[00:00:00] Senior Reporter: Heading to CBC? Kick things off the day before at Brewbound's meetup at Love City Brewing in Philly, Sunday, April 19th from 5 to 7 p.m. Connect with beer industry leaders, grab a drink, and catch up with the Brewbound team. It's free to attend and walking distance from the convention center. Head to Brewbound.com slash lovecity.rsvp. And don't forget to catch the Brewbound team at booth 956 during CBC. Hear from leaders of Craft Brewers who are actually succeeding while making beer-flavored beer next on the Brew Brewbound Podcast. Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Brewbound Podcast. I am Brewbound Managing Editor, Jessica Infante. And I'm Senior Reporter, Zoe Licata. Hey, look at us, so professional today with our titles. I know.
[00:01:00] Brewbound Podcast: This is what happens when we go into the office, we become like real professionals.
[00:01:03] Senior Reporter: We turn into actual journalists. Look at us. I suppose we should do this more often.
[00:01:08] Brewbound Podcast: Zoe, how you doing? I'm good. I'm good. I feel like we actually had a little bit of like summery weather in Boston for a hot second there, which was nice. Looking forward to that being a real thing shortly. What else did you get up to this weekend? Watched another race. Had a friend graduate college, celebrated her for a little bit. It's grad season, which means the city was a nightmare a little bit, but that'll be over soon.
[00:01:36] Senior Reporter: Soon, yeah.
[00:01:36] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah. What about you?
[00:01:38] Senior Reporter: I watched Conclave. Oh, how appropriate. And the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
[00:01:45] Brewbound Podcast: Oh, I also watch Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
[00:01:48] Senior Reporter: I feel like it was quite the duality in terms of religious themed entertainment, highbrow, lowbrow. When Conclave first came out, my husband was like, hey, we should watch this. And I was very much like, no, not really. I don't know why I acted like that about it because then obviously everything that happened in the past couple weeks with Pope Frank going on to his eternal rest, may the good Lord bless him and keep him, and then everybody got like papal conclave fever. And I, as frequently noted on this podcast, I'm a product of 14 years of Catholic education. What was I thinking? This movie is like my Super Bowl.
[00:02:25] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah, I'm surprised you hadn't watched it yet. It was really good. Yeah, I haven't watched it yet either. It was on as soon as the all the Pope stuff was going down. We said, Oh, we need to watch this. And we never did.
[00:02:36] Senior Reporter: Oh, highly recommend two thumbs up. So anyway, as you've noticed, Justin is not with us this week. He is out, but you will hear his voice later in this episode. We are continuing our conversations from Craft Brewers Conference recorded at our Brewbound Podcast on location booth studio, which was very fun. This week's featured guests are the crew from Sierra Nevada. We've got Chief Commercial Officer Ellie Preslar and Chief Brewing Officer Brian Grossman. Justin talked to the two of them. And then I sat down with co-owner and Chief Operating Officer Mike La Rosa from New Trail Brewing in Pennsylvania. And I feel like both of these two companies obviously Sierra is much bigger than New Trail, but New Trail has really been a runaway success story in the past couple of years. And they both really have certainly kept their eye on the beer flavored beer ball for better or for worse.
[00:03:24] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah. I remember I went to Sierra's distributor meeting, like, when was that? A few months ago? I think that was August. Yeah. End of last year. But that was a big part of what they talked about was like, we still want to make sure we're, our main focus is that beer flavored beer and they're finding ways to do it. And New Trail 2, yeah, it popped up in the top 50 stuff lately. It was like a standout there. So nice to have some like positive beer conversations, like legit beer conversations.
[00:03:53] Senior Reporter: Yeah, for sure. And I went New Trail's distributor summit last August too. So yeah, funny how all these things connect, but yeah, NewTrail, you'll hear Mike talk about it, but they've really been able to find success through IPAs and loggers. And I think it's, it's always refreshing to see somebody who's not putting all their eggs in one basket. And personally, as a fan of, of beer, like it's just really nice to see somebody investing in that space instead of running off to find what the next thing is. Because there's always going to be those next things, but there's also always going to be beer.
