Brewbound Podcast: How to Reshape a Portfolio with Larry Horwitz

[00:00:00] Zoe Licata: How do you reshape a brewery's portfolio? We'll talk about it next on the Brewbound Podcast with Larry Horwitz from Crooked Hammock. Hello and welcome to the Brewbound podcast. My name is Justin Kendall and I'm the editor of Brewbound and I'm joined by Zoe Licata, Brewbound reporter extraordinaire, the co-host of this program. What's up, Zoe?

[00:00:31] Crooked Hammock: Hello, I'm missing Jess. I feel like I need to like hear the Jess intro first and then my intro.

[00:00:39] Zoe Licata: Yeah, we got a tease this week during our meeting not to pull the curtain back too far, but Jess showed up with a special guest.

[00:00:47] Crooked Hammock: Yeah, we got a little a little sneak peek at a new little brew bound family member. So it was very exciting.

[00:00:53] Zoe Licata: Yeah, that was very cool. Very unexpected. And we've tried to leave Jess alone largely during this time. And I think she's tried to stay disconnected from the beer industry, which rightfully so. She's going to come back to a whole new world here.

[00:01:08] Crooked Hammock: Yeah, a whole new brew bound world and beer world.

[00:01:13] Zoe Licata: Exactly, well, one thing that isn't changing is BrewTalks for now. We are doing our next BrewTalks in Denver, kicking off the Great American Beer Festival week with our networking conversation series. It's gonna take place Thursday, September 21st, from noon to 3 p.m. Mountain Time. We're gonna be at Cervantes Masterpiece in Denver again. Great lineup coming up. We're still building it, but we know that we're going to be talking about the return of draft and why it's not exactly coming back the way it used to be. As you've seen probably from our last BrewTalks conversation, the number of accounts, the number of tap handles. There are fewer of them out there. So we're gonna talk about that with Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head, Lori Scheffler from Tamron Consulting. They do the annual wholesaler surveys of large brewers and craft brewers to get a sense of what's going on in the market. So we're gonna talk all about it with them and more guests to be announced, more conversations to be announced.

[00:02:23] Crooked Hammock: Yep, excited to be back in Denver. It's going to be a good time. Cervantes is a fun place to be. So everyone come hang out and kick off JBF unofficially with us.

[00:02:33] Zoe Licata: Tickets available now at Brewbound.com. This week, we have a special guest, and that's Larry Horwitz. He is the Director of Brewing Operations at Crooked Hammock. They have locations in Delaware and South Carolina. Larry's working to reshape their portfolio, so we'll get into the weeds with him coming up in our conversation a little bit later. But first, we gotta get to the news, and it's been a busy earning season, and that starts with Boston Beer. You and I were both on the call and this one was, I hate to say it, a bit of a snoozer. Not a lot really going on. It's like, I kind of feel like it's a groundhog's day with Boston Beer where yes, Twisted Tea is doing well. No, Truly is not doing well. Most everything else is suffering as well. So not a lot of new news, I guess.

[00:03:30] Crooked Hammock: Yeah, it was a little weird because from Boston Beer's perspective, at least from what the leadership was saying on the call, they seemed very happy and positive about things. And I mean, sure, they met their expectations for Q2 and they're doing what they want to be doing a little bit, but it just seems to be the same thing of most of the brands aren't doing very well. Truly is doing really poorly. but they feel totally confident in their projections still. They feel confident in Twisted T, of course. So it was a weird call. One of the biggest takeaways from it was because shipments were down in Q2, they save money on freight, which I guess is looking at things in a positive way, and are going to be putting all of that money back into marketing for Twisted Tea and for Truly. So expect to see even more commercials and advertising for both of those brands than you already see right now. There's already a lot being invested into those two brands.

[00:04:31] Zoe Licata: That more than rankled a few of those analysts because I think they were like, wait, you're saving this money, and your gross margin is finally improving, and it's not where you want it to be. They've got this elusive 50% gross margin target that they're after. And it was up, but now they're saying, oh, we're gonna take that money, and we're gonna invest it in truly advertising, and you're gonna see the brand at least once a week, or whatever it was.

[00:05:00] Crooked Hammock: Yeah, they said they wanted you to see them on your screen weekly. And it definitely, there were a couple of questions in either the reports afterwards or on the call itself from analysts about that decision. I think it was a mix of Twisted Tea already has so much momentum behind it. Does it need more money? It seems like it's doing just fine and any more growth is just going to come from added distribution or added packages. And then on the Truly side, they've already done so much to try to improve that brand with the new packaging, with the advertising that they've already had for it, and those new campaigns, and the new refreshed formula as well. It seems like, okay, when is enough to keep putting money into this brand? So there was a little bit of skepticism about, can we just take this money maybe and put it, I don't know, either behind other brands or just kind of keep that for investors. They weren't so sure on that decision.

[00:05:58] Zoe Licata: Yeah, I'm not sure on that decision. And I guess after last year's marketing with the fruit flies, I think that anybody probably has more than a few reservations about them pumping it into advertising. But they have a new campaign, Lightly, what is it?

[00:06:17] Crooked Hammock: Lightly Fantastic.

[00:06:19] Zoe Licata: OK, Lightly Fantastic.

[00:06:21] Crooked Hammock: which in itself is an interesting choice. Yeah, they have this new campaign rolling out and Dave Berwick, the CEO reminded everyone that like this new rollout of everything finally fully is kind of hitting the board towards the end of Q2 is when it finally happened. So they're not going to see results right away if there are positive results, but the campaigns that they've had so far haven't seemed to have a huge impact enough to have any significant change on Truly's trends.

[00:06:52] Zoe Licata: One of the things that I also thought was interesting was their approach to twisted tea, and they have Twisted Tea Lite, and now they've introduced Twisted Tea Extreme, which is their higher ABV, 8%, what is it, like single serves? That they're doing in a few test markets, and those'll probably go wider, because who doesn't want 8% hard tea at this point? Make everything super hard. That was interesting. The shelf space expansion that they've gotten about 49% increase in shelf space is interesting there. And they've got a lot of room still to grow with that Twisty T brand. Major markets that they under-index in, like California, Texas, and Florida, those are major beer-drinking, alcohol-drinking states, so large population bases still to go after there, but it's always weird on these calls because I feel like we end up hearing a little bit more about, like, Truly than we do Twisted Tea, and Twisted Tea is really the growth driver at this point.

