Pour One Out For Deschutes’ Kirkland Helles

[00:00:00] Justin Kendall: What's up with Deschutes is Kirkland beers have the fourth shakeout and the latest on the world cup next on the brew down podcast. Hello and welcome to the brew down podcast. I'm Justin Kendall.

[00:00:23] Jessica Infante: I'm Jessica Infante and I'm Zoe Licata.

[00:00:26] Sean McNulty: And I'm Sean McNulty. Look at that. Yeah. More Jersey, Jersey rules, Jersey rules. Sorry. I'd get that in there just to start the podcast. Justin hates this already.

[00:00:37] Jessica Infante: Get it out of the way now.

[00:00:39] Justin Kendall: Yeah. I'm ending the recording at this point. No, welcome to Sean, our Weekend Insiders, Weekend Beer newsletter writer. We are happy to have you here. Happy to be back. Love having this much jersey. We are outnumbered, Zoe. Yeah.

[00:00:57] Jessica Infante: Only in the summertime, and I'll allow it. That's the proper time.

[00:01:01] Sean McNulty: We have the World Cup Championship. Come on. Listen, that's where the center of the universe is in New Jersey Stadium. Thank you very much.

[00:01:07] Speaker 2: I have issues with that.

[00:01:08] Sean McNulty: We won't get into that conversation here, Justin. That's fine.

[00:01:10] Justin Kendall: Don't worry about it. But yeah, we have thoughts. So tell us a little bit about what you do here, Sean.

[00:01:18] Sean McNulty: What is it you say you do here? Pull a little office space out there. Uh, yeah, now I do the weekend newsletter here. It comes out on Saturdays, kind of recapping the week in Brewbound and the week in beer at large. I always appreciate fun items from the world of beer. You can always send me those. either on LinkedIn or my email. So yeah, just kind of taking a larger picture view. You guys are definitely in the day-to-day at Brewbound, you know, doing the daily newsletter. This is a chance to kind of zoom out and maybe connect some dots during the week that happened or in the month that happened. It kind of takes some bigger picture point of view stuff, Justin, as well. Let's have some fun with this beer business, which should be fun. This is beer. Come on.

[00:01:55] Speaker 2: It should be fun. You're a lot funnier than us. So thank you for that.

[00:01:59] Sean McNulty: Listen, this podcast may prove otherwise, but we'll see.

[00:02:03] Jessica Infante: I mean, you have a bit more freedom than we do.

[00:02:06] Sean McNulty: Justin Kendall lets me have a little more fun with things too. Yes, exactly.

[00:02:09] Justin Kendall: I mean, when you share it at, you know, four on a Friday, you get the lax editing job.

[00:02:15] Sean McNulty: Yeah, Justin at his, uh, end of his editing run for the week when he gets my draft on Friday afternoon. So, uh, yeah, liberal use of gifts. So, you know, we have a good time with, uh, we have some good time with beer.

[00:02:26] Justin Kendall: I'm on my way to pizza Friday at that point. Plus, so am I at that point too. We're both ready to get out the door. Well, we've got a lot to cover this week, but before we get there, we've got Brewbound Live coming up December 9th and 10th in Marina Del Rey. You can find out more information at Brewbound.com, but our first speakers are announced. That's Rob Todd and Celine Frew from Allagash Brewing Company. And they're going to talk about building a world-class culture up there in Portland, Maine. Going to be great. Tickets available now, get them while you can. And also we got to plug our job board. There are a lot of great jobs out there and you can also list some great jobs on our board and get a very targeted audience of future employees. Your next star employee is out there and you can find them through the Brewbound job board. Check that out. You all brought up the World Cup, and we're just after the 4th of July holiday. So how do you all spend the 4th, and how are we feeling about where beer is at this point?

[00:03:31] Sean McNulty: My fourth was kind of fun. I mean, we had a little bit of a heat wave on the East Coast. It was just 100 degrees and three days later, it's now 70 degrees. So we're, you know, we're all over the place in the East Coast, but yeah, you know, the 250th, I don't know that, you know, other than ABC being on for 24 hours a day with coverage of July 4th, there was a big difference. The fireworks were still the fireworks. But you know, Jess, you're definitely in the beach town area. Any beach vibes going from a Saturday, July 4th this year?

