ELY- Dorothy Molter root beer addicts may be in for a tough two months. Dorothy’s famous root beer won’t be back on store shelves until May. An unexpected delay in the manufacturing of the root beer’s cardboard six-pack bottle carriers is the cause.
“We order the six-pack carriers once a year,” said Jess Edberg, executive director of the Dorothy Molter Museum, which sells the root beer using Molter’s proprietary recipe. “When putting in our order for fiscal year 2025, we found that the company providing our carriers was no longer sourcing them from a manufacturer in Winnipeg and was now getting them from a plant in West Virginia. No one knew. I’m not sure who didn’t tell whom about the move … Right now, it’s a six-week lead time to get the carriers. Usually it’s less than two weeks.”
The West Virginia manufacturing location has new equipment which produces six-pack carriers of a different size. “Because our brewer has to make changes to accommodate the change in the carrier size, that adds an additional three-week delay before we receive our first shipment of root beer,” Edberg told the Timberjay.
Making Dorothy’s
root beer
“We contract with Gray Brewing Co. of Janesville, Wis., to brew our root beer,” Edberg said. “We provide the packaging and the flavorings. Gray Brewing provides the glass bottles, the water, the sugar, and the production equipment. The root beer has to fulfill our mission of being true to Dorothy’s legacy, so we use glass bottles like Dorothy did and her proprietary recipe.
“We have a long-term relationship with Gray Brewing Co. and they have given us a lot of support over the years,” Edberg added. “Gray is the oldest family-owned craft brewer in the country, founded in 1856. They also can bottle in glass. Most modern craft brewers these days prefer to use cans or kegs.”
The sale of Dorothy’s root beer is a major revenue source for the museum. “Our largest distributor is Zup’s,” noted Edberg.
“We only had one pallet of root beer going into winter this year because our distributors have been selling more root beer than previous years. Usually, a short supply in the winter is not an issue, but it is now because of the delay in receiving our root beer.”
Edberg was confident that the root beer would arrive in time for opening the museum for the season on May 24.