While many annual business plans over the next couple months will likely include fourth-category innovations, Sierra Nevada is focused on continuing to innovate with “beer-flavored beer.”
Sierra Nevada leadership shared their plans with wholesalers Wednesday at its brewery in Mills River, North Carolina. The company’s top three priorities for 2025 include continuing the growth of Hazy Little Thing, revitalizing Pale Ale and strengthening the company’s non-alcoholic portfolio.
Look out for further coverage of the event, including Sierra Nevada’s 2025 goals and why the company still believes in investing in craft.
Little Thing Brand Family Extensions
Hazy Little Thing continues to lead growth for Sierra Nevada, and will remain a top priority for the company in 2025 (more on that in future coverage). However, Sierra Nevada does not want to limit its hazy offerings, and believes in the style’s ability to bring in more consumers, VP of marketing Lesley Albright told wholesaler partners.
“While this category often seems a little old news to us in the industry – of course there are hazies everywhere – we are really confident, and we hear from consumers that there’s still a lot of people coming into this style, a lot of people still trying it, and it has a large effect on our entire portfolio,” Albright said.
A new limited hazy offering will join Sierra Nevada’s Little Thing brand family in 2025: Rad Little Thing. The 7% ABV West Coast IPA combines East Coast haze with West Coast flavor and style. A draft of the 6-pack’s packaging shared at the meeting featured bright colors and the image of a skateboarder in action – something Sierra Nevada plans to lean into when promoting the brand, including potential partnerships with athletes.
Rad Little Thing will be a part of Sierra Nevada hazy rotator series, available in 12 oz. can 6-packs, joining other limited offerings Juicy Little Thing, Tropical Little Thing, Dank Little Thing, Cosmic Little Thing and Cool Little Thing. The latter, a 7.5% ABV “cryo fresh” hazy IPA and the latest offering in the series, “absolutely rocket[ed] to the top of our velocity charts” and had the second highest rate of sale within Sierra Nevada’s portfolio behind Hazy Little Thing, making it the company’s “best-selling rotator to date,” Albright said.
The hazy rotator series has grown dollar sales +28% in the last 13 weeks in NIQ-tracked off-premise channels (ending July 20), and outpaced craft 6-pack dollar sales growth trends in the last 26 weeks by nine times, Albright shared.
“The coolest thing is that this is all happening without cannibalization of Hazy Little Thing,” she added. “And I will be the first to admit I wasn’t entirely sure that we wouldn’t see some impact on Hazy, and I’m so thrilled to report that we are not seeing that at all.”
Also to come in spring 2025 will be a new lineup for Sierra Nevada’s Hazy IPA variety pack (previously called the Party Pack). The pack will include Hazy Little Thing (6.7% ABV), Cosmic Little Thing (8% ABV), Tropical Little Thing (7% ABV) and Hoppy Little Thing (5% ABV).
The new variety pack is the first time Cosmic Little Thing, a hazy double IPA, will be available in a 12 oz. can, with the limited-edition offering previously only available in 19.2 oz single-serve cans. Tropical Little Thing will continue to be a variety pack exclusive offering.
The existing Hazy IPA variety pack lineup, which was rebranded this year, includes Hazy Little Thing, Tropical Little Thing, Dank Little Thing (7.5% ABV, pack exclusive) and Juicy Little Thing (6.5% ABV). In the last four weeks (ending July 20), the variety pack has increased dollar sales +35% year-over-year (YoY), and 177,000 cases have been sold since February.
The demand for the variety pack – which is the No. 2 variety pack in NIQ-tracked off-premise channels, according to Albright – has caused some out-of-stock issues, but the company expects to have solutions in place for the next rollout.
Two New Non-Alc Styles and a Variety Pack
Sierra Nevada’s Trail Pass non-alcoholic (NA) beer brand has been “a star” for the company in 2024, and the company plans to be in the NA segment “for the long haul,” Albright said.
The NA line launched in January with two offerings: IPA and Golden. Sierra Nevada is now the No. 4 craft NA brand in NIQ-tracked off-premise channels year-to-date (YTD), and IPA and Golden are the No. 2 NAs in their respective styles, according to Albright.