[00:03:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, the beach was packed, but it was, like you said, basically like living inside of Satan's mouth.

[00:04:06] Sean McNulty: And that is what I said. Thank you. Yes.

[00:04:08] Speaker 2: For paraphrasing that, you know, I thought about friend of the pod and BWA chief economist, Lester Jones, several times on Saturday, because several times I was offered a beverage on the beach. And every time I said, no, it's too hot. So yes, there is a point at which it is too hot for beer. My weather app on Saturday said something ridiculous. Like the feels like temperature was 193. We had taken a morning coffee walk on Friday and it was saying 153 and I was like, yeah, I would believe that.

[00:04:43] Sean McNulty: Jess, I think you may have had heat exhaustion. I'm just going to tell you right now, Jess, I think that you could have used that cold beer maybe I think at that point.

[00:04:49] Speaker 2: Right? Is there such a thing as heat gullibility? What did I notice on the beach? That's a great question that no one asked me. I just asked myself. I saw a lot of people drinking hard sports drinks.

[00:04:59] Sean McNulty: Yes, Flavor Aid is very big in Jersey, I will say that.

[00:05:02] Speaker 2: Yes, I saw more Super Light than I did Spiked Aid. Planes in the Sky, only Super Light. I have a list. What struck me the most was that I saw absolutely no banner planes for actual core beer. There was, let's see, Tito's. There was Super Light from Surfside. The copy they were including varied a lot. Sometimes it would say new from Surfside. So like clearly trying to ride the coattail. Yeah. Which makes sense. And sometimes it said like hard sports drink flavors or maybe just sports drink flavors. And then I saw Spiked Aid and I forget one of the two of them. It might have been Spiked Aid. Actually called itself an RTD on its plane. Oh. What do you guys think of RTD as a drinker facing term? Do you think drinkers know what that means?

[00:05:46] Sean McNulty: I think I'd get a blank face if I said, hey, you want an RTD, but Zoe, is that big in the Darty crowd or what?

[00:05:51] Jessica Infante: I don't know. That's a tough one. I feel like, yes, I think it's become slightly more. I think some consumers are starting to understand what it is. I mean, canned cocktail is now, I think everyone understands that.

[00:06:02] Sean McNulty: Sure.

[00:06:03] Jessica Infante: And so it's getting there. Yeah.

[00:06:05] Speaker 2: That's too many letters to be able to read from the ground.

[00:06:08] Jessica Infante: Yeah, exactly. If anything, they might not know what RTD stands for, but if they see it, they know what that means, if that makes sense.

[00:06:14] Sean McNulty: OK. I guess, yeah. What is the RTD? Ready to drink? Probably not. But like, oh, you know, I understand, you know, what's home box office HBO, but yeah.

[00:06:22] Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:06:22] Sean McNulty: Right.

[00:06:23] Speaker 2: I also saw a white car plane that had the copy included because now I'm not editing, but analyzing marketing copy from a beach chair, like a crazy person.

[00:06:33] Sean McNulty: While not drinking beer.

[00:06:35] Speaker 2: Sunsip repeat, which is like, what are you, borrowing the Sunsip from High Noon?

[00:06:42] Sean McNulty: Like gym tan laundry, I don't know. There's a lot going on there in the Jersey Shore.

[00:06:45] Speaker 2: A lot going on there, I suppose. I didn't even think about GTL. So yeah, I saw a lot of people drinking hard sports drinks.

[00:06:52] Sean McNulty 1: Imported draft beer, number one, and number two was probably the hard sports drinks, whatever we call it, RTDs, and canned variety, not in the draft variety, but craft, domestics. They're not coming here and drinking Bud Light. That does not seem to be what the takeaway is, Justin, from this data.

[00:07:07] Speaker 2: No. I spotted more Bud Light than I ever expected to.

[00:07:11] Sean McNulty: Really? Yeah.