[00:07:58] Crooked Hammock: Yeah, I think they have to do a lot of trying to explain or back their truly decisions or truly support. I mean, one of the analysts questions even told the line of saying, how long are you going to give truly in general, it seemed, of just kind of like, People are still have skepticism about it. So I think they just have, that's why they talk about it so much. But Twisted Tea really has, it's the brand for Boston Beer right now. It's like the only one really that is providing any growth for the company. And so we got a little bit more details about what they're doing to continue and to sustain that growth. What I thought was interesting was there was no talk about hard Mountain Dew at all on this call, which normally there's at least a little conversation about it. And I don't know if that's just because they're kind of at a standstill of figuring out all their distribution things or they're just okay with where it's at right now and the markets it's at right now, but there was no chat about that other offering.

[00:09:00] Zoe Licata: Yeah, it seems like that's a little bit of a point of frustration with how slow that it has rolled out. It's not nationwide. I mean, it's not even in half the number of states at this point, right?

[00:09:14] Crooked Hammock: No, no, not at all. I don't think it's even at where they wanted it to be in the first year. It's nowhere near where they expected it to be and it continues to move very slowly. So maybe they're just trying not to put any spotlight on it right now to not have to explain why that's slow.

[00:09:34] Zoe Licata: Yeah. And it's in the quarter, it's depletions and shipments were both down in Q2. So, I mean, they're up year to date, but that's not really the trend you're, you're hoping to see. And I know that they're probably cycling some things there, but you would think with an under distributed brand, it's likely picking up some new States that would sort of offset, but not really.

[00:10:03] Crooked Hammock: Yeah. And we've seen some more excitement for some potential competitor brands like the Monster Entrance that have come in. So I'm sure it's not going to get any rosier in that department.

[00:10:17] Zoe Licata: Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about Molson Coors' earnings. And it sounds like it was a pretty good quarter for them. Really, this is the first picture that we've seen of their business since the Bud Light boycott. And it's starting to really materialize what that means. And that was pretty clear from the call. And I'll skip over all the numbers and stuff like that. But here are the things that stood out to me on the call. Their top 20 retailers are saying they're gonna allocate more shelf space to Molson Coors' brands. They're expecting more for Coors Light, Miller Light, Coors Banquet. Those brands are all growing double digits. And then in the on-premise channel, it sounds like they're doing even better than the off-premise channel. And they've gained 12,000 tap handles. That's a pretty sizable chunk of business in the on-premise channel. And those are for Coors Light, Miller Light, and Blue Moon. Those are the brands that are getting the handles.

[00:11:22] Crooked Hammock: Yeah, it's pretty significant. And this was the first call where they kind of admitted that, you know, we're really benefiting from everything with Bud Light and we're prepared for that to continue. But Gavin Hattersley really also hammered it in to try to say, it's not all because of Bud Light. This is because of this plan that we've had for three plus years now. And he said that even if, you know, we obviously didn't plan for Bud Light to have such declines, but if this had happened in 2019, and we hadn't already set up everything we had in place, we wouldn't have been able to have the same gains that we are now. So it is a combination of their strategy plus just the benefit of Bud Light losing some consumers.

[00:12:05] Zoe Licata: In some ways, I think he's right. They pared down their economy portfolio. They're not making a whole bunch of brands at this point. They've really zeroed in on these are our focus areas and we're going to stick to those. And, you know, if something doesn't work, we're going to kill it off pretty fast. And they've done a pretty good job of that. In another way, I'm like, you cannot discount what is happening with Bud Light. And I don't think he really is, but for their top 20 retailers to be looking at the planogram going into the fall resets. And some of them moving up their spring resets to the fall and more, even more so coming on line after, like he, he said that, yeah, I I'm talking about the top 20 retailers, but there are more every week who are having these conversations with our sales leadership.

[00:13:01] Crooked Hammock: Yeah. And this is something we'd heard little rumblings of, of some like resets, just the way that resets are working have kind of changed this year of people kind of moving those up. But this was the first confirmation that we've had from one of the bigger suppliers of being like, yeah, like we've heard directly from the retailers, this is what we're doing. And on the Boston Beer Call, they had said the opposite, they hadn't seen anything. So it seems to be really directly impacting or benefiting the brands that are competing in the same space as Bud Light.

[00:13:34] Zoe Licata: Yeah, and I think Jim Cook had really said that, too, is that whatever shift is going on is really benefiting the light beer brands more than Samuel Adams Boston Beer.

[00:13:46] Crooked Hammock: Yeah. Or even truly like something where, like we've talked before, but potentially hard seltzer took some of those light beer drinkers. But it doesn't seem like that is happening again with these resets. We'll just have to see if this plays out, if that momentum continues, if they can keep out of stocks low. can just keep up with demand because we know they've had problems with it in the past.

[00:14:09] Zoe Licata: Well, let's move on. We've got some people moves and one is very personal to us. And that's Danelle Cosmal is leaving the Beer Institute in November and going to Japan. She's moving to Japan with her family.

[00:14:25] Crooked Hammock: I'm very excited for Danelle, but I was personally very sad to see that she's not going to be at all these beer events that we usually go to anymore. But she is making a wonderful life decision to go move with her family there for at least a few years and have this new adventure. So we're really excited for Danelle, but also really sad. No word yet from the BI on what comes next about who's going to move into that position and kind of take over. I mean, she's VP of Research there, so she's really handling all of their big reports, all of their annual data dumps of everything. So gonna be interesting to see who fills that position. And Danelle's also said she's not completely done with the industry forever. She is still figuring out what her next chapter will be and how she can continue to be involved. But that's gonna take a backseat for a sec to focus on the fam.

[00:15:18] Zoe Licata: Yeah, I have a feeling that we'll be seeing Danelle in the future.

[00:15:22] Crooked Hammock: Oh, yeah. I don't think she's going to go to too far.

[00:15:26] Zoe Licata: This is one of those industries where it's like you think you're getting out and then you get sucked right back in.

[00:15:33] Crooked Hammock: Yep. You either have to like make a real solid, clean break and just leave everything and everyone behind, or you're going to slowly crawl back. It just always happens. It's just the way of the industry and the people and all that stuff. So I'm excited to see what happens next. I'm going to miss Danelle at the BI, but I'm very excited for her.

[00:15:55] Zoe Licata: Yeah. It's a real life hotel, California. The other move that happened this week was non-alcoholic beer brand Partake has hired, or promoted, I should say, Evan Cohen to be president. He's gonna lead the company's operations moving forward. Founder Ted Fleming is gonna take a step back, and he's gonna be in a role of chief operating officer, and he's really gonna focus on innovation.

[00:16:27] Crooked Hammock: Yeah, this comes as we've seen in all the data we've gone through week after week, like non-alcoholic beer continues to post double-digit growth. It continues to be really good in scan data. We know from Stateside that Athletic has kind of been dominating the space here, but Partake particularly does really well in Canada. Was it 70% of their sales are over there? Yeah. So they're dominating that space over there. It's going to be interesting to see what this next chapter is for them, for how they continue to maintain a leadership position in a segment that continues to grow, continues to get new entrants and evolve.

