wide loss of up to $50 million a year, said Jeff Becker, president of the Beer Institute.

Breweries have collectively lost about 300,000 kegs a year, Becker said, out of an estimated 10.7 million in circulation.  It costs brewers as much as $150 to replace each keg, so the thefts have a big impact.