[00:07:12] Speaker 2: Oh, it's a beer you don't see as much, I don't know, in cans? Cans on the beach, yeah. Okay, interesting. Ryan and I went out Wednesday night to watch the U.S. game before this, and we were like at the one bar in town, and I was like, man, we are the oldest people here.

[00:07:29] Justin Kendall: Always a good feeling, Jess.

[00:07:30] Speaker 2: Right? Yeah. So I spotted another table of people.

[00:07:32] Justin Kendall: That's encouraging for the category. That is true.

[00:07:35] Speaker 2: That's true. A table nearby us who probably looked about our age. And on the table, what they were drinking was like, I don't think you guys have changed your drink order from when you were 21. It was a Bud Light bottle, a Corona Light bottle, and a Heineken bottle. And then they probably like, why is this bitch staring at us? But at least I did not approach.

[00:07:57] Sean McNulty: Yeah. Good call.

[00:07:58] Speaker 2: But a lot of surf sides being drunk.

[00:08:01] Jessica Infante: Yeah.

[00:08:02] Sean McNulty: Zoe in Boston?

[00:08:03] Jessica Infante: Around here, it was also a lot of hard sports drinks, but all exclusively SpikeDade. I didn't see any Super Lytes out there.

[00:08:12] Sean McNulty: Oh, it was all the way up there too. Okay.

[00:08:13] Jessica Infante: Still decent amount of high noons. There was a Cappell taste test that occurred with some folks, finally. Sean, do you know what Cappell is?

[00:08:23] Sean McNulty: For the listeners at home, Zoe, why don't we fill us all in here?

[00:08:25] Jessica Infante: Yes. Capple is the answer to Bapple, which was Bushlight Apple. It is the... Oh my gosh. Now I can't even... Keystone. I've just been calling it Capple. Thank you. Keystone Apple.

[00:08:40] Sean McNulty: Okay.

[00:08:42] Jessica Infante: Okay. Got it. Reviews were they liked it better than Bapple.

[00:08:46] Sean McNulty: Interesting. Ooh, hot take. Don't tell the people in Iowa.

[00:08:49] Jessica Infante: Very 4th of July packaging on that one. Seeing that in person. It's like a screeching eagle and things on there. It's quite intense.

[00:08:57] Sean McNulty: How long do you think we see like all this packaging last on shelves? Cause like Bud had a lot of it.

[00:09:02] Jessica Infante: Yeah. We're still going to be seeing it in November. November. Wow. You're going to November. Okay.

[00:09:07] Sean McNulty: I was saying at least September, but you're going a little further than me.

[00:09:10] Jessica Infante: I think it's going to be here for a while. Cause everyone was doing it.

[00:09:13] Sean McNulty: It would be a great indicator of rate of pull. It's just like, okay, who has some juice and who's not moving? That'd be pretty obvious. So yeah.

[00:09:21] Jessica Infante: But interesting. I heard a couple of people just say they were making their own drinks because they were saying they don't want to do vodka drinks anymore. I think high noon is starting to be like, I've had too many high noons and now I need to just make something else. But what are they making? Which is fascinating.

[00:09:36] Sean McNulty: Exactly. What's the alternative?

[00:09:37] Jessica Infante: There's rum based drinks going on and mainly tequila.

[00:09:41] Sean McNulty: I don't take things down a notch, I'm gonna shift to tequila. So, you know, I'm just gonna really... Yeah. Yeah. That's what the logic was at. Okay, great.

[00:09:49] Jessica Infante: Yeah. But overall, like, I think the heat and the fact that it was, you know, the holiday was on a Saturday, folks had Friday off. There was a lot of days in a row of drinking. It didn't seem like the consumption levels were at the same levels as they were in the past. Not as high as they were in the past, which is interesting.

[00:10:08] Sean McNulty: Yeah, the heat, I mean, came out of the Midwest and then, you know, just we'll see in the numbers, you know, we get the weekly numbers there, if there will be a big bump for July 4th or the jest factor of, yeah, the last thing I want to have right now is a beer. So you can tell me either story in a couple of weeks when we get the data.

[00:10:22] Speaker 2: Satan's mouth is not a place to drink beer.

