Boston Beer Company’s annual Great American Beer Festival brunch this year was, of course, physically distant. It was also less boozy than previous years. The latter point was on purpose. Among Boston Beer’s big innovations for 2021 are Samuel Adams Just the Haze IPA and Dogfish Head Lemon Quest, both non-alcoholic offerings.
The strategy is clear: Boston Beer is aiming to be a major player in the non-alcoholic beer space. Year-to-date through September 6, dollar sales of non-alcoholic beer increased 38.7%, to $124.9 million in off-premise multi-outlet and convenience stores according to market research firm IRI.
According to Boston Beer, premium and sub-premium non-alc brands make up 70% of total cases and the top four non-alc brands hold 90% share of the segment.
So, in February, Boston Beer will launch two non-alcoholic beer brands nationwide under the Samuel Adams and Dogfish Head brands.
Samuel Adams Just the Haze non-alc IPA checks in at less than 0.5% ABV and around 98 calories. Just the Haze will be sold in 6-packs of 12 oz. cans.
As for Dogfish Head’s offering, Lemon Quest is a wheat beer brewed with lemon purée, blueberry juice, açaí berries and sea salt. Lemon Quest boasts big lemon citrus aromas, and “a slightly sweet and refreshing finish,” the company said. The beer also falls at less than 0.5% ABV and contains 93 calories per 12 oz. servicing. Lemon Quest will be sold in 6-packs of 12 oz. slim cans.
During the brunch, Boston Beer founder Jim Koch called Just the Haze his “breakfast beer.” He admitted his past aversion to entering the non-alcoholic beer space because “the basic problem with non-alcoholic beers is they taste like shit.” He added that consumers have tons of non-alc offerings beyond beer to choose from, including sodas, energy drinks and juices.
However, Koch came around after seeing the development of Just the Haze over the last six months. He said he wanted the beer to have the full characteristics of a hazy juicy IPA, with flavors of mango, orange, peach, guava and apricot.
“It should have a full body and bit of sweetness and finish fruity with enough bitterness to keep it from being cloying,” he said while sampling Just the Haze.
Dogfish Head co-founder Sam Calagione added that the non-alc drinker is getting younger and credited Heineken with its 0.0 offering and craft non-alc beer maker Athletic Brewing with attracting new consumers to the space.
“Boston Beer is totally doubling down not just on the technique of embracing both de-alc and low-gravity ferment, but we’re doubling down by simultaneously releasing two very complimentary but very distinct versions of non-alcoholic beers,” Calagione said.
Calagione said the demographic potential for the beers are “limitless.” He added that he sees the majority of the N/A beer volume in the future being incremental, coming from existing bev-alc consumers but also possibly active lifestyle consumers — the same ones who were attracted to Dogfish’s SeaQuench — who drink sports drinks such as Gatorade or even non-alc seltzer drinkers, such as La Croix.
Calagione said Lemon Quest was benchmarked against Gatorade and Michelob Ultra.
“We wanted to go on an active lifestyle journey with this that was really unique but also comes from the SeaQuench DNA,” he said.
Both beers are expected to be available in package by February, although Koch said he was intrigued by the prospects of draft. He also said a few thousand cases could be sold via the company’s websites. However, he said Boston Beer isn’t “set up to build a big e-commerce business” and would of-course go through the three-tier distribution system, which he said “is much easier than packaging beer up and shipping out one case at a time.”
Asked how big of a business non-alc beer could be for Boston Beer, Koch said he doesn’t know before saying he feels like Adam in the biblical story of Adam and Eve.
“I was telling Sam yesterday, I kind of feel like Adam when Eve got pregnant,” he said. “It never happened before in history, so poor Adam looking at this … ‘Oh, my God, how big is that thing going to get?’ That’s where we are with N/A beer. I just don’t know how big that thing is going to get.”