[00:17:06] Zoe Licata: Yeah, it sounds like they wanted to bring in somebody with a lot of beer industry, or even just CPG, fast food, someone who really understands not only the beer industry, but the broader CPG market. Evan's got 25 years of experience. He's been at Miller Coors and a division of Sazerac and Leo Burnett. So he's definitely got a lot of experience under his belt. And I have a feeling that we're gonna be hearing about more leadership changes in this industry very soon because this has been the year of change at the top of the craft brewing industry.

[00:17:52] Crooked Hammock: Yeah, you made a list the other day, and it was just to be reminded of the amount of changes that have happened just, I mean, it's only been seven months now, and it's wild to go back and look at all of the C-suite, like legitimate leadership changes that have happened at various brands, including big names like New Belgium, like Sierra Nevada, like there are things happening all over the industry right now.

[00:18:18] Zoe Licata: Yeah, it's wild. That is a wild amount of turnover. Let's close out this portion of the news with something that hit right after we recorded last week. Anheuser-Busch cut around 2% of its U.S. workforce. And digging around on their website, they have about 19,000 workers, they said. And so that works itself out to be around 380, but it's probably much less than that since they said less than 2%. They called this a restructuring, and they said that this will simplify and reduce layers within its organization. However, those layoffs did not affect frontline workers, so that would include brewery and warehouse staff, drivers and field sales reps. CEO Brandon Whitworth called it a very difficult but necessary decision to eliminate a number of positions across its corporate organization. And he went on for a little bit and said that these corporate structure changes will enable our teams to focus on what they do best, brewing great beer for everyone and earning our place in the moments that matter. If I am ever laid off from a job, I would hope that the leader has enough empathy to never spout any of the company's taglines in whatever release that is.

[00:19:43] Crooked Hammock: had to slide that tagline in at the end there.

[00:19:47] Zoe Licata: I mean, that really sucks for their workforce. And, you know, you feel for all those people. And Brendan has not been great at messaging in the moments that he needed to be really solid in messaging. And that is from the start of this boycott and backlash. The statements he's released then, the statement he released here, I feel like these statements are lacking.

[00:20:19] Crooked Hammock: Yeah, they've all seemed to falter a little bit. So it's going to be interesting to see moving forward, because it doesn't look like any of these trials with Anheuser-Busch's brands are really changing too much. They've possibly slowed down a little bit, but not a great deal. So I would expect some other changes are going to happen in the future, whether that continues with more layoffs or if there's leadership changes, who knows. Obviously what's happening right now isn't working. The strategy right now isn't working. We should have some numbers up by the time this is out of some of the latest data, which includes a look at ABs trends lately. And I mean, year to date, their sales are down 5.6%, volumes down 10%. Something has to change and it's gonna be interesting to see what they decide that will be.

[00:21:14] Zoe Licata: there have been analysts that have pretty strongly suggested that leadership needs to change at Anheuser-Busch. And that, for analysts to do that, that's not something that you usually see.

[00:21:28] Crooked Hammock: Right. We'll see what happens there. If that happens, what direction AV will decide to go with that. I'm a little nervous about, I think sometimes when these things happen, they can kind of I don't know, lean. I'm nervous that they might skew into bringing leadership in that will more heavily cater to the consumers that they lost and try to bring those consumers back and maybe go to a more extreme than they were before.

[00:21:57] Zoe Licata: Yeah, it is a tough position to be in. And yeah, I don't envy being in that position. Let's get out of this and play Another Round or Tabbing Out. And I'll start by the time you're listening to this, it's IPA day. And I know how much Zoe loves IPAs. So Zoe, are you buying Another Round? Are you Tabbing Out on IPA day?

[00:22:21] Crooked Hammock: I'll buy Another Round if it means we can have less IPAs on the other 364 days a year. That would be fun. I can confidently say I will not be drinking an IPA on IPA day.

[00:22:35] Zoe Licata: How about International Beer Day? I think it comes on August 4th.

[00:22:39] Crooked Hammock: Sure. I'll be drinking some lagers. I'll be drinking maybe a sour to give me anything else. I'll be fine.

[00:22:46] Zoe Licata: Aren't you going to Jack Savvy on IPA day?

[00:22:49] Crooked Hammock: Oh, that's right. Yes, I will be. And I'm not drinking an IPA.

[00:22:55] Zoe Licata: Yeah. Well, I'll let you fire away here.

[00:22:59] Crooked Hammock: Yeah, so I have Another Round of Another Round Tabbing Out for you today. Something that hit the mainstream news today was Epic One Water Brew, which is a Kolsch made with recycled shower sink and washing machine water from a very fancy luxury residential building in San Francisco, made by a startup in partnership with Devil's Canyon Brewing. I will caveat that this is not for sale because that would be illegal due to all the safety precautions that are out there, but they can give it away for free. So Justin, are you going to be drinking this Kolsch made with recycled gray water?

[00:23:41] Zoe Licata: If they send me some for free, I will drink it. I don't want to be a climate alarmist. And I don't think I have to be a climate alarmist to tell you that some bad stuff happening and our water supply is going to need all the help it can get. And water is essential to beer. So I guess if I want to drink beer in the year, you know, how long am I going to live? By the time I'm 65, if I want a beer, if I want an IPA, I'm guessing that I'm gonna have to drink one with recycled gray water. So thank you to that luxury apartment.

[00:24:23] Crooked Hammock: Yeah, at least it's like bougie gray water, I guess, right?

[00:24:28] Zoe Licata: Would you drink this?

[00:24:30] Crooked Hammock: I think I would. I'm sure I've drank in much worse things. At least it's filtered and they've gone through all the precautions. And the point of this is, yes, to showcase that you can reuse water for things, the potential of that, and to bring attention to all the fun things that are happening with our climate.

[00:24:52] Zoe Licata: So, Zoe, let's close this out. And this is a non-beer one, but I feel like it's an important one. We have never discussed this before.

[00:25:01] Crooked Hammock: Oh, God.

[00:25:01] Zoe Licata: Yeah. So there have been several hearings about UFOs.

[00:25:08] Larry Horwitz: Yes.

[00:25:09] Zoe Licata: And I gotta know, Zoe, are you buying Another Round on UFOs being real, or are you Tabbing Out on this?

[00:25:19] Crooked Hammock: I am absolutely buying Another Round that they're real. I'm happy that people are finally starting to admit it. I think it would just be, as someone who believes in what scientists have told us about the universe and all the other things out there in space, I say this before knowing your answer, but I think it'd be a little naive to think that there wasn't other beings out there, right?

