Channel Marker Brewing will pay homage to its seaside hometown of Beverly, Massachusetts, with its new name: Coastal Mass Brewing.
The name change comes from the discovery that another brewery was using the name Channel Marker for one of its beers. The name is a registered trademark of Florida-based Islamorada Beer Company, which registered it with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2015.
Justin Negrotti, Jake Crandell and Tim Corcoran founded the brewery as Channel Marker in 2017. Upon learning of the overlap in name, the team undertook “a complete evaluation of their legal options” and “decided the optimal path forward was to change the brewery’s name,” according to a press release.
“Tim, Jake and I shared the feeling that a name change best positioned us for continuing the growth we’ve seen over the past five years,” Negrotti said. “This isn’t a drastic change in our minds.”
Save for the name, all of the brewery’s branding will remain the same, including its logo.
“Though our name is changing, the spirit, values and culture that guide our company are not,” Negrotti said. “We consider our brand to be much more than a name. Nothing else is changing. Our visual appearance, location, people, and most importantly, our beer, will not change.”
Coastal Mass’ portfolio includes New England-style IPAs, double IPAs and pale ales; sours; amber lagers; and Waterslide hard seltzer.
The new name will be introduced to the public during the release party for Captain’s Feast triple IPA on November 23, which Coastal Mass typically launches just before the Thanksgiving holiday.
Channel Marker produced 421 barrels of beer in 2021, according to the Brewers Association.
Editor’s note: the below was added at 5:25 p.m. ET on Tuesday, November 15, following a conversation with co-founder and CEO Justin Negrotti.
Co-founder and CEO Justin Negrotti on What’s Next for Coastal Mass
Coastal Mass and Islamorada have been in touch about the name overlap since early 2021, Negrotti told Brewbound. All communications between the breweries were “definitely polite,” he said.
“There was no animosity,” Negrotti said. “It never got to the point where lawyers were involved on both sides talking to each other. It was us working with their owner over the course of the last year.”
Islamorada agreed to allow Coastal Mass to clear any potential trademark issues before deciding on a new name, which has already gained “preliminary approval.”
“We told them that we didn’t want to make any moves until we had cleared trademark application on whatever new name that was going to be,” Negrotti said.
Because consumers frequently refer to the brewery by its initials CMB, it was important that the new name have the same monogram, so the team workshopped names that began with C and M.
Coastal Mass will celebrate its new name with the release of a new flagship, Coastline IPA, a 6.5% ABV hazy IPA.
“We actually signed a contract with Yakima Chief Hops to source a good amount of our core hop varieties that we use in a lot of beer for next year,” Negrotti told Brewbound. “In doing so, they allowed us access to some hops they had in inventory in excess, and they allowed us to basically hand select Citra Simcoe and HBC five and six that we use in this Coastline beer.
“For us, this was the first time that we actually got to pick all the varieties based on the analytics and based on sensory in a beer,” he continued. “I was really, really excited with how the beer was tasting and smelling yesterday when I sampled it off the tank.”
Coastline IPA will be canned on Wednesday with labels featuring custom artwork from artist Andrew Houle. For the first beer bearing the brewery’s new name, Houle painted a sunset scene with six Adirondack chairs overlooking a curved harbor filled with moored sailboats. The oil painting was digitized for can labels.
For now, Coastal Mass self-distributes its beer locally, with two employees serving as its sales and delivery team, which “may not be a sustainable model for us long-term,” Negrotti admitted. Much of the company’s focus has been dedicated to the rebrand and announcement. With that in the rearview mirror, Coastal Mass may begin exploring a partnership with a wholesaler.
“At our size, we have the luxury of being selective about when and who we sign on with,” Negrotti said. “It might be something we look at in 2023. It could be beyond that.”