Dead Guy is getting a few friends. Rogue Ales & Spirits is transforming its iconic 30-year-old flagship offering into a brand family with the launch of Dead Guy IPA.
Dead Guy IPA is a 7% ABV West Coast IPA, featuring Citra, Mosaic and Belma hops and Rogue’s proprietary Pacman yeast. The beer, which launched on Friday, January 13 in the Pacific Northwest, is sold in 6-pack cans and bottles, as well as on draft. Nationwide distribution is expected to follow.
“We wanted it to be a mix of new and old,” Rogue president Dharma Tamm told Brewbound. “It still has to harken back to Dead Guy and old school beer drinkers or craft beer drinkers while having new interesting stuff.”
The addition of Dead Guy IPA is part of the Newport, Oregon-headquartered craft brewery’s effort to create a house of brands and driven by consumer recognition of the master brand, Tamm said. Building the Dead Guy family will be Rogue’s focus over the next two years, he added.
To be clear, Dead Guy Ale, an ale brewed in the style of a German maibock, isn’t going anywhere. Dead Guy IPA will share the original beer’s signature artwork but will be differentiated by green packaging and large letters spelling out craft’s most popular style.
A Dead Guy variety 12-pack will follow in time for the spring resets, with two additional yet-to-be-revealed styles exclusive to the package.
One style Tamm doesn’t see a Dead Guy playing in the “short term” is hazy IPA, as Tamm views Rogue’s Batsquatch Hazy IPA as complementary to the brand (Batsquatch is Rogue’s second best-selling brand). Instead, expect Dead Guy to play in “traditional styles,” Tamm said.
Adding styles to the Dead Guy brand may also help break the seasonality Dead Guy Ale faced, with sales picking up in September and October in time for Halloween.
“This actually will help a lot,” Tamm said of the IPA. “Maybe it might change that seasonality but I doubt it because our goal is always to be the beer for Halloween.”
The move within Rogue’s beer portfolio follows the company rebranding its whiskeys under the Dead Guy moniker, building a brand family that includes the original expression, a stout cask finished whiskey and a wine cask finished whiskey.
Overall, Tamm called 2021 a “really good” year for the 35-year-old brewery, while he admitted that 2022 “was not” and “in line with the rest of the industry.”
In 2021, Rogue ranked as the No. 33 largest Brewers Association-defined craft brewery by volume in the country. The company increased production +17%, to an estimated 88,000 barrels, in line with its production in 2018 and 2019 following a -16% decline to 75,000 barrels during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.