[00:04:28] Brewbound Podcast: Right. We talk a lot about like the consumer today wants other things. They're always looking for other things, but that real beer consumer is not going to just disappear. That still exists. They still want beer, flavored beer. It's just how are you marketing to them? How are you getting their attention? How are you letting them know that you have what they want? Because there's still a lot of options in just beer alone.
[00:04:53] Senior Reporter: For sure. I mean, Zoe, you reported this week on a recent distributor survey from Jeffries. We've done a two part series on it. And I mean, I read it. It's a little depressing. So I think let's get into the bad news before we let Ellie, Brian and Mike give us the good news. What are distributors thinking about beer for the summer?
[00:05:15] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah, not Great Smoky yes, Jeffries, they talked to a bunch of different distributors, different sizes, and basically the takeaway here was they are feeling less great about beer compared to the survey that they did in the spring. So they are now expecting like the total beer industry to decline 2% volume-wise for the rest of 2025. And it seems like most of this is because, as we've talked about a bunch, Q1 was not great. We didn't expect it to be great, I think, but it was even worse than I think a lot of people and especially a lot of the larger beer folks really expected it to be. So volume expectations are down. And also another big reason for that is what's happening with imports. So we know tariffs, we know how that is impacting imports right now, just sentiments around it, what you should be doing about them, what they're going to have to be doing about pricing. And it's all kind of a mess right now. And imports are really one of the only segments in beer that was providing a great deal of growth. So with the expectations for that segment down, that's going to have a huge impact on overall beer expectations. And now really what was interesting from this report is N.A. Beer is kind of the one leading growth driver now. And it's still, we've talked about this before, it's a tiny, tiny segment still, but that's kind of what beer is relying on now because of this impact. Yeah, which is frightening.
[00:06:43] Senior Reporter: Yeah. I mean, look, it's a good story. NA Beer touches on so many things that are resonating with consumers today in terms of health and wellness and moderation and all of that. And it's good for beer to have something that plays in that wheelhouse and does well. But it's so small compared to everything else.
[00:07:01] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah, so not the most positive results. Their expectations for NAB are through the rest of the year is volume up 6% as of right now. Other segments that they are also feeling positive about are domestic super premium, which is 2.5% and F&Bs, which are expected to grow 2%. Everything else down. Imports at the end of the day, basically flat, depending on if you include Mexican imports or not. They also dove into some brand level analysis, so talking about all the big guys essentially out there. They have Anheuser-Busch, Constellation, Molson Coors, Heineken, Marc Anthony, Boston Beer, and Tilray. This is in the part two of this coverage. That was a bit more mixed, I think, on what sentiment was from the distributors. Anheuser-Busch was actually relatively positive. Their expectations were less positive than the previous survey, but they still are expecting like flat to about flat for Anheuser-Busch, maybe slightly down, like 1% compared to some other folks which are going against much stronger comps, going against growth. So their impact is going to be a little bit different. On the other end of the spectrum, not super bullish on Constellation right now because of all the stuff happening with imports, which makes a lot of sense. So yeah, it's definitely a mixed bag. It seems almost like people are, based on some of the comments that were included in that report and just some of the results, there seems to be a lot of uncertainty about how the summer is going to go. Yeah. And just not really knowing what that's going to look like. And we know that's the biggest season. You rely so much on that for your business. And so having uncertainty there is really scary. Yeah. I mean, I think
[00:08:50] Senior Reporter: Q1 was just so bad for so long that I think that's probably what has everybody spooked. And I need like a behavioral economist to do a deep dive into why Q1 ended up this way for beer.
[00:09:02] Brewbound Podcast: I know.
[00:09:02] Senior Reporter: Is everybody just so malaised by the national goings on?
[00:09:08] Brewbound Podcast: It seems like there hasn't been a real concrete, like, this is why reason yet. Some folks have been like the weather, always going to blame the weather a little bit. Some have said, yeah, it's the kind of macroeconomic trends that are happening, the uncertainty around what is going to be going on with the economy. And you can't also discount the impact of some of the political things that are happening on Hispanic consumers who are a decent chunk of beer consumers. So that is going to have an impact on sales as well. It seems like there's a lot of little things that it piled up and not necessarily one big thing you can point to, but there has to be something else there that it caught kind of everybody off guard. Right.
