Not many tangible goods can ease the pain of the Trump administration’s impending tariffs, but Canada’s oldest brewery offered its customers a large-format antidote.
On Friday, Moosehead Breweries released the Presidential Pack: a massive wooden crate filled with 1,461 cans of the brand’s flagship lager. That’s one can for every day of President Trump’s term.
“If the start of 2025 has taught us anything, it’s that it will take determination to weather four years of political uncertainty,” director of marketing at Moosehead Breweries Karen Grigg said in a press release. “And what better way to make it through each day than with a truly Canadian beer?”
The Presidential Pack was sold exclusively through Moosehead’s website for a price of $3,490 CAD ($2,418 USD) plus tax and container deposit fees, but with free shipping. It was only available for customers in the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Ontario. And as of Monday morning, all units are now completely sold out.
Moosehead is anticipating a steep increase in the cost for aluminum — a product that it sources from the U.S. — as a 10 percent tariff is slated to go into effect this week. Additionally, 20 percent of the brand’s sales currently come from the states, Moosehead CEO Andrew Oland told CNN, so the tariffs will likely hinder the brand’s exports.
The silver lining for Moosehead is that the tariffs will likely encourage Canadian residents to buy more local beer — a sentiment that’s backed up by the fact that the Presidential Pack sold out in less than a week.
Then again, gimmicky, large-format beer packs are nothing new, and have similarly captured the drinking public’s attention in the past. In 2014, Texas’s Austin Beerworks debuted a 99-pack of beer, and Pabst followed suit three years later. Since then, Pabst has also released a gargantuan 1,776-beer case to celebrate 2021’s Independence Day, and then a 180-pack in June 2024 in honor of the brand’s 180th anniversary.
One concern is whether or not the beer will stay fresh by the time consumers start working their way through them. Given that the flavor of lagers, like Moosehead, start to dull after about three months, it’s almost certain that the beers in the Presidential Pack won’t stay fresh for the duration of Trump’s presidency, regardless of refrigeration and storage. However, beer drinkers clearly love a novelty, and this one definitely worked out for Moosehead.