[00:10:26] Sean McNulty: The title of this podcast, we found it, ladies and gentlemen. Very nice. Thank you, Jess, for that.

[00:10:29] Jessica Infante: Yeah. I think the only thing that really benefited from 250 this year was firework sales are probably through the roof because they were doing massive firework shows every single day they could, and probably still are. I heard some more last night. It's just next level this year.

[00:10:48] Sean McNulty: Wow. Okay. Justin, little Iowa fireworks out there. Give us the Midwest report. Come on. It's all this East Coast talk.

[00:10:55] Justin Kendall: I always go back to the Simpsons line of celebrate the birth of America by blowing up a small portion of it. And here in Iowa, it's blowing up a large portion of it. Somebody in my town burned down their garage. Oh, boy. It was nonstop from Friday through Saturday night. And it was an absolute war zone where we had to take cover in the basement. Oh, wow. Because it was so loud. So a good time as always here in Iowa, where it's just like, it is literal scorched earth on the roads around my neighborhood.

[00:11:30] Speaker 2: How does your dog feel about fireworks?

[00:11:32] Justin Kendall: She hates it. Yeah. She was the one that was like, we're stopping watching this movie now. You're not going to finish this movie. We're going to the basement. And then she was generally fine in the basement, but cat, dog, both taken shelter. Yeah. Never a good time for pet owners.

[00:11:50] Sean McNulty: No, the worst holiday of the year for pet ownership.

[00:11:53] Justin Kendall: And small humans.

[00:11:57] Speaker 3: Mark your calendar. Brewbound Live is back on December 9th and 10th in Los Angeles. Join brewers, distributors, investors, suppliers, and industry partners for two days of beer and beverage alcohol conversations, fresh perspectives, and product discovery. Early registration pricing is available now. Head to brewboundlive.com to register.

[00:12:17] Justin Kendall: A lot of people bummed out about the news that Deschutes Costco beers coming to an end here very soon. Later this year, they're going to wrap up. The note came out last week and yeah, I got a chance to talk with CEO Peter Skrbek this week and he said that this was always going to happen. They made a commitment as far as volume goes and they met that commitment and now that's how this partnership sort of winds down from here.

[00:12:46] Speaker 2: I have never seen such universal sorrow at a piece of news that we've put out, at least not in a while. Wow. Yeah. Like all the comments on every place that our stories get linked to, people are distraught.

[00:13:00] Jessica Infante: Yeah, it's like people who are in the industry that are upset about it. Like this was apparently a cult favorite for some folks of just can stock up at Costco on some Deschutes beer.

[00:13:12] Sean McNulty: It's an odd thing because it's like, you know, it's anything but September, October, I think was the timeline there, Justin, on this, right? So it's like end of year. So it's like, oh, you've hit your quota three months early and you're not going to like make more, like, and it just, nothing's, nothing's not adding up here, Justin, and I don't, you know, I know that's the official line, and that makes sense from a deal point of view, but from a Costco point of view, I'm not getting a real narrative here as to, um, what's up, like, it's, even the quality was, it was lauded for, you know, the Hellas was like an, an awarded beer, like, it wasn't like a, a quality issue, and, uh, you know, I'm a little at a loss as, uh, why Costco would end this at this point.

[00:13:47] Justin Kendall: I emailed the Costco CEO because... Oh my, wow. As the team here has pointed out, Justin knows here. Oh my God. You can just find his email apparently. And as the team here has said, like he, he apparently responds to folks. Well, he apparently forwarded my email to their beer buyer who no commented me, but at least it got somewhere. And they were like, yeah, we're not going to talk about our private label stuff. So.

[00:14:16] Speaker 2: Huh. So I have a question. Is it private label though? No, it's co-branded. Deschutes' name is on the package. This is where I get confused about what's private label and what's not.

[00:14:26] Sean McNulty: And maybe that's the move they're looking to do, Justin. They want to own Kirkland Beer.

[00:14:31] Speaker 2: But I think they previously did, right? There was an old version of a Costco lager that people widely panned. Then Deschutes got in the mix, the beer got really good. So now are we going to go back to that bad beer?

[00:14:42] Justin Kendall: I hope not. Really good for a, what, 12 pack at 14 bucks?

