The Boston Beer Company has lofty goals for 2021. The company expects all of its brands — Samuel Adams, Dogfish Head, Truly Hard Seltzer, Twisted Tea and Angry Orchard cider — to grow next year.
In a conversation with Brewbound, Boston Beer Company CEO Dave Burwick explained that the company will launch several new products across each of those brands to help stoke the growth.
Heading into 2021, Boston Beer is coming from a place of strength with its brands, which include the No. 2 hard seltzer brand (Truly), No. 1 hard tea (Twisted Tea), No. 1 hard cider (Angry Orchard), No. 1 craft lager (Boston Lager), No. 1 seasonal lineup (Samuel Adams), No. 1 sour ale (Dogfish Head SeaQuench), and No. 1 low-calorie IPA (Dogfish Head Slightly Mighty).
“When you have that portfolio of brands, then your ability to innovate grows considerably and you have more avenues to innovate down, because you have seven more strong brands in which to innovate off of,” he said. “And it’s hard to innovate off of weak brands. We’re in a really good place now.”
The innovation pipeline starts with Truly, on the heels of a 2020 in which the hard seltzer brand’s lemonade line extension proved to be one of the beer category’s top new products of 2020.
Boston Beer will extend the brand again, this time into familiar territory, tea, with the launch of Truly Iced Tea Hard Seltzer.
Burwick explained that Boston Beer is taking the learnings from Truly Lemonade — consumers are seeking “bigger, bolder flavor,” — and applying it to Truly Iced Tea.
Burwick said the combination of tea and fruit delivers on that proposition, with tea having a sweeter profile. Truly Iced Tea mix pack will feature four flavors — Peach Tea, Strawberry Tea, Lemon Tea, and Raspberry Tea. Each 12 oz. can is 5% ABV and contains 100 calories and 1 gram of sugars — all in line with the original Truly line.
“It’s another way to play in hard seltzer, but in a more flavorful way,” Burwick said.
In addition to Truly Iced Tea, Boston Beer will enter the higher ABV (8%) hard seltzer space with Truly Extra in single-serve 16 oz. cans. Burwick admitted that the company was reluctant to offer a higher ABV hard seltzer, but he said the company’s research found that there’s “real interest in that” after testing the product in New York City.
Boston Beer will also replace one of the flavors in its Truly Citrus mix pack, adding Citrus Squeeze, which Burwick described as a mashup of orange, grapefruit and lemon flavors.
Another focus for the company will be on growing distribution of Truly Lemonade in its sophomore year. Burwick said there remains a huge opportunity to grow the distribution of Truly Lemonade, which he estimated has 58% of ACV distribution, whereas Truly in total has 71%.
Overall, Burwick said Truly has the opportunity to double in 2021, and the company is investing in added capacity in-house as well as with third-party contract producers. In fact, he said he believes the hard seltzer segment, which has hovered around 9% to 10% of overall beer category sales, could account for between 12% and 15% of the category next year.
Dogfish Head: Canned Cocktails, Non-Alc Beer and Hazy IPA on Deck
The next frontiers for Boston Beer will be canned cocktails and non-alcoholic beer. The company will launch Dogfish Head Scratch Made Cocktails in cans next year. Burwick noted that Dogfish Head has operated a distillery for more than two decades, so canned cocktails are a natural progression for the brand. The line will launch with three offerings — vodka soda, vodka lemonade and whiskey sour — each checking in around 7% ABV and coming in sleek can 4-packs. Each offering will have a unique Dogfish Head-esque twist to give them more complex flavor profiles.
“The whiskey sour kind of has a cherry bergamot taste to it,” Burwick said. “The vodka soda has blueberry shrub, which is basically these blueberries from Maine. And the vodka lemonade has strawberry and honey berry in it.”
The products will be distributed through Boston Beer’s distribution network, Burwick confirmed.
“We don’t want to go outside the network,” he said. “So it’ll be limited; it won’t be national overnight because it’s going to take a while to build out that distribution.”
Dogfish Head will also enter the non-alcoholic segment with Lemon Quest, a wheat beer brewed with lemon pureé, blueberry juice, açaí berries and sea salt.
“It plays more like a soft drink or a sports drink is how I think about it,” Burwick said.
Dogfish Head will also release Hazy-O, an IPA brewed with oat milk and four different oats, next year.
Samuel Adams: Sam ’76, New England IPA Rebrand in Wicked Line
Samuel Adams’ big innovation brands from two years ago — Sam ’76 ale-lager hybrid and New England IPA — are being rebranded as part of a new sub-brand, the Wicked line. New England IPA, which will be rechristened Wicked Hazy, will also be reformulated to make the brand less bitter and easier to drink, Burwick said.
Meanwhile, Sam ’76 will become Wicked Easy, which Burwick said is the brand’s “last shot.” Both brands will receive a packaging refresh with a more youthful and fun look, he added. Expect the transition to take hold in February 2021.
The Wicked line will also be connected to the Samuel Adams “Your Cousin from Boston” advertising campaign, Burwick said. The Cousin will work across the entire Samuel Adams portfolio, including forthcoming non-alcoholic beer Just the Haze IPA.
As Brewbound previously reported, the company will also make its first foray into non-alcoholic beer with Just the Haze IPA. Burwick called the non-alc hazy IPA “indistinguishable” from alcoholic versions.
After reformulating seasonal offerings Cold Snap and Summer Ale, Boston Beer will release a reformulated Winter Lager. A “remastered” version of Boston Lager, featuring the same recipe but a different brewing process, was recently released in New York, Burwick said.
“We think consumers’ taste profiles are changing, and we should at least see if there’s a way to improve Boston Boston Lager with people,” he explained. “The recipe is the recipe, but there are so many variables associated in the brewing process that we can change the process and put out something that’s different.
“The end result is you don’t have as much of that bite at the end,” Burwick added. “I’d say it’s more chuggable than the current Boston Lager.”
Angry Orchard: 2 Fruit Ciders on the Way
Although Boston Beer has shied away from offering fruit ciders in the past, the company will launch two fruit flavors, Peach Mango and Strawberry, in 6-pack cans (5% ABV) in 2021, Burwick said.
“We’ve resisted doing fruit ciders because it wasn’t sort of a traditional type of cider, but clearly consumers want it,” he said.
Burwick called the Peach Mango cider “one of the best products I’ve ever had.”
As for the big innovation of two years ago, Rosé cider, Burwick said it proved to be “a fad” and is no longer a focus for the brand.
“There’s gonna be a natural sort of Darwinian paring of Rosé across customers and geographies based on how it’s doing,” he said. “So it will lose distribution next year, most likely, but it won’t go away completely.”
In other Angry Orchard news, the brand will receive a packaging refresh to reposition it to appeal to a much broader, multicultural consumer base, Burwick said.
Twisted Tea: Slightly Sweet Line Extension Coming
Twisted Tea will launch a slightly sweet version in 12-pack cans and 24 oz. single-serve cans. Burwick said the new offering contains about half the sugar of the namesake brand and will be distributed in “high-developed” Twisted Tea markets.
Twisted Tea trends have doubled during the pandemic. The brand started 2020 up between 15% and 20%, however those trends accelerated during the pandemic to between +30% to +35%. Although Twisted Tea has relatively small household penetration, with about 1% of households buying the brand in a given year, Burwick said more people have discovered the brand during the pandemic.
“That’s increased by at least a third during that time,” he said. “For whatever reason, Twisted Tea has broken through.”