Craft continues to battle declines, with dollar sales for the segment down -1% in the last 52 weeks (ending September 19) and volume down -5.3% in Circana-tracked channels. But the ebbs and flows of craft are what make it a “success,” Samuel Adams founder Jim Koch said last week during the company’s annual media brunch at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF).
“I know in the press people are writing ‘Oh, craft brewing, is it in trouble? Jeez, it’s not really growing. Oh my gosh, people are coming into the business, but people are going out of business,’” Koch said. “And I’m here to say, when this all started, getting to that place was our wildest dream. That was what success looked like.”
Koch recalled the American beer industry before the early days of craft, when jokes were made about the low quality and lack of flavor and many had a “dystopian vision” of American beer becoming “more and more mass production, more and more mass marketing, lighter and lighter, less flavorful beer, dumbing everything down to the world of Coke and Pepsi.” However, Koch and his early craft beer companions had different plans.
“The fundamental nature of craft brewing for all these years is this invisible, silent collaboration,” Koch said. “That is the hallmark of a movement: people who had a common dream, who believed in, against considerable odds that this could happen.”
Now, nearly 10,000 craft breweries operate in the U.S., with “a craft brewery in pretty much every city, town, even village,” Koch said.
“Everybody in this country has almost immediate access to some of the best beers in the world,” Koch said. “We are in an industry which is unquestionably a permanent fixture on the American beer landscape. It is not going away. It is solid, it is steady. It is permanent.
“Nobody makes a joke about American beer anymore,” he continued. “We are teaching the rest of the world how to make great beer and have a great brewing community, and that looks like success to me.”
Beyond the rallying cry for craft beer, Koch and Dogfish Head founder Sam Calgione shared some of the two Boston Beer-owned brands’ priorities for the rest of 2023 and into 2024, including Samuel Adams two non-alcoholic beers – Just the Haze and Gold Rush – and Dogfish Punkin Ale, inspired by Calgione’s first Dogfish Head brew.
For both Samuel Adams and Dogfish Head, the goal “is to be the most customer-focused beverage innovation company in America,” Caligione told media members.
As part of that mission, Boston Beer is investing time and resources into Drink Lab, a consumer feedback platform that was started at Dogfish Head a few years ago. The technology is used at all Boston Beer taprooms, allowing consumers to scan a QR code and give direct feedback on beers. Dogfish Head’s Citrus Squall was the first beer to come from the platform, with consumer feedback helping decide everything from the flavor profile to the final name of the beer.
Reeling consumers into innovation is proving positive in Citrus Squall’s performance numbers. The 8% ABV double golden ale and paloma cocktail hybrid launched at the beginning of 2023 and is the “single biggest new launch in a number of years” for Dogfish Head, passing $1 million in sales in NIQ-tracked off-premise channels.
Dogfish Head has used Citrus Squall to bring in younger legal-drinking-age consumers.
“These younger drinkers today, oftentimes their first foray into legal drinking now is seltzers, is cocktails,” Calgione said. “What can we do to maybe excite these younger drinkers in a sort of Trojan horse way to come hang out with us as craft brewers?”
Citrus Squall, a beer that has the “equal DNA” of a cocktail and a craft beer, is Dogfish Head’s answer to that question, Caligione said.
Caligione also teased the future launch of Colderest IPA, created with the mission to have the “coldest cold IPA” in the market, Dogfish Head brewmaster Mark Safarik said.
The 7% ABV cold IPA, made with flash-frozen Citra and Azacca hops, will be available in a new Dogfish Head variety pack, launching in December.
Koch and Calgione also celebrated Funkytown Brewing, the winner of the latest Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream Experienceship. Read previous coverage here.