[00:09:51] Senior Reporter: I don't think anybody was expecting a banner quarter, but I think everybody collectively seemed pretty like, whoa, this was bad. Yeah. I don't know if we got into this last week when we talked about AB earnings, but something that their CEO, Michelle Dukaris said that I thought was really interesting. And you and I have talked about it. Everybody's got their own theory as to why the LDA portion of Gen Z is not quite so much behaving the way other generations did at the same time. And his theory was that their college experience, which is where you kind of learn how to socialize and interact like quote unquote adults, was super interrupted by COVID. So they just, haven't quite learned what social protocols are like. And he says that, you know, as they get older, then their behavior starts to look a lot more like Millennials and Gen X.
[00:10:38] Brewbound Podcast: I have a hard time talking about Gen Z sometimes because we have such a small part of their generation still that is legal drinking age. So I don't know, but it's definitely COVID. I think we are far from knowing what the other impacts of COVID are going to be.
[00:10:58] Senior Reporter: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's been years now, but the effects will, I'm sure, continue to be felt.
[00:11:06] Brewbound Podcast: One of those habits was getting things delivered and we have seen, we just got a DoorDash report came in that even though we're a couple years past those kind of hunker down days, people are still ordering e-commerce delivery of alcohol and food and it's actually going up, which I was surprised to see. DoorDash came out with this report which is a mix of both survey results from their users as well as just app data. If you don't know about DoorDash, DoorDash is one of those apps like Uber Eats or Instacart where you can order directly from restaurants food or alcohol. And they actually found that specifically kind of these adult beverages so alcohol non-alcoholic adult beverages and this new category of THC beverages. Ordering for all of those were up in the most recent months, like past six months versus the same time last year. There wasn't really an explanation for why necessarily, and they didn't really ask consumers what was driving that increase. But I think it is pretty notable that it's still going up, but not with a major cause like, oh, we have to be inside.
[00:12:20] Senior Reporter: Right, that's interesting to me. It almost feels like people, like once COVID restrictions were lifted, people were like, oh, we can go back out and went back out. And now it's like, all right, I've seen the world. And now I would like to stay home and order some booze on DoorDash and watch Conclave.
[00:12:34] Brewbound Podcast: And the leading response for why consumers would order specifically alcohol delivery was just for a regular night at home. There wasn't any special occasion. It's just I'm home and I want my booze delivered directly to my door.
[00:12:50] Senior Reporter: That's important and brands should particularly be considering like how do you get discovered?
[00:12:56] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah.
[00:12:57] Senior Reporter: Because, you know, you think of how much product discovery comes from you as a consumer just walking and looking at the shelves in a store. Right. So when you're not doing that anymore and you've got an endlessly scrollable app, what do you even look for?
[00:13:11] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah. And what's interesting for DoorDash specifically is, you know, these consumers have the option to order maybe like cocktails or things directly from restaurants, but they also have some liquor stores listed on there. So how are you making sure your brand is visible on those sites? How are you making sure it's updated on those sites? We've talked a lot over the past few years about that like digital shelf and making sure you're present on there and keeping that updated, how important that is. What I also found a bit surprising from this report was when it dove into the non-alcoholic stuff that was happening, so specifically adult non-alcoholic beverages, not like sodas and things, and ordering was double what it was before, and consumers were saying they want more options. They don't think there's enough options out there, which is Shocking, I think, a little bit to us who talk about, oh, there's a lot of people delving into not particularly non-alcohol beer right now. It seems like that's becoming a very crowded space. We've heard retailers say that's pretty crowded right now. But consumers, apparently almost a third of them, 32 percent, said there still aren't enough NA beverage options on menus for delivery.
[00:14:20] Senior Reporter: I would love to know what exactly these people want.