[00:25:43] Zoe Licata: Oh, the truth is out there, Zoe, and this is... I believe this wholeheartedly, and I hope it just leads to my second career as Fox Mulder in the waning days of my life when I'm drinking gray water beer.

[00:25:57] Crooked Hammock: I'm excited about that future for you.

[00:26:01] Zoe Licata: Hopefully it doesn't involve an alien abduction of my daughter, but, you know, then it'd just be all about vengeance, just like Fox. But yes, I'm in on this. The universe is too vast to think that we're it.

[00:26:18] Crooked Hammock: there's way too much out there. And just to see, I don't know, from the other perspective of just people talking about how tiny we are on this little planet in our one galaxy, I would be shocked and disappointed if there wasn't other things out there.

[00:26:35] Zoe Licata: Isn't somebody's tagline the only planet with beer?

[00:26:41] Crooked Hammock: I wouldn't be surprised, but that can't be true either, right?

[00:26:45] Zoe Licata: I think that might've been like a New Belgium tagline or something like that.

[00:26:49] Crooked Hammock: Yes.

[00:26:50] Zoe Licata: I think that might be a little short-sighted too. I think they may not be taking into account the aliens out there.

[00:26:55] Crooked Hammock: I want to know what the beer trends are with the aliens. Do they care as much about hazies? Are they drinking hard seltzer?

[00:27:03] Zoe Licata: They're the reason that we have hard seltzer probably. Yeah. All right. Let's get to our featured interview with Larry Horwitz from Crooked Hammock. Larry Horwitz is reshaping Crooked Hammock Brewery's portfolio as Director of Brewing Operations. Larry is here today to discuss reworking that eight-year-old brewery's portfolio. Thanks for being here, Larry.

[00:27:29] Boston Beer: Hey, my pleasure. Justin, it's always a good time to talk about beer with people from your organization, and I think we've got some fun stuff to cover today.

[00:27:37] Zoe Licata: Well, I'm psyched. We talked before we went on the air and you and I have sort of been in the same orbit for a little while and finally we're able to connect. So I'm excited about that. And one of the things I want to ask you about is your bio calls you the light logger whisperer. How do you get that nickname?

[00:27:54] Boston Beer: Well, you just get a PR team and set them loose. I don't know that I would identify myself that way. You know, I started my career in craft beer a little bit differently than a lot of people do working for breweries, relatively large ones who we won't talk about too much, that are famously responsible for making lager beer. When I transitioned into craft, I went to work for a lager house. And I didn't realize at the time how unusual that was, right? I have a mentor in this industry whose name you may recognize, a guy named Alan Young, who really showed me the craft beer ways. And at some point in my training with him, he's like, you know, it's unusual that our little tiny brewery in the late 80s and the early 90s makes lager beer. And I'm like, I don't really make millions and millions of barrels of it over here. He's like, yeah, that doesn't happen in craft beer. I mean, it's not an accident that IPA is the number one selling craft beer style in America, right? Like, it's only been recently that people have started to re-engage with lager beer. But I find lager to be a technical challenge that's both fulfilling and quite frankly, I've been in this business long enough to watch the cycles, right? It's funny, what's old is new again. I'm almost old enough that the clothing I have from 20 years ago may in fact, although it won't fit me, may in fact be fashionable again. And I think that's kind of the case with lager beer. I don't want to say that there's complete fatigue on the hop spectrum, but there's definitely some of that. And I definitely think that there is a whole demo of folk, even those who appreciate well-made, very complex flavor palette beer, who are interested in a shift on that idea, right? I personally love a big, strong, hoppy IPA, but I'm not as young as I used to be, and I got to drive home responsibly, or I care more about that than I used to. And there are times when I want to drink 3% to 5%. I don't want to drink 7% to 12%. And I think a lot of our consumers are indicating that as well. We've seen the shift in the markets. You know, there are a fistful of breweries around our locations that are famous for wild ferment, hoppy beers, big, strong Belgian style styles that are sneakily dropping, especially lighter lager styles into their portfolio. And they're gaining traction, right? I mean, we all know the numbers aren't enormous, but we also represent a relatively small slice of the bigger industry. I don't have to fight out the in the trade with other breweries for shelf space on a huge grocery chain. We need to create products that are brew pubs and restaurants that our customers want to drink. And because we mostly don't sell other people's beers, with some notable exception, we need to offer a pretty diverse portfolio. And so when I came to this group, and they're awesome, they said, hey, we're really interested in what you can do to help us get our beer portfolio in a place where it'll help us sell more beer. We are all fighting the shift. from beer to spirits, right? And this is a tough one because I'm a Gen X guy. I drink spirits and I drink wine. I drink a lot of beer, relatively speaking, in a relatively healthy manner. Caveat, caveat, right? But we all know what's happening is that this beer business is dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the marketing, especially around canned cocktails. And while a lot of my brethren are out there doing that kind of work, and I'm not morally opposed to that, we all need to do what we need to do to support our businesses. My primary driver is beer, and I want to make sure that our portfolio is engaging the people who are interested in those types of products. And so, you know, am I the light lager whisper? Sure. I'm happy to have somebody call me that. I would tell you that there's a whole generation of people, including, you know, Ray Klimowitz and And George Reich, the former international brewmaster at Anheuser-Busch, probably actually deserved that title. But I don't mind co-opting it for the needs of the organization I work for, right? And so, you know, when I got here, I said, listen, let's take a look at the portfolio of what we're selling. And I think it's really interesting to look at the data. I'm a data guy, right? We all, we were talking about this earlier, Justin, we all see the same numbers coming out of IRI, right? I believe in syndicated data, but I also believe that you got to look at that data carefully because, you know, the country's big and, was it Tip O'Neill famously said, all politics is local? I think beer styles are pretty local too. And when I think about our North Myrtle Beach location, which is in the Southeast and it's where I am today, I think there are a lot of people that walk up to our bars in tourist-focused areas, and they say, hey, have you got a Bud Miller course, Molson Modelo, for me? And if we're going to say no, then we need to be able to cleanly and carefully produce products that are going to meet their needs, and hopefully exceed them. And so that's been my approach to lager beer, specifically with this organization. They made plenty of really tasty lager beer before I got here. So it's funny to think that my innovation is 4.2% to an IBU Clarified yellow beer, right? There it is. And I think that Crooked Hammock, which is an awesome organization where I work, a subsidiary of a hospitality group called La Vida, you know, if you ask the founders of this organization about their startup, they're like, yeah, we built with once on a band. Like, they were just so excited about the beer business, which I'm stoked about, that they were like, yeah, we don't know what we're doing, but let's go. And to their great credit, they got over that hump. I mean, we all saw the explosion, what, 2014, 15, 16? I don't have a curve in front of me, but you know, when I started in this business, there were 300, 400 breweries in America. And then all of a sudden there were 800 and that was amazing. And then I remember when we got over a thousand and people were high-fiving. And then Kim Jordan got up at a craft brewers convention and said the craziest thing anybody ever heard. What if we could be 10% of the US beer market as a subset of the industry? And people were like, she crazy, right? That lady, that lady's crazy. Well, here we are floating somewhere around that number, right? And while we're not seeing the incremental growth in the sector that we used to, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I don't think it's unhealthy, right? I mean, we don't, as an industry, want to be commodity beer. So it's kind of funny to talk about making things that others have viewed as a commodity. Sorry, that was a really long-winded answer to, are you the light lager whisperer? I have the skill to make it. I think that I'm proud of that work, and I don't lay my career at the feet of the Lager Temple, but it's likely to be 20% of what we sell in 2024, you know? That's not bad. No, that's pretty good. It's pretty easy to justify too, right? Because somebody will say, well, why would we do that? And, you know, we try to be introspective and smart about how we approach the portfolio. And I say to people on my team all the time, I'm like, well, we'd love to talk about craft beer. We're craft beer people, right? I mean, all of us are. But I'll get asked the question, well, why would we do that? I'm like, well, because the other 88% of the market looks like that. And I think you've got to pay attention to that. Now, you know, there are plenty of breweries that don't have any reason to ever produce product like this beautiful, in my humble opinion, beer right here, right? This is Hammock Light, and there are a whole lot of other breweries that won't use the phrase light for lots of really good cultural reasons. But if we're trying to hit a demographic that's a little broader, then it makes a lot of sense for us to play in that space. And I like to think that I've been around long enough to figure out how to actually produce that pretty well. I mean, it's not novel tactics or techniques or even ingredients. We can talk about all that, but that's fun for me. But at the end of the day, it's being thoughtful and intentional and careful about how you approach your quality and how you source your raw goods and how you age the beer, clarify the beer, store the beer and serve the beer. And I'm happy to say that this organization has given me the time, attention and resources to do that really well. I tell people all the time, they're like, how did you get to where you were? You know, 30 years is a long time. I'm like, yep. I'm like, the biggest way that I ended up where I am is this phrase that James Otto Adelini, formerly of Brewhup, I don't know where Otto is these days. He and I owe each other a phone call. But Otto's like, listen, wisdom, and I'm gonna take a little bit of a step and say that after 30 years, I've at least got a little bit of that. Wisdom comes from experience. And experience comes from a rash of really bad decisions. I'm like, I tell people all the time, the best way to get better at what you do, unfortunately, and we'd like to shortcut this as much as possible, but occasionally you got to break some stuff. If you want to innovate or you even want to get better at doing something that other people know how to do and is well published, you're going to mess it up a lot. And I think we learn more from our mistakes than we learn from our successes. And I like to think that my career has been built in that way. What else you want to talk about?

