New Belgium Brewing Company

Young Lion Gets New Owner; Ex-Employee Sues Legion Brewing; Samuel Adams Drop a Cherry Bomb; Budweiser Drops Super Bowl LX Ad; People Moves at Holidaily, Bell’s; Athletic’s Bill Shufelt on Bold Names; Womrtown’s Patriot Place Taproom Gets a ‘Glow Up.’

Lauren Woods Limbach joined New Belgium in 196 and the rest is “an incredible fairy tale, wild ride, with some of the hardest work and the best people on Earth,” she said in an Instagram video last week announcing her upcoming retirement.

New Belgium Brewing has big plans for Voodoo Ranger in 2026, from two new IPAs to partnerships with two of the biggest TV and video game releases of the year.

A pair of new ready-to-drink (RTD) offerings are coming from New Belgium in 2026, including Kirin’s top-selling canned cocktail and a vodka cocktail with a “subtle nod” to the Voodoo Ranger franchise.

Beer is in the midst of “a fun crisis,” New Belgium Brewing CMO Rebecca Dye Yonushonis declared during the company’s distributor convention in Fort Collins last week.

Craft’s off-premise performance over the last four weeks has been a tale of two channels.

What do distributors want in 2025? A survey of 173 distributors from across the U.S. found that middle-tier leaders are seeking simplification and focus in programs, among other key traits. Those answers were among the takeaways from consulting firm Tamarron’s 27th annual Brewer Partnership Compass survey.

After reaching nationwide distribution in 2023, Bell’s Brewery has refocused on its core Great Lakes markets. New Belgium CEO Shaun Belongie explained that the Michigan craft brand struggled in far away markets, leading the company to double down at home.

New Belgium is still feeling the effects of Hurricane Helene almost one year after the deadly storm devastated western North Carolina. Even as the company’s Asheville production facility has come back online, New Belgium is dealing with tough decisions made in the aftermath.

New Belgium Brewing Company turned down the innovation firehose to a drip – for the most part – to start 2025. Yes, the company did add “Mini Rippers,” 7.5 oz. 8-pack cans of Voodoo Ranger Juice Force and Tropic Force (both 9.5% ABV). And it rolled out LightStrike, a 5% ABV non-carbonated hard refresher line, aimed at Millennials and Generation Z consumers.

Refreshers are like opinions – no one’s the same, but everyone’s got one. Numerous fruity and colorful hard beverages have hit the shelves in the past two years, labeled as “refreshers,” but that is about where their similarities end.

Teamsters’ strike at Breakthru spreads to six more states; Voodoo Ranger and Malört collab on Roulette IPA release; Intuition Ale Works available for turnkey sale; G4 Kegs pauses imports; consumer spending dips in May; and Constellation data shows Hispanic consumers’ pullback from dining out.

Although still in decline, craft beer’s dollar sales and volume losses eased up in May, according to the most recent off-premise report from market research firm Circana.

Volume at craft breweries outside of the Brewers Association’s (BA) definition of small and independent declined 4% on a comparable basis, to 6.752 million barrels, in 2024, the trade group reported in the May/June edition of The New Brewer magazine.