[00:14:48] Speaker 2: Yeah.

[00:14:48] Justin Kendall: Under 14 bucks as a Costco member.

[00:14:51] Speaker 2: All this has taught me is really upholds my prior belief, which is don't fall in love with anything at Costco because you don't know when it's going to go away.

[00:15:01] Justin Kendall: The Netflix of chain retailers.

[00:15:04] Speaker 2: Heartbreaking.

[00:15:06] Justin Kendall: Sure. I guess we can go with that a little bit.

[00:15:08] Speaker 2: Yeah.

[00:15:08] Justin Kendall: They pull the plug on things so early, right?

[00:15:11] Speaker 2: Yeah.

[00:15:11] Justin Kendall: Still waiting for that end of Santa Clarita diet.

[00:15:14] Speaker 2: I think you're going to be waiting a while.

[00:15:15] Sean McNulty: That's the first time I've heard that sentence uttered, Justin, but I'm glad to hear we have it on the podcast.

[00:15:21] Justin Kendall: You can't end on a cliffhanger.

[00:15:23] Sean McNulty: I'll get you the email of the showrunner. They can maybe tell you what happened at the end of it, but maybe they should do a free meat promotion, Justin. Do a little free meat and Kirkland beer promotion. Maybe we need to get that going on at the Costco and they got to expand their horizons here. Take those Iowa lessons.

[00:15:37] Justin Kendall: I got to go get some paper products, so we'll see what happens. See what happens there? Okay.

[00:15:42] Speaker 2: And does your Costco have booze?

[00:15:44] Justin Kendall: Oh, yeah.

[00:15:45] Speaker 2: They don't all.

[00:15:46] Justin Kendall: Yeah, this one does. Yeah, definitely.

[00:15:48] Speaker 2: The one that I am nearest does not. And I am worried that by the time I get back to my regular one in Massachusetts next month, all of the Kirkland lager will be gone.

[00:15:56] Justin Kendall: Mmm, that's probably the byproduct of this, right?

[00:15:59] Speaker 2: There's gonna be a run on it and I'm gonna miss it. Yeah.

[00:16:02] Justin Kendall: Yeah, your friend Zoe is probably like loading up.

[00:16:05] Jessica Infante: Yeah. Zoe, are you a Costco member? Not personally, but a member of our household is. So we take advantage. Maybe I need to ghost taco myself.

[00:16:16] Justin Kendall: I wonder if this is one of those opportunities where, not like a letter writing campaign, but a, if you send an email to Costco, if you're a member, if you can actually sway them on this one to bring it back.

[00:16:29] Speaker 2: I think we could. Maybe.

[00:16:32] Justin Kendall: I'm just throwing it out there.

[00:16:33] Speaker 2: I started a letter writing campaign in sixth grade to save the zoo in our town. And the zoo today is thriving. So.

[00:16:40] Sean McNulty: So you're welcome.

[00:16:41] Speaker 2: Every time my friends, I see my friends take their kids there on social media, I always think in my head, you're welcome.

[00:16:47] Sean McNulty: And then I write in the comments and then that's how I rolled out. Everybody's like, you moved away like 15 years ago. What do you want? Your parents didn't even mail that letter. It was like, give me a break. That was just for fun. No, if this does sell out like in August, Justin, it's like, again, it just adds to the case of like, Costco, what are you doing? You know, you have a hit. And again, I think there's gotta be some other, something going on behind the scenes here that we're not seeing yet is that's my, all my gut says on this, Justin, that this will continue on in some form, just not the current one. But just use a good quality product. It's like, guys, you know, don't mess with the sauce sometimes. You can really get burned that way. So who knows?

[00:17:26] Justin Kendall: I talked to Peter and they're trying to figure out what's next for lager for them. He doesn't want to see this beer go away, obviously. Yeah. Love to see it still at Costco, but they're in strategy meetings the next few days and they're going to be discussing what they possibly do with lager. They know that it's a tough place to break through. you're fighting the biggest of the big and it's not going to be easy to compete on price on anything in that format. And so it's like, where do you play in there if you do play in there? And he acknowledged, you know, we wouldn't have been able to do this if it wasn't for this Costco partnership. This is doing in one year what would take us normally a decade.