[00:14:25] Brewbound Podcast: Me too. We don't know if they're looking for maybe non-alcoholic wine and beers because that's smaller than NA beer or if they really just want more NA beer options. But yeah, specifically for delivery menus and restaurant menus, they want to see more non-alcoholic options. The people have spoken. I guess they want what they want. Yeah. And then that makes sense now why we saw that Jeffrey's report where non-ALC is really leading the way. It's that seems to be the the key highlight from both of those reports. More insights in that DoorDash report. So definitely check it out. More stuff on like when they're ordering, what the occasions are, some gifting insights, which is kind of interesting. So definitely check that out.
[00:15:06] Senior Reporter: Yeah, Drizzly, may it rest in peace, was really big on gifting. And that's like primarily what I, I don't think I've ever had ever used Drizzly for myself.
[00:15:15] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah.
[00:15:15] Senior Reporter: I think I just used it to gift people champagne when I declined to attend their weddings, which, you know, that's pretty nice. Very kind of you. Right?
[00:15:23] Brewbound Podcast: I know.
[00:15:24] Senior Reporter: That's more than I've done. Yeah. So that story.
[00:15:29] Sierra Nevada: Your stories on the Jeffrey Survey, Justin's road reports from Beer Marketers Insights Conference, all of that is available up on Brewbound.com to read.
[00:15:59] Senior Reporter: One more quick news then, and before we get out of here, big news last week was that Anheuser-Busch's spirits-based RTD brands are moving to the Southern Glaciers Wine and Spirits Network in California, but also a few other states too. This is big, like really big. So they, for the most part, neutral their vodka-based seltzer, which is delicious.
[00:16:21] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah, it is pretty good. Yeah.
[00:16:23] Senior Reporter: Neutral was in the AB beer network in California, that's moving to Southern. And Cutwater Spirits was with RNDC. So just the latest in a long line of spirits brands that have left RNDC in California. Most of those other brands like Tito's and Brown Foreman and Sazerac have gone to Reyes, but AB is not going to Reyes for reasons that should be obvious if you are a frequent listener of this podcast. One interesting call out here to note is that the AB Holy Own Distributors, which there are a few of in California, cannot carry the spirits based options. So that was not a choice. And we will keep you posted on this, but both of these brands are actually really big. I went into the three-tier data dashboard and was kind of shocked to see.
[00:17:11] Brewbound Podcast: AB has been consistently highlighting them too in some of their pretty significant growth numbers in the past few earnings results because they do really well and We talked about some of the other recent distributor moves that, you know, it was RNDC still being able to have cut water was good for them, so they didn't have to be as concerned about some of the other moves that were made. That going away now, they don't have a lot now to go off of that's at that much of a scale. Right. So really a significant impact. But what were some of the data points that you pulled from them? Because it is kind of surprising. I think it's what's most surprising is some of the Cutwater stuff, because I feel like Cutwater doesn't get as much hype because it's been around for a good minute now.
[00:17:59] Senior Reporter: Yeah. So Cutwater was founded in 2016 by Ballast Point executives who had obviously left, or I don't know if they had left Ballast Point, but Ballast Point was acquired by Constellation in 2015. So the next year, Cutwater launched, AB acquired in 2019. And I think Cutwater kind of had been like dabbling in both RTDs and big model spirits, but AB is pedal to the metal on RTDs with them. One of the longest established, I would say, RTD brands that's playing right now. And they're a little bit stronger than I think mostly everything else. I feel like you see like 7% ABV up to as high as maybe 14%. My younger, you know, family, friends and cousins are really into them who are obviously all older than 21 because I'm old as fuck. But Cutwater is the 21st largest brand in the spirits category nationwide. which is, right?
[00:18:55] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah, that's much higher than I would expect.
[00:18:58] Senior Reporter: Yeah, nothing to sneeze at, but dollar sales and volume both growing in the 20% range. So it's Big Bend getting bigger. Neutral, which started in Canada, Labatt subsidiary acquired it, AB brought it into the States in 2021. 49th largest spirits brand, which is also nothing to sneeze at. I want to say it's the second largest spirits-based, vodka-based seltzer. But the thing there is that number one is high noon and the horse is so far out of the barn on that. But if you're a distributor that does not have high noon, you sure as heck want to have neutral in your book.