[00:36:36] Crooked Hammock: You're just answering like any questions ahead of the time. This is perfect. We could just let you talk the whole time.

[00:36:42] Larry Horwitz: I want to hear from you guys.

[00:36:44] Crooked Hammock: You make our jobs easy. I know we've been talking about this process of curating the portfolio a little bit, but there's also this idea of you want to offer options to an array of consumers, but you also want to be Authentic to who you are as a brand, how have you found what is the best way to kind of keep that balance, make sure you're able to bring in those new consumers but still stay true to the Crooked Hammock brand that exists?

[00:37:14] Boston Beer: Well, the Crooked Hammock brand is about family fun in the backyard, right? I mean, our facilities, you know, I think everybody in the brewery restaurant business has three products, right? You have the food and beverages that you manufacture, you get your service, because we're a restaurant. And of course, you have your environment and our environment is really unique. We are playgrounds for adults and children and huge outdoor spaces, mostly built around an experience of, quite frankly, dealing with the very long wait for a table at the beach. Right? Our locations are intentionally built partly because we live in these places where tourists and large groups of people tend to enjoy outdoor spaces in the summertime. So that's our vibe, right? You know, we're here for the cookout. We're here for the backyard sitch. And I think that when it comes to staying authentic, you don't want to be a brand hopper. I think we've all seen this over the years. I can usually tell you when a brewery or a restaurant is going to go under from a distance when you see them starting to try to reinvent themselves over and over and over and over, right? They get the desperation and they just start grasping at straws. And they're like, we have to make the IRI podcast I listened to said that everybody's drinking double IPA, so we need to change our entire portfolio. It has to be double IPA. And then somebody else will come along and they'll say, nope, that's not working for us. You know what we really need? We need pastry sours. That's all we're gonna make is nine million different SKUs of pastry sour, right? And I think that the brands, at least in my neck of the world, that people associate with authentic products are names that aren't gonna be a surprise to people, right? I mean, think about Sam and Dogfish, or the crew at Victory, or the Drogues Brothers in Harrisburg, Hershey, where they said, listen, We think it's really important not only to spend time making great beer and thoughtfully and carefully choose ingredients and processes and equipment, but also to make beer that they care about, right? And I think that's really important. So if you don't love this, I tell people, don't make it. You know, and they're like, well, you know, we kind of have to. I'm like, you can skin that cat lots of different ways. But if you can't get behind it, your customers will feel that. And so I think you got to start with that idea, which is decide who you are. And once you figure that out, you got to work tirelessly to defend that position. And for me, you know, this brand is relatively new to me, although I have been in the brewery restaurant space for a very long time. And I really enjoy that because for me, hospitality, the hospitality business is near and dear to my heart, right? How else do you get direct feedback from customers? Plus, I mean, quite frankly, and to be really direct about it, there's a whole lot more money in not putting beer into the wholesale trade and fighting for shelf space at Kroger. I mean, we do a little bit of that work. It's important for lots of reasons inside of our business. It keeps our volume high enough to justify some great quality tools and a good team. But if we were making beer that we didn't care about, the chances of that succeeding are going to be pretty low. And people can feel it. I mean, I believe our customers would feel it if we did that. So part of my approach to where we are now is to say, hey, how can we shift what we're doing in a way that increases the quality of the beer, aligns with our raw good contracts or where we want to be on raw goods and the availability of raw goods in the market? Small breweries, of course, don't have the buying power that multinationals do. So we've got some unique pressure there. And that not only are enjoyable to us, but that are going to be desired by our customers. I think there's another challenge in the world, which is how many beers should your local brewery have on tap? How many do you have? I'll get to that in just a second, but I'll ask you both individually. So Justin, if you go to your favorite local tap, how many beers do you want them to have on tap? I'm old, so I'm going to say like 10 at this point. All right. And Zoe, what about you?