“We’re really thrilled with the initial performance of Trail Pass, and it’s exceeding our expectations,” Albright said. “What I want to make sure I communicate to you all is that we are really confident in the foundation that we have built with our Hop Splash [hop water] and our Trail Pass brands, and we’re looking forward to being a big player in this category as it evolves.”
While the NA segment is dominated by single-flavor 12-packs, Sierra Nevada sees “a real big opportunity” for the segment with variety packs.
“My team has seen some really interesting behavior when it comes to non-alc purchases that really indicate there’s a socialization and a sharing opportunity,” Albright said. “Gone are the days where you bring a 6-pack of non-alc to a party and you’re kind of embarrassed, or it’s a little bit of a downer, and you’re hiding it at the bottom of the cooler. People are now accepting a non-alc as a really important part of that party mix and that party cooler.”
To capitalize, Sierra Nevada has created a four-flavor non-alc variety 12-pack, with plans to become “the first brand to nationally distribute [a] non-alc variety pack.” Non-Alc Variety Pack features the two existing NA beer offerings, as well as a Hazy IPA and Brewveza Mexican-style blonde ale.
Sierra Nevada began testing the variety pack in a handful of markets this year, and will expand into an additional 14 states this fall, with further expansion possible in 2025.
Additionally, Trail Pass Hazy IPA will be available in its own 6-pack, as well as possible single-serve packages, including 16 and 19.2 oz.
The idea for a variety pack came from the brewers, who were eager to create and put out more NA offerings, CCO Ellie Preslar told Brewbound.
“There’s some [NA] variety packs out there, but there wasn’t one really broadly available,” Preslar said. “And as I talked to wholesalers and then looked at what’s working on the beer side from a variety pack, it was one of those [things] that made sense.”
Sierra Nevada already has several other NA styles that brewers created through the research-and-development process that the company is exploring releasing in the future, including launches available direct-to-consumer or as taproom exclusives.
The company is also researching which NA styles perform best on a regional level, and could pursue regional releases. IPA, hazy IPA, golden ale and Mexican-style lager are the top four NA beer styles on a national level, but there is more diversity regionally, Preslar said.
A Return to the Pilsner Game
One of the most anticipated announcements from Wednesday’s presentation was Sierra Nevada’s answer to the craft lager trend.
Light lager brands have been among the defining styles of 2024, with many craft producers launching brands to compete with major domestics, as well as standalone light lager companies, such as Garage Beer and Montucky Cold Snacks, both of which received high-profile investments.
There are three major ways for breweries to participate in the trend, according to Albright. The first, to create a value craft lager play, which Albright described as a “dumbed down” version of craft beer. The second, to create a Mexican-style lager, which Sierra Nevada doesn’t believe it can do with a core brand in an authentic way. And the third – the direction Sierra Nevada is choosing – is to create a premium product with an emphasis on being a locally created and “authentic” product.
To “disrupt the American craft lager category,” Sierra Nevada will launch Pils, a pilsner that will hit the market in 2025. Albright did not share other details on the brand, with more information expected this fall, but noted that it will likely be “an early draft play.”
Leadership shared a few more details during a Q&A following Wednesday’s presentations, including that it will have a flavor profile in line with a more traditional European lager, and that the ABV will be between 4% and 5%.
Chief brewing officer Brian Grossman said he wants to show the difference between a hoppy beer and a bitter beer, with Pils leaning into the former, playing up hop-centric characteristics, with crisp yeast flavor also bringing out the hops.
“A lot of people don’t realize that we’ve actually been making pilsners for a very long time,” Grossman said. “In 2010 we actually won the World Beer Cup gold medal for a pilsner.”
He also noted that it will be different from Sierra Nevada’s previous offerings in the style, such as Nooner.
“We are really focused on the long play in our re-entry into the lager category,” Albright said. “We are going to be doing test markets and be really thoughtful and diligent about the way that we go to market.”
Jon Wilks, VP of wholesaler sales, added that the company’s distributor partners have been enthusiastic about the the offering being available on draft, and that “if and when we do make a play from a draft perspective, it would be strategic and it’d be completely incremental and be very thoughtful in our approach.”
Other new products coming in 2025 include:
- Hop Tropical IPA (6.5% ABV), a Q1 seasonal;
- 19.2 oz single-serve cans of Torpedo IPA (7.2%);
- A can version of the Torpedo IPA variety pack, joining the bottled variety pack, which will remain in distribution.