[00:19:35] Brewbound Podcast: Totally. I think what's also interesting about the Cutwater stuff is that they're still recording this double-digit growth, both dollar sales and volume. While having a pretty extensive portfolio, they're kind of constantly turning out new products. They have basically a canned version of any cocktail you can think of. But a lot of times when you see a company coming out with so many new products like that, the numbers end up getting really wonky because the older brands are not doing as well. This one, it seems like they're still able to sustain that and add growth throughout their innovation process, which we know is not an easy feat these days.
[00:20:16] Senior Reporter: No, and I had just pulled up their website thinking I would rattle off some of their offerings, but there's just too fucking many. There's so many.
[00:20:23] Brewbound Podcast: You can really find whatever you would want in a cup of water. This is like a dozen flavors of margarita. That's insane. I would love to know just their strategy behind what they put out where and like what ones perform better in certain areas. Like there's definitely a lot of cool nuggets you could pull from that.
[00:20:42] Senior Reporter: All right, well, that's the news. Like we said, you can read all of those stories and more at Brewbound.com. If you are not an insider yet, consider joining us. You get access to all of those in their entirety, plus a much more plus-step version of our daily newsletter. If you don't subscribe to either version of the newsletter, we've got a free version and a paid version. And I, you know, join us on this adventure. So there's another brand here in our fair commonwealth that seems to be new. Neither you nor I have received press release about it, but we know one is out there because we have found it on the website of our buddies, the Mass Brew Bros. It is the Mass Masshole Light Lager. And I'm just going to tell you a little bit about it. You, Zoe, and also the listeners. Mass Masshole Light is big on flavor, light on charm. That's really funny. Big on flavor, light on charm. This beer personifies the Masshole, which if you're not familiar, and I don't really know how widely this term gets out, I'm going to ask you your feelings on this, so I'm sure you have many. But this beer personifies the Masshole, blue collar, white collar, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that Brady is goat, bird over magic, the Yankees suck. And the Cape is where summer happens. I'm just reading this for the first time and I have some feelings. It's at an accessible price point to every Masswell who wants to drink a damned beer or five. A light lager, entering the light lager fray. This one with a clear point of view and the ability to only be sold in one state. Yep. The can, I have to say I like. It is a grandpa aesthetic, I would call it. Definitely. And it also looks like cigarettes. A little bit, yeah. But the best part about this can is the seagull flying away with a slice of pepperoni pizza in its beak. And I might be the only person on earth who feels this way. I think seagulls are one of my top five favorite animals. If I could be an animal, I'd be a seagull. That's shocking. Is it though? Look, they're very loud and obnoxious. They're usually trying to get to the beach and they are shameless in their pursuit of snacks. Who else does that describe that you know? That is me. I am a single. Zoe, Masshole Light Lager, 4.2% alcohol by volume, available in 12 ounce cans in six packs and 12 packs at your local packing and dive bar in the Bay State. Another round tabbing out. Do you have more thoughts on this than I have articulated?
[00:23:09] Brewbound Podcast: I don't know if I'm getting another round or not. I'm going to get one round and then I'll have to wait and see. I think we should also know this is coming out of Hendler Family Brewing Company. So these are the folks that have Jack's Abbey and Night Shift and Wormtown. Here are my feelings on this. I appreciate the Boston references quite a bit. I appreciate the aesthetic. Do we need another craft light logger? Not necessarily. Although, see, my feelings are going to continue to change the more I talk. On one hand, I'm looking at, like, Scintilite from Ryan Geist does really well. And a core part of that is because it's so tied to that community, it has a super big, like, local focus. And so people there, apparently all about it, buying merch, buying beers. I could see that happening for this. I can see if they turn it into a lifestyle brand and have merchandise and stuff, that's going to be big. My other thought is how big can it really get? I mean, we just saw Sam Adams changed the branding for one of their beers that was, you know, the Wicked line because they felt like that couldn't actually travel as far as they thought it could. That was very Boston focused. So can something that's Mass Hole, is that really going to go anywhere outside of Massachusetts? Probably not. I don't know. I could go either way. How do you feel about the Mass Hole name?