[00:40:58] Crooked Hammock: Yeah, I was in a similar like 10 to 12 range. I want to be able to have a couple options still within things that I like, and then people who like a little bit different can also still have a couple options, not just like one thing.

[00:41:12] Boston Beer: Yeah, you guys just made my heart super happy, right? You know, there are some famous brands out there that live their life by one product, and we know who they are. You know, Lars and the crew at Trumer get my utmost respect, because when they opened that brewery, they basically made one beer, right? a trimmer pills, which is stunning. I love that beer. That's great. And we're in the hospitality business, so we definitely need a broader portfolio than that, mostly because different people, different tastes. But I agree with you. I think the 10 to 12 numbers are awesome number. We have most of the time about 14 products. I've just said that my old behind would like to see 10. When I walk into brewery and I see 45 beers, that doesn't happen very often, but there are places that we all know and love. You see this more often in craft beer bars, especially the larger chains with house at the end of their name, right? There's famously one of these in Cincinnati where I have some family and every time I show up at the large place that sells beer named house, I usually ask the bartender, what's the last keg you tapped?

[00:42:10] Zoe Licata: I mean, that's the fairest question at that point. And that's where my head is, is like, how long have a lot of these kegs been sitting there?

[00:42:20] Boston Beer: Right. We all know the answer to that, right? It doesn't take a lot of math to figure out. If you've got 100 brands on tap, they're probably not selling 50 US barrels of beer in a week. A beer's been around for a hot minute. So I think that keeping your portfolio tight is also important. There are plenty of times where the beer list needs to get bigger. We do events pretty regularly where we either save and re-release beers of our own for short periods of time, or we invite guests or brewers whose beer we enjoy to come hang out with us and sell their beer. So the list can get bigger, but there's this idea in the consumer choice world, I love to read about psychometrics and the way consumers approach grocery stores specifically. It's a weird hobby of mine, right? I'm a stats guy. And there's this idea that when you go, have you heard the salad dressing anecdotes, right, from the statisticians of the world? This shows up on Freakonomics every once in a while and these kinds of podcasts where they're like, you know, when there's 900 salad dressings in the aisle, you're less likely to buy salad dressing. Or you're more likely to buy, what is it that my mom put on the tables? Hidden Valley Ranch, right? You know, just shout out to, I don't know who's making it these days, but great. You gave me fat and flavor and I win. You're less likely to explore other interesting options. And I think if we carefully curate our list, that we can get more action out of it, right? And frankly, we can give more customer satisfaction. So if I make a beer like Hammock Light, and by the way, this is a forever beer for us. When I say forever, my marketing team's like, you're not allowed to change this for 24 to 36 months. I can get on board with that. Then it leaves the space where we play to be even tighter. And I don't think that's bad because it forces us to be intentional. I think this fight for what's new and different, you know, skewmageddon, skewproliferation, call it whatever you want, has created some challenges for our industry because just because it's new and different doesn't mean it's great. And, you know, my crotch to the old behind would way rather drink great beer than new and different beer. So I'm glad to hear you guys say that number. Some of my favorite local bars, you know, I think famously in Philadelphia of a bar owned by a guy named William Reed and a partner of his, I apologize, I can't remember his partner's name right now, Standard Tap on Second. For years, they were like, look, we're only going to serve local beer. That's a serious commitment. I'm pretty stoked about that. I think it's difficult to do that, but they chose it. And we're only going to serve maybe 12, maybe 16 beers. in a place that's famous for tons of craft beer on tap in the Philadelphia metro. And part of the beauty about that bar was being able to see what had they thoughtfully chosen for this week. Right. You know, as a local, I could go there and see the skew hop, but he's always had three or four beers that were on tap forever, you know. And I think that that makes for a better drinking experience for me. So we're trying to be thoughtful about that. Of course, because we're a restaurant, we also serve spirits and we serve wine. And as I've talked about before, I still drink in both of those categories. So I don't have a problem with them being on tap. And I hope that we're choosing carefully products in those channels as well. But if I'm doing my job right, then when you show up to my place, you're going to find, sorry, to your point, more than one product, hopefully, that intrigues you or interests you. And if my staff's doing a great job, we're letting you know about them. Maybe we're bringing you tastes. We've been careful with our descriptions in the menu and laid it out in a way that creates an experience for you that isn't just about what shows up in the glass, right? Although, obviously, we're responsible for this on my side of the wall. And so that's how we kind of landed where we are. And I think that we will probably be in the 12 to 14 product range for our target. We may be as low as 10 and as high occasionally as 18. But I think that's enough. I don't want beer to get old. Fresh beer matters. You know, our sector of the industry, we've talked about this for generations, I think it's real. Especially when we talk about hazy New England IPA. This is a beer style not to be overlooked. I tried to hate it for a minute. I occasionally teach for my friend, Steve Parks, who runs the American Brewers Guild in Vermont. And he's right down the road from a lot of brands of New England beer that we're all familiar with who famously say things like, don't pour my beer in a glass, just drink it out of the can and enjoy it. And I don't think they really need to put that on their can anymore. Consumers are on board for hazy beer, right? they're not going to be offended by that any longer. But when that started happening, I mean, it was a total clutch pearl situation for a few of us because I was like, man, what are they doing? And then somebody gives you one that's fresh and beautiful. You know, I remember the first Julius I had from Treehouse. I'm like, man, all right, I get it. I totally get it. That beer is beautiful. I do like the idea that, especially in the hazy world, the hazy New England world, that that group of people, for the first time in my career anyway, really turned that style on its head. The fact that all of the hops were either in the whirlpool or in the cold side is pretty novel. I mean, to me, that's exciting and interesting because we've all, even those of us who are creative, and I put myself in that bucket, have made beer pretty much the same way for 100 years, with some notable exceptions around the newer craft styles. And so I think that's an innovation, not to be overlooked. We make a ton of pastry sour beer. It really is pressing the boundaries in my world of what backyard beer is. But I think that's interesting. It's also fun, fruity, and fresh. You know, a lot of Fs in there. And that, for me, has been interesting growth to see how that portfolio can shape up. You know, I'd say that we're in the maturity of the hazy New England IPA world. I think we may even be reaching maturity in the pastry sour world. But I think there's some stuff left to do there. What I'm really curious is what's going to be next. I mean, where do you guys think we're going to end up, at least in the next couple of years?

[00:48:02] Crooked Hammock: I mean, that's the question. If I had the answer, I would probably be a much richer person, right? I mean, I would love it to just keep being all about the loggers and those like lighter beer styles. And I just want like, that's what I want to be drinking those refreshing beers.