[00:18:11] Speaker 2: Did he give you any updates on Party Bomb?

[00:18:13] Justin Kendall: That was the first thing he talked about.

[00:18:15] Speaker 2: Is there going to be like Kirkland's signature party bomb?

[00:18:17] Justin Kendall: There's new bombs coming. Wow. Yeah. Mango just hit and watermelon is on the way in less than 10 days by the time you're listening to this. Distribution was a little slower to turn on with it, just getting into convenience and stuff. Now they're ramping up, they're doing a lot of things that they don't do with the beer brands. They've got an ambassador program that they're going to do. He said that they're really kind of looking at Red Bull as a model for that. They're working with marketing classes at various universities, University of Oregon, Arizona State, and University of Wisconsin is coming on soon. And they're just kind of tapping them for ideas, also tapping into their key demographic.

[00:19:04] Jessica Infante: If you're having a bad day, just talk to Peter Skrbek about Party Bomb because he just gets so happy and excited and it really brightens everyone's mood.

[00:19:15] Justin Kendall: He says things CEOs don't typically say. It's almost like a Batman comic book with the, you know, POW! Wham! You know, like he is just so enthusiastic and it's, it's kind of contagious. not going to even do close to justice of capturing his enthusiasm for the Hellas, for Party Bomb, for Boneyard. He mentioned the distribution change from Point Blank to Columbia has been huge for Boneyard, that they are The number one craft draft handle in Oregon is Boneyard. So they are chasing Coors Light there. They're about 500 handles behind. Big jump there to make, but he's feeling really good about where they are and where their own portfolio is. And that he doesn't even mention Fresh Squeeze and how the non-alcoholic IPA version of Fresh Squeeze has turned on consumers to the alcoholic version. So he would never have guessed that there would be crossover there, but here we are.

[00:20:19] Sean McNulty: Well, that non-alcohol is really good. I will say, I mean, they do, you know, they know they invested a lot in their production, you know, facilities for N.A. there. And that paid off in that product because N.A. fresh squeezed and they're like the porter, like both N.A. versions are, you know, top level N.A. beers, in my opinion. So a shout out to them for that. That's the Distroots that I buy here in, uh, in Jersey. I'll put it that way.

[00:20:38] Justin Kendall: I don't blame you. I love that beer.

[00:20:40] Sean McNulty: Yeah, did a great job.

[00:20:42] Justin Kendall: That's kind of what's up with Deschutes. And we've got far more than that in the story at Brewbound.com. You can read it there. I want to turn it over to Zoe because you've got some hot takes. Ooh. Or at least one hot take. My favorite kind.

[00:20:57] Jessica Infante: I don't know if I can take full credit for this hot take because I know we've heard this. I think Bart Watson has touched on this before. Maybe Lester Jones as well. But just in recent headlines, we've noticed that some folks have pointed out that they're really focused on nailing their quality and making sure their quality is where it needs to be and have spent a couple years doing that. I think it is Bart who had said, you know, that should have been the default at this point, especially in the craft beer front. The consumer expects all to have high quality going on. So if that is what you would need to focus on, I mean, definitely you need to get it done. But it sets off red flags to me when I see those in companies touting things of, oh, you must have had more problems for your company than the general stuff that is plaguing craft right now. if quality is still an issue here in 2026. Not calling out any specific brands, but it's become a trend where I've seen some folks do it, and it tends to be, if that's something you're focusing on, then there's a lot of other things going on at that company that we probably need to be paying attention to.

[00:22:04] Sean McNulty: I feel like that's also just, that talking point was like, I don't know, three, four years ago, that was the conversation point too. And it's just like, oh, we're bringing, if you're bringing this back around now, it's like, where were you four years ago? And that ship has sailed, buddy. Like, you know, we're way beyond that, but it's interesting. It's interesting. You're hearing it more. It's sad that you are hearing it more. It's a double-sided coin there, Zoe.

[00:22:23] Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it was CBC 10 years ago when Paul Gatza was like, don't fuck it up.