[00:24:40] Senior Reporter: Does it offend you?
[00:24:41] Brewbound Podcast: No, I'm not offended. I will proudly say I'm an asshole. I think our driving rep is inaccurate. I know there are a lot worse drivers out there. Just go to Florida or Connecticut, but I'm down with our kind of rough and gruff personalities. All right.
[00:25:00] Senior Reporter: Like, I wouldn't say that mass drivers are bad. I would say they are aggressive and crazy. Like, I thought learning how to drive in North Jersey, I would be fine anywhere. No, no. Coming up here was like, a whole new re-education in driving. Massachusetts is funny to me because I feel like they're, like, I don't know if this stereotype is known the whole country over, you know? Like, I wonder, like, how many people think of Massachusetts and think of, oh God, well, I was gonna say the Kennedys, but the one in the spotlight right now is really, I don't think he's as emblematic of the rest of the crew. You know, like, I feel like there's like certainly like a super highbrow, Preppy, nautical, Nantucket. Like there's that vibe and then there's this vibe. And I don't know how many people know this vibe.
[00:25:48] Brewbound Podcast: No, and I feel like this vibe is kind of dying down a little bit because, I mean, you're not finding a lot of folks outside of a very specific area that are really encapsulating this vibe. Even the accent isn't really as much of a thing in most places. In Western Mass, this is not going to really be a thing. Yeah. So that's like two hours west of Boston, Mass whole culture, not super big.
[00:26:12] Senior Reporter: No, you guys are like farm hippies out there. Yeah, basically. Yes. Yeah. I like, I don't like my husband is grew up here. And when he would come visit me before I moved here. I remember one of my friends trying to affectionately call him like, hey, asshole. He got so mad.
[00:26:27] Brewbound Podcast: I think context is definitely.
[00:26:29] Senior Reporter: Yeah.
[00:26:30] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah. We are allowed to call ourselves motherfuckers. You can't call us motherfuckers, which I think is why this works, because this is beer made in Massachusetts. It's saying this is beer from here. So we ourselves are calling ourselves motherfuckers.
[00:26:45] Senior Reporter: Yeah, I think what this beer particularly gets right is the local angle. Like the craft light lager space, as you mentioned, is blowing up and there are some that have managed to break through. Usually they have like a strong local tie. Yeah. So you've got Cincy Light. I mean, like look at Garage Beer like that was born out of a Cincy area brewery, Braxton, but they sold the brand and now it's... certainly taking off, but that's due to having major celebrity connections. So that's one way to do it. And then like the whole Pabst family is built on grandpa beers. So here is a local grandpa beer.
[00:27:20] Brewbound Podcast: I'll buy a t-shirt that says Masshole Light Lager on it. Will I buy a 12 pack? Probably not. I think that's my final verdict.
[00:27:28] Senior Reporter: All right. Another round of merchandise. Another round of merchandise. Dude, I would take pretty much anything with this eagle on it. Fair. Cool. Well, this has been always a great chat. And let's get to our featured interviews featuring leaders from Sierra Nevada and New Trail Brewing. This is Justin Kendall and I'm on the trade show floor at the 2025 Craft Brewers Conference. And I'm joined now by Ellie Preslar, Chief Commercial Officer for Sierra Nevada.
[00:27:58] New Trail: And we're joined by Brian Grossman.
[00:28:00] Senior Reporter: What's your title, Brian?
[00:28:01] New Trail: My title changes daily.
[00:28:03] Senior Reporter: Yeah.
[00:28:03] New Trail: I'm either a second generation. I'm either chief brewer. I've been chief standards. I've been, I don't know. You're a little bit of everything at this point. Yeah. I quit ordering business cards about six titles ago.
[00:28:17] Senior Reporter: Well, I want to talk about Pills to start with. You're launching this new brand in the on-premise, and that's a pretty common practice to launch in the on-premise. But you all are doing this in a very dedicated way where you're not doing any package yet. You know, you've said that that's coming later this year, and you want to do this the right way. You've released special tap handles. You know, you're going big with this. So what's the early read on the reception for Pills?
