Brewbound Podcast

On the latest edition of the Brewbound Podcast, the team analyzes the tectonic shifts in the bev-alc market in the last week, including:Constellation Brands giving Coors Distributing Company the proverbial black rose, with plans to terminate their relationship in the next 30 days, and the odds of its portfolio heading to the Reyes Beverage Group, which entered Colorado earlier this year;Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits paying $12.5 million to resolve a federal probe into bribes given to retail chain grocery buyers;Underwhelming Labor Day off-premise scans;A major equipment manufacturer shuttering its brewing division;And more industry upheaval.Brewbound’s Justin Kendall, Jessica Infante and Zoe Licata also ponder the creation of the Two-Zie, a double koozie from mid-strength beer maker Dad Strength.Listen here or find the Brewbound Podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Von Ebert Brewing brewer Dashawn Agbonze sees himself as the “fun police” – a badge he wears proudly, much like the German brewers that he admires.“I’m always like, ‘Why are we doing this?’” Agbonze said on the latest edition of the Brewbound Podcast. “Ultimately, like the Germans, I don’t believe in magic. I need an explanation. Let’s talk it out. Part of that is, let’s train people so that everyone can see the same vision and we have the same goal because we know exactly how to get there.”Agbonze, a two-time Michael James Jackson Foundation for Brewing and Distilling (MJF) scholarship awardee, shares his journey climbing the ranks of the brewing industry and why he believes education is critical for up-and-coming brewers. “The education is important because it enables you to be in a controlled space to fail,” he explained. “You’re not putting a business on the line. You don’t have employees with families that you have to risk in order to learn that ‘Hey, a clean tank would make the beer that you want,’ or ‘Hey, contamination via your canning line can happen,’ or how to solve these problems in a safe space.”Failures in a learning environment become key lessons in training the next generation of brewers, Agbonze shares. Before the interview, the Brewbound team discusses the latest news, including a major departure from Whole Foods’ bev-alc team, an update on Pabst’s stolen beer, the Beer Institute’s latest beer supply data and FIFCO USA’s new owner and new/old name. Brewbound managing editor Jessica Infante also shares highlights from her trip to Asheville for the annual business planning meetings at Highland Brewing and Sierra Nevada. Listen here or on Apple or Spotify

The summer selling season wraps up this weekend with Labor Day Monday, and one of the hottest segments of the summer has been hard sports drinks. Brewbound editor Justin Kendall and senior reporter Zoe Licata dive into the fast-growing segment and how their views have shifted on it over the last year. They look at who is leading the segment now and new entrants looking to fast-follow, including Boston Beer Company. The duo also recap several rounds of layoffs, including Sapporo USA’s wind-down of the Stone Brewing-branded locations in Escondido, California; Mark Anthony’s integration of the Finnish Long Drink and coming sales team cuts; and Diageo’s ongoing $1.2 billion restructuring effort hitting its NYC headquarters. Plus, Justin and Zoe discuss low-ABV beers (and Justin cracks Sierra Nevada’s new Go-Two IPA) and Pabst’s viral stolen beer marketing campaign. Listen here.

Fingers boozeletter author Dave Infante joins the Brewbound Podcast to deep dive Diageo’s ongoing restructuring and workforce slashing under CEO Sir Dave Lewis (aka “Drastic Dave” for his reputation for making big cuts at previous stops). Infante shares insights from his reporting and conversations with Diageo employees, many of whom wondered why the Guinness and Johnnie Walker maker was so slow to adapt to the modern bev-alc competitive landscape.“The frustration that I heard from current and former Diageo employees was mostly about why weren’t we doing this before we had to start laying everyone off,” Infante tells Brewbound editor Justin Kendall and managing editor Jessica Infante (no relation). “You don’t have to get to this point before you start pivoting to RTDs.”The trio also hit recent headlines, including Garage Beer and Liquid Death tapping into the real world animosity around data centers and BuzzBallz’s recent Pop-Tarts partnership.Jessica offered a theory on the BuzzBallz-Pop-Tarts team up: “Kids aren’t eating Pop-Tarts. You know who’s eating Pop-Tarts? Sad, elder millennials who can’t afford anything else and want a tiny treat. The moms who would be out marching on the capitol up in arms against this aren’t feeding that to their kids.”“They’re the ones who are intrigued by the BuzzBallz Pop-Tarts that they saw on Instagram,” Dave adds.“That’s definitely going into their Stanley tumblers,” Jess says.Listen here or on your preferred podcasting platform.

