Local beer brewers are coming up with ways to keep their businesses afloat, with pubs and bars closed due to the nationwide coronavirus Alert Level 4 lockdown.

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Thousands of litres of beer are sitting in kegs across the country. If it doesn't move fast, it could go down the drain.

Epic Beer founder Luke Nicholas says he has 600 kegs - 30,000 litres - of beer with "no home".

"We don't know where we'll be selling them, or when."

The beer can last between nine months to a year. But the longer the wait, the higher the cost.

"This is a really big issue," he says.

"I guess it's something I've had my head in the sand for a few weeks. We're going to have to look seriously at what we do with this beer, if we can sell it."

Ship Hop, Timaru's only micro-brewery, is bottling its keg beer, deemed an essential product, and personally delivering it.

"Two of us are actually driving around town delivering beer to people's doorsteps," co-owner Hadley Rich told 1 NEWS.

"There's posters that people have put on their door welcoming us and thanking us for the beers. It's been really cool."

Across the ditch, pubs in Australia are putting their keg beer in cans.

The Royal Albert Hotel has started a campaign called 'Taps n Tins', where it fills one litre cans direct from frosted taps.

It allows customers to place their orders in the morning, pour the beers fresh and arrives to their door in the afternoon.