[00:48:19] Boston Beer: I'm curious because you're my target customer, right, Zoe? Like, you're the best. You're a smart woman who's into craft beer. High five. What's driving that choice for you? I mean, you said light, so let's assume less filling.

[00:48:34] Crooked Hammock: Yeah, I want it to be something I can have a few of and I'm not worried about what I'm going to be doing the rest of my day. My ideal situation for drinking a beer is either after a long work day or on a hot summer afternoon. I want something that's going to cool me down, that's just going to be that refreshing drink. And I want something that kind of, it can be across multiple occasions. So if I'm like at a dinner or I'm at the beach or I'm at, it's something that can cross those boundaries and not feel like, oh, I, I don't know if I want this beer with my pasta. You know what I mean? I want something that I can return to again and again.

[00:49:15] Boston Beer: I think that you hit upon an idea that's really interesting, which is after, what, nearly 20 years of Schemageddon, that people, it feels to me like people are looking for some stability, right? They're looking for beer they can count on. whether that's new American lager beer or traditional premium lager beer or Sierra Nevada pale ale, which I personally love. I think Canada's breed make beautiful beers and they always have. And every once in a while I hear somebody say, you know, why haven't they updated the label or changed the beer? And I'm like, don't shush. Come on, cut it out. You know, that's interesting. Those are answers that I would have expected. And I'm glad to hear it. Justin, what about you?

[00:49:59] Zoe Licata: I lean on flavor. That is the trend line that I see where consumers, not that it started with seltzer because, you know, it was, it's always been there, but that started to change the palette, I feel like for a lot of incoming consumers. And so whatever the next trend is, I think it has to play on flavor lines, whether that's fruit forward, whatever it is, it's gotta be something like that and lighter as well.

[00:50:28] Boston Beer: We've got this whole movement towards sober curious, which I am not opposed to, right? I think this is an interesting idea. I like the idea of being responsible about our bodies and about our consumption of alcohol. You know, I think alcohol is a healthy part of my life and my lifestyle, and hopefully it is for other people too, but there's really been that shift, right? We were talking about this briefly before we started recording where, you know, in the data, if you look carefully at craft beer slice-ups from people like IRI, you know, double-digit alcohol IPA looks like it's exploding, right? And by purchase, you can't argue with the data, right? But the question is, why is that? And how does that play for a brand like ours, right? I mean, we're going to make maybe 4,000 U.S. barrels of beer this year, and we're going to sell 90% of that over a bar that we own. And I think you hit on something really important, which is that, number one, things we can count on. So we talked about that. Now you're talking about flavor, and that's really important too. And I think it's not just flavor from what has, I think, been the craft beer approach for the last 20, 25, 30 years, which is how much more flavor and what kinds of different flavors can we get into beer. That's interesting to me. But it's going the other way, too. How can we streamline the flavor profile a little bit or increase its fineness or delicacy? I think of a beer in the style category of a Grisette. where you can have very complex flavors, but not necessarily a ton of alcohol and slightly drier champagne-y approach to a style, right? Or, I mean, light lagers, this is an easy go-to, right? Or even a Helles or an American Premium, where while the flavors are more narrow, all of a sudden the choice of your raw goods or the hops or the way in which you produce the product, it makes a really big difference, right? And there's not no flavor or low flavor in this beer. So says I, right? I think everybody has to approach flavor from their own standpoint, but I believe that there's a grassy situation going on in this product. And I can taste the malt. I mean, we're very careful about the malt we choose for this. It's not made with domestic craft screw blend. You know, we pay more for premium North American Pilsner malt. I think it matters, and I think that it's given a few of us who are interested in that idea some room to play. But I agree with you, flavor matters, right? And not just smack-in-the-gob flavor. I am happy to see that shift, where, you know where I see it, interestingly enough, is at beer festivals. Love them or hate them, they're a part of our business, and those of us who make and sell beer spend a lot of time talking to consumers over an eight-foot wooden table. And for a lot of years, you'd go to a beer festival and you'd get the outstretched arm, give me the strongest beer you have. Right? Yeah. And I'm seeing a shift in that. I mean, there's still some people who they're here for that, and they're not going to be dissuaded from their consumption of ethanol and go for them, right? Hopefully they're using it to get home. But I am seeing way less of that. Some of it's just a demographic shift, right? I mean, the boomers are getting to the age where they don't consume like they used to. Although I did see an interesting data point recently on consumer spending. They're spending more. than any other demographic right now on alcohol, not just beer. But they're drinking lower alcohol content products. Seltzer's been an interesting thing, right? We make and sell small amounts of seltzer. We're likely to make and sell more seltzer. The change in the TTV rule interpretations around 2012 about what a beer could be or should be made that possible. And I think there are a lot of companies in the world who do it for monetary reasons. We don't. We do it, to your point, for flavor reasons and for lifestyle reasons, right? I can't stand in the sun in the backyard cooking at the grill all afternoon if I'm drinking Bigfoot, you know? Not to pick on Bigfoot, because I think Bigfoot is a beautiful beer. And for me, it's occasional, right? I want a bottle of Bigfoot in the winter in front of the fireplace with a chunk of Stilton cheese, you know, and maybe some bad decisions with dogs and cats. I'm not leaving the house. Snow me in, and that's going to be good. But like Zoe said, if I'm going to happy hour with my friends, or we're going to go fishing, or I want to go surf, I definitely want a beer. But I also want to be able to drag my fat middle-aged behind up on my big fat foam surfboards. in a safe manner. So it's just, it's been an interesting time. And I think the millennials have gotten to an interesting age, right? They're almost middle-aged now. Elder millennials are what, 38, 39, 40, 41? Depends on whose number you use. And they're in their child rearing years, and then they're in their home building and buying and owning years, and everybody's running, right? We had that little break during the pandemic, which while it created some interesting challenges in the world and in the beer market, it was kind of cool. I mean, we get to stay home with our people, and I hope that you both had people for that, because that would have been very difficult if it weren't for that. And maybe we drank a little more than we would have otherwise, because you're home with free time, and Drizzly will deliver alcohol to a shockingly large amount of the country now. which is both a blessing and a curse. You know, I lived in Louisville, Kentucky for most of the pandemic and I could call and get a fifth of whiskey delivered to the house. And you're like, wow, that seems like a really that with great power comes great responsibility.

[00:55:49] Zoe Licata: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:55:51] Larry Horwitz: How many figures of whiskey should I put in that glass? I don't know. Maybe one less.

[00:55:55] Boston Beer: Yeah. So we're swinging the pendulum the other direction a little bit. I think the, what are we calling the generation after millennial? We're calling these Z, I think.