[00:22:29] Sean McNulty: Right. Like 2019 maybe? I don't even know.

[00:22:31] Jessica Infante: Yeah. Once a consumer thinks this isn't the quality that I want, it's almost impossible to get them back in the first place. So you pair that with all the other reasons why some folks are turning away from craft. It's just asking for disaster.

[00:22:45] Sean McNulty: Yeah. But why is that now in 2026? It's like, really dude?

[00:22:48] Jessica Infante: Yeah.

[00:22:49] Sean McNulty: It's like Justin and Netflix. Once you lose them on Santa Clarita Diet, you're just not going to give them back to the customer. You know, it's just gone forever. You know, forget Raw. He doesn't care anymore. No, no. Santa Clarita Diet really took him off the back. Heartbreaking.

[00:23:01] Jessica Infante: I'm curious to see how it translates to, with so many folks moving into other categories and segments with, you know, trying to expand to more consumers, how much quality is, is it as important a factor beyond, you know, craft beer? And are people taking as much care with those products as they were with craft beer? I have no insights into exactly what that looks like. It seems like some folks are trying to do it with care and to tout things as premium products. And so it's quality products. But yeah, it's something to be on the lookout for.

[00:23:32] Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, there's like so many permutations of flavor that you can get in craft beer compared to what casual consumers think of as being, quote unquote, regular beer, that you have all of those different varieties in the mix. And then you add on this other layer of quality issues that can also contribute to unpleasant flavors. And then people, you know, you just don't know, like, hey, do I not like this flavor because I don't like it? Or do I not like this beer because it's actually kind of bad?

[00:23:54] Sean McNulty: Right.

[00:23:55] Jessica Infante: I think the assumption of something being a quality product is why we've seen this trend of loggers, like light loggers happening, is a lot of these have been approaches to, hey, we're going to give you a quality product that is a light logger, that is meeting the same occasions as some of these others in the past. And so it is almost giving them that. that hey you can you can have this same high quality experience but with this kind of value play that might fit your needs needs more.

[00:24:22] Speaker 2: Yeah this isn't something that we ever do but occasionally you see other media outlets that cover the broad spectrum of beverage alcohol ask other brewers hey what do you drink and then they end up like framing these things up as being like Craft brewers say that these big beers are good, actually. And it's just so weird. Like, hey, these companies that have existed for centuries, they're working to create a product that thrives on repetition of process. Can you believe they actually nailed it?

[00:24:52] Justin Kendall: Kirkland Signature Helles.

[00:24:54] Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, like.

[00:24:57] Justin Kendall: Cough, cough, yeah.

[00:24:58] Speaker 2: Oh, it's just like the nagging is so weird. I'm so done and over it. Let people drink what they like to drink.

[00:25:05] Sean McNulty: Just, yeah, with trends these days, Jess, there's no more room for that kind of stuff with sales and things like that. But I will say for non-alc, that was a thing and still is a thing. Jess, you've talked about pasteurization as a thing, quality. So I think for that, Zoe, which is, again, a small part of the market here and is newer, but I would say 100% for that quality range, we can all agree very, very widely for a while. I think it's valid that the people who are left remaining are the ones who actually knew what they were doing, but that was a big thing in non-alcohol for sure. Huge.

[00:25:32] Jessica Infante: Yeah, did like basically segment wide damage and now it's been working to repair that.

[00:25:37] Justin Kendall: Totally.

[00:25:38] Sean McNulty: Yeah.

[00:25:39] Justin Kendall: Well, thanks for joining us, Sean. We appreciate you taking time out and we'll be back next week.

[00:25:45] Jessica Infante: And that's our show for this week. Thank you for listening. The Brewbound Podcast is a production of BevNET CPG. Our audio engineer for the Brewbound Podcast is Joe Cracci. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt and our video editor is Ryan Galang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smerlinski. Our designer is Amanda Huang. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your colleagues and friends and review us on your listening platform of choice. You can find our work at Brewbound.com. And we also welcome feedback and suggestions at podcast at Brewbound.com. On behalf of the entire Brewbound podcast team, thank you for listening. We'll be back next week.