Goose Island is getting into the lemonade flavor game — but not with a hard seltzer.
The Anheuser-Busch InBev-owned, Chicago-headquartered craft brewery will release a line extension of its flagship 312 Urban Wheat Ale this coming spring, with 312 Lemonade Shandy.
312 Lemonade Shandy (4.2% ABV) will launch in 6-packs and 15-packs of cans, as well as draft, and be available year-round.
Goose Island president Todd Ahsmann told Brewbound that he was “a little skeptical” of line extending 312 until he started sampling the beer. He said he went through around 50 trials before the company found the right liquid.
“It’s sweet, it’s sessionable, it’s drinkable, it’s refreshing,” he said. “It’s going to appeal to everybody that loves 312, but expand out to a new consumer that’s looking for something different.”
Differentiating itself in a market with an increasing number of hard seltzers was one of the reasons Goose Island decided to introduce a shandy.
Ahsmann explained that Goose Island was inspired by Chicago’s street corner Italian ice stands. He believes the brand can connect with adult consumers looking for those flavors, and the 312 Lemonade Shandy brand has plenty of opportunities to pull from popular flavor combinations at those stands.
“We’re already working on a bunch of extensions and a variety pack and everything, but we’re just going to launch with the lemonade shandy,” he said.
Entering the shandy space puts Goose Island in competition with its neighbor to the north, Molson Coors’ Leinenkugel’s, the market leader in the space.
Off-premise dollar sales of the Molson Coors-owned Wisconsin brewery’s flagship seasonal shandy are up 8.5%, to $86.3 million, year-to-date through November 1, according to market research firm IRI.
According to Ahsmann, the shandy space is fertile territory with few existing challengers to the top brand.
Beyond lemonade shandies, Ahsmann shared Goose Island’s plans for 2021 and provided a retrospective on 2020 in an interview with Brewbound. Here are a few of the highlights.
Lost Palate IPA Added to Year-Round Lineup
Lost Palate IPA (7% ABV), which launched in late 2019, has graduated from a spring seasonal to a year-round release.
The beer was brewed for one of Goose Island’s brand ambassadors and bartenders, Jonny Coffman, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer in late 2017 but is now 100% cancer free.
Although Coffman lost most of his palate, he could still taste mango and cinnamon, so he requested that Goose Island brew a hazy IPA brewed with mango and cinnamon.
“It actually was the No. 7 craft innovation just as a seasonal, and that was pretty amazing,” Ahsmann said. “It wildly exceeded our expectations. We really couldn’t supply it.”
Supplying the beer won’t be an issue in 2021. Goose Island is now cross-brewing it at other A-B breweries. The brand will also receive a full 360 marketing campaign, and Coffman is slated to appear on NBC’s Today Show in December to discuss his journey and the creation of Lost Palate.
Goose Island Getting into Single-Serves for C-Stores
Goose Island will release its first 19.2 single-serve can offerings in an effort to capitalize on opportunities in the convenience store channel in 2021.
The company will launch three beers in 19.2 oz. single-serve cans, including two IPAs, Next Coast and Lost Palate, and a new beer that is exclusive to single-serve cans: Tropical Beer Hug, a 9.9% double dry-hopped tropical IPA.
“It does not drink like it,” Ahsmann said of the IPA’s nearly 10% ABV. “So low bitterness, high aroma, amazingly delicious. Really, really fun packaging and fun beer.”
Ahsmann added that 6-packs of Next Coast and Lost Palate will remain a focus in c-stores, but he believes there’s a lot of run room for a higher ABV IPA, as New Belgium has proven with its Voodoo Ranger offerings.
E-Commerce Could Drive Bourbon County Stout Sales
This Friday marks the release of the 2020 edition of Bourbon County Stout, and Ahsmann has high expectations for the latest edition of the famed barrel-aged stout.
“I think it’s gonna sell faster than it’s ever sold this year based on the fact that retailers have really embraced e-commerce,” he said. “A lot of our biggest retailers have employed the lottery system to sell this beer, instead of what we traditionally did, which is have people line up on Black Friday.
“We always love that culture of standing in line and people talking about what beers they’ve been drinking for the last year and people trading beers right there in line and stuff,” he continued. “Just based on the amount of people that entered all these lotteries, which is blowing my mind, I think we’re gonna learn that we shut out a lot of people that didn’t want to stand in line. And now people that just enter the lottery, they can show up, pick it up, shop a little, drive home. It might be the new model moving forward.”
Among those early returns, Ahsmann said “a very influential bottle shop” in Chicago sold through its “hefty allotment” in two and a half minutes.
Ahsmann also disputed the notion that Bourbon County has lost some of its sales luster. Although demand may have declined in the past, he pointed to 27% dollar sales growth annually and 17% growth on Black Friday.
As for the future of Bourbon County, Ahsmann said the company is always considering different packaging configurations, something Deschutes Brewery did this year with The Abyss barrel-aged imperial stout, which will now be sold in 4-packs of 12 oz. bottles.
Goose Island Sales Down in 2020
Like most craft breweries, 2020 was a challenging year for Goose Island due to the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down on-premise sales for several months.
Ahsmann said 45% of the brewery’s mix was in the on-premise channel and that spikes to around 50% of the business in the summer months. However, the company benefited during the pandemic from customers stocking up on familiar brands in the off-premise channel and large pack distribution.
Nevertheless, Ahsmann expects Goose Island to finish the year down. According to IRI, through October, Goose Island’s top two brands IPA (-3.4%) and 312 (-4.6%) were down in off-premise retailers, while Next Coast IPA (21.9%) and the Goose Island variety pack (+122.5%) were both up.
Lost Palate exceeded expectations, while So-Lo low-calorie, low-ABV IPA (3% ABV, 98 calories), which launched in late 2019, is performing better in grocery than it has in convenience stores. So-Lo has racked up more than $2.5 million in sales through October at multi-outlet and convenience stores tracked by IRI.
Ahsmann said the plan for So-Lo was to “sample, sample, sample” but that’s not possible during a pandemic. Ahsmann remains encouraged by the company’s foray into the better-for-you drinking space.
“We’re just relying on people taking the chance and pulling it off the shelf,” he said. “The repeat buys are really encouraging.”
Another byproduct of the pandemic was forcing Goose Island to focus more locally. And that local focus has led to a handful of collaboration IPAs — from hazies to double dry-hopped to milkshake IPAs — that will be coming out in 2021. The list of collaborators include Old Irving Brewing, Alarmist Brewing, Mikerphone Brewing and Phase Three Brewing.
“Those are like four of the hottest breweries in Chicago right now,” he said.