[00:56:04] Crooked Hammock: Gen Z, yeah.

[00:56:06] Boston Beer: Yeah, Gen Z is just hitting drinking age now. And they've got a really different approach to the market. I mean, we all know the problem of, hey, that was my father's beer for craft beer, or some of the legacy brands. Although I have a feeling that as they age, they're gonna begin to explore some of the products that stick around, because we know and love a bunch of these. you know, RIP this week for Anchor, right? I mean, hopefully that doesn't happen to all the brands that are out there. I have a personal and close association with that brand. It's one of the reasons that I'm stoked about the craft beer business. And I had the great fortune to spend a little bit of time with Fritz Maytag. was he's just a match. I mean, just the nicest guy. And the fact that that he bought that brewery, which was a terrible financial decision, in my opinion, and managed to make it work for as long as he did and influenced, you know, Ken Grossman and then through Ken and a few other people, an entire generation of us to do this thing that we did is pretty amazing. I hope that a few of those brands make it through what I think is going to be a rough transition for the next decade or so. I don't think craft beer is going away. I don't think beer is going away. I think big beer is changing. I'm not opposed to that. I think we've all kind of been wondering, is there going to be one really enormous beverage beer company? If ABI and Bev Molson Miller of course becomes one thing, what does that really do to the industry? I am not for that. That's just my personal opinion. I think consumer choice is driven by lots of breweries and not one enormous one. But we'll see. We'll see where that lands.

[00:57:43] Crooked Hammock: It comes back to what you were saying earlier about simplicity too with the next generation of drinkers is we've grown up with so many options out there in the craft beer space and in the beyond beer space that even I've noticed from just watching some of my friends drink is they're kind of returning back to some of the more simple classic brands that existed for a little while because they know what they're going to get out of it. and we're almost exhausted from trying so many things to start out our drinking lives, that it seems like it would make sense for that pendulum to shift a little bit back to simplicity and some of the stuff that we used to rely on a little bit. Yep.

[00:58:29] Boston Beer: But I think in an interesting way, right, because there seems to be still this penchant for quality.

[00:58:33] Crooked Hammock: Right.

[00:58:34] Boston Beer: People are like, just because I would like the product to be simple doesn't mean I want it to be pedestrian.

[00:58:38] Crooked Hammock: Right.

[00:58:39] Boston Beer: Right.

[00:58:39] Crooked Hammock: Exactly.

[00:58:40] Boston Beer: Sorry, I'm using $10 words there, but you know, and I appreciate that. So I feel a little bit lucky that my middle aged tastes are lining up with where the industry has shifted for a minute. And I hope it sticks. I do have one other interesting beer to talk about just for a hot second. What's the number one craft IRS skew currently? Blue Moon.

[00:59:02] Crooked Hammock: Yeah.

[00:59:02] Boston Beer: There you go. It's interesting because I'm a PeerSells fan. When PeerSells started making Wimpy Beer in the late 70s and the early 80s, nobody had any idea what was going on with that. Keith Wheeler really put together a beautiful product and I'm stoked about their success. I don't begrudge them that work. And I'm pretty happy that he's managed to introduce to one standard deviation from the mean, a phenolic, unfiltered, spiced, Belgian-style beer that contains adjuvant. I mean, come on now. That's awesome. So I've made a product like this off and on for years. This is our wide-eyed whip beer. And this is Another Round of those things where people are like, that's an interesting choice. And I'm like, well, let's see how it does. I don't know what the future is for wit beer in America, but we're gonna make it for a while, and we'll see what happens.

[00:59:53] Zoe Licata: It's like a time and place thing, too. You're very much a hospitality-focused business. Oh, yeah. You're trying to get that check ring. Putting out a 5% wheat beer, wit, in the summertime, I feel like that's not that risky of a move. Right?

[01:00:14] Boston Beer: And some friends of mine are like, you're making commodity beer again. And I'm like, I don't view it that way. Because for starters, we are very small breweries. And because of the, and this is awesome, because of the ability to keep the retail margin, we're not beholden to lowest common denominator raw goods. I mean, everybody needs to be responsible about how they make their products so that they can return fair value to the investors in their business. But it's not like. I mean, we all know what happened at the world's largest brewery, right? I mean, for a long time, love them or hate them, they were owned by a family who cared a very great deal about the quality of the product that they produced. And I don't think it's a mystery or a secret to anybody that there was a shift a little bit more towards shareholder value and the accounting team once they were bought by a multinational. And I believe I can see the shift in the product quality there. And I'm happy that we don't have that paradigm. I can brew 4.2% 10 IBU beer, but I can buy beautiful boutique Pilsner mall for it. And my bosses are stoked about that because they're like, the beer tastes great to us. But to your point, Justin, about old brands getting the lift again, I mean, all of a sudden the people in their early twenties around me got high life in their fridge. Right? And I'm like, I'm of an age where I remember High Life being in 40 brown bags on the side of the road, got chucked out of the side of a pickup truck from a group of young men making bad choices. But I am not sad to say that I have revisited that product pretty extensively in the last five years. And it's exciting and interesting, which is funny, because that was the antithesis of what Craft Beer was trying to do in the beginning. And so I think there's a maturity happening in our business, which I am here for. And I don't think it's ever gonna change the idea that there are people among us, and hopefully I'm at least somewhat in this bucket, who are still pushing the boundaries. I mean, we're in the middle today of producing the first round of a plus 10% Russian imperial stuff that we intend to age in bourbon barrels. Now, is that novel? It's not novel in the last 15 or 20 years, but it's certainly novel in the last 100 years. And it's the complete other end of the spectrum, especially if we sidestream some of that word and give it a Belgian yeast, which I'm trying to convince one of my production guys to do, but we'll see. There's a clean tank. We'll see what happens with that. I've had a blast talking to you. Anything else you want to talk about?

[01:02:47] Zoe Licata: No, I think we've covered it. So I'm excited to see what you're going to do there. And we're very happy for you. So thanks for joining us.

[01:02:54] Boston Beer: Yeah. My pleasure. I'll give a couple of shameless plugs and a shout out for our organization. So Crooked Hammock Brew Pubs exists basically in three places in the world right now. We are in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina at Barefoot Landing. We are in Lewis, Delaware, our original location just outside of town. And we have a third location in Middletown, Delaware. So if you're in the Mid-Atlantic or in the Southeast, Mid-South, please come and visit us. And hopefully you get a chance to try some of our beautiful beer products. fresh and at our locations and in limited distribution around where we are. Perfect. Well, thanks for doing this.

[01:03:30] Zoe Licata: My pleasure. And that's our show for this week. Thanks to Zoe for hanging out with me. Thanks to our one man audio team, Joe. And thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back next week.