Does every beer need a non-alcoholic (NA) analog? The Brewbound team discusses on the latest episode of the Brewbound Podcast.As Molson Coors prepares to launch an NA version of Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy, Brewbound editor Justin Kendall questions whether the product is trend chasing or if consumers are clamoring for it. Managing editor Jessica Infante gets White Claw Zero flashbacks, while senior reporter Zoe Licata offers a different perspective after exploring NA ciders.The trio also analyze recent headlines, including:Samuel Adams taproom workers’ plans to unionize and Boston Beer’s response, so far;And B3 Beverage’s “complicated” partnerships, with a deal for Yards Brewing going forward and others falling through.Listen here.

The decade-long consent decree that allowed Anheuser-Busch InBev’s (A-B) MegaBrew merger with SABMiller to go forward expired in July, removing guardrails that had been placed on the world’s largest beer manufacturer by the Department of Justice to ensure competition in the marketplace.Chris Jones, managing director of Central Market Strategies, joins this week’s Brewbound Podcast to explore what competition looks like in a post-consent decree beer industry.Jones argues the consent decree did its job, creating a competitive environment that allowed new brands over the last decade such as Athletic Brewing, Mark Anthony Brands’ White Claw and Boston Beer’s Truly Hard Seltzer to become category leaders in non-alcoholic (NA) beer and hard seltzer, respectively, while also preventing A-B “from using its massive size as the world’s largest brewer to disrupt the market.”WIth the consent decree’s guardrails down, including the removal of an independent monitor who maintained compliance by handling claims of interference and coercion, there now exists “a lot more risk in the system of this market power and abuses of market power that could result from the size and scale of the largest brewer,” Jones said.Going forward, it will be important to track national market share in an already “highly concentrated market” and middle-tier consolidation in the years ahead, he added.Listen to the full conversation with Brewbound managing editor Jessica Infante here.Before the conversation, Brewbound editor Justin Kendall and senior reporter Zoe Licata join Jess to run through the latest news, including Lawson’s Finest Liquids’ first NA beer, what distributors say is on their cut lists, a distributor territory swap in the Northeast and “warm beer takes” on the latest NFL beer marketing.

How can a new brand make a splash in the increasingly crowded ready-to-drink waters? A winning combination of differentiated flavors, artistic packaging and a willingness to work the market day in and day out. That’s what has been working for Lake Hour, according to CEO Michelle Ivey, this week’s featured guest. Ready-to-drink (RTD) canned cocktail brand Lake Hour launched three years ago amid the segment’s meteoric rise. Its co-founders – actor Wyatt Russell and film producer Rich Peete – had no prior beverage experience, and tapped Ivey, an industry vet, as CEO in late 2025.“I was blown away with the brand that they built, the fact that they had built this beautiful feeling of family and slowing down and the lake concept,” Ivey said. “Once I tried it, I realized it was one of those, ‘actually’ brands that when you take a sip, you're like ‘Wow, actually, this is great. This tastes so good.’ And so, I was so impressed with what they did and what they built two years in as startup founders that have had no experience in the industry.”Lake Hour recently entered Texas via Reyes Beverage Group-owned Capital Reyes Distributing. Being a young brand in the book of one of the largest bev-alc distributors in the country isn’t daunting for Ivey, because she sees securing mind share and growing the brand as Lake Hour’s job.“That is the brand's responsibility – distributors don't build for you,” she said. “You have to build for you. You have to earn that attention and you do that through proper investment in the market, in my opinion. You have to invest in the sampling, the retail execution, on-premise activation, your social media and consumer awareness and proper field support.Ivey acknowledged that “probably sounds really boring, because it's not magic.” “You have to just be there daily and do the everyday work that it takes to build and sell your brand,” she said. Before the interview, the Brewbound team discusses recent headlines, including a proposed reprieve for intoxicating hemp beverages, how many retailers sold out of various bev-alc products during the World Cup and how Anheuser-Busch InBev views itself relative to spirits giants. Listen here or on your preferred podcast platform.