[00:28:44] Craft Brewers: The early read has been really positive. We've had launch events at both of our breweries and in Chico and Mills River as well as out in a couple of the markets. And the reception has been really kind of frankly overwhelming. I've given a lot of challenges to our brewers to keep up from a production standpoint. just given some of the early demand we're seeing and the consumer and the account reaction. So we're really, really excited. And Brian and his team have done just a really, really fabulous and magical job with that liquid.
[00:29:16] Senior Reporter: Why did you want to go that direction with pills to start with?
[00:29:21] Craft Brewers: We really think about when we launch a new brand, we want to launch it in a way that we're building a brand to, you know, be the next hazy, right? To be like pale and be around for 45 years. And so we wanted to take a lot of care and concern so that we learned as we went and that we were able to kind of draw in early consumers who would become those raving fans who would then help us kind of build that in some key markets and then let that spill over as we, you know, expand nationally later in the year and then eventually bring it to package.
[00:29:53] Senior Reporter: Those are some big names that you dropped there. So that sort of points to big expectations for this beer.
[00:30:00] Craft Brewers: Long term, we've got some big expectations for this beer.
[00:30:03] New Trail: Tell us a little bit about the liquid. It's a liquid of love, that's for sure. I started on this project probably a few years ago, believe it or not, actually for a European-centered market that was looking for a need. And I really got some good inspiration from there to bring it back to the U.S. here and start brewing it. I really wanted to make sure we paid homage to the European history of the style, but I really wanted to make sure it had the Sierra Nevada kiss to it, per se. So that's where the crystal hop really comes in with that nice lemon characteristic on the end. It gave us a little bit of challenges on the brewing side. We're more of an ale brewer than a lager brewer. Right now, yeast management is a little bit of an issue, but it's a really nice 2-8 beer, 22 IBU, 4-7 alcohol. Saphir hops is the bitter, and then, like I was saying, Crystal on the finish. How far out is the beer right now?
[00:30:59] Craft Brewers: So we are launching in about 30 markets, draft only. Those are staggered a little bit in some ways, but most of those markets have at least a couple of key accounts that have the beer now. And then we'll slowly build that through the summer further.
[00:31:17] Senior Reporter: Gotcha. This isn't one of those 30 markets, right? It's not.
[00:31:20] Craft Brewers: There are some good Midwest markets, but this isn't one of them.
[00:31:24] Senior Reporter: Iowa?
[00:31:26] Craft Brewers: No, you gotta go maybe Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis.
[00:31:31] Senior Reporter: I mean, Des Moines is the Chicago of Iowa.
[00:31:34] Craft Brewers: I'll keep that in mind for next time.
[00:31:36] Senior Reporter: So the package release still on pace for later this year?
[00:31:41] Craft Brewers: Yes, still on for later this year.
[00:31:43] New Trail: OK. We are scaling right now. We're a little challenged on space because we are in Summerfest season also. So having two logger launches is definitely an impact on the seller. But we're getting through summer, and then we'll go right into big, big Pilsner campaigns. It's going to be a fun fall. It's going to be a busy fall.
[00:32:00] Senior Reporter: Yeah. Well, I want to talk about the special National Parks packaging that you all have released for Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. How do you see that program connecting with consumers?
[00:32:12] Craft Brewers: It's really resonating. You know, we just started talking about it with consumers over the last month and the amount of feedback we've gotten through our social media, frankly, through the packaging showing up right in our two breweries and some of the coverage that it's gotten, it's been really overwhelmingly positive. It fits really well, right, with who we are, the values that we've held dear for so many years. And so consumers are really loving it, and we're starting to hear a little bit of the treasure hunt mentality, since the four parks that were highlighted are kind of all mixed out there on shelves, so people kind of searching and seeking for those. And so we're really excited about what this program brings, not just for the National Parks, but also for Pale Ale.
[00:32:55] Senior Reporter: Do you anticipate this being something that you do each summer going forward?
[00:33:00] Craft Brewers: You know, we'll obviously evaluate it, but we would love for this to be a more enduring partnership that we have with the Parks Foundation and, frankly, supporting our communities across the country and really ties. So, you know, we'll see in more to come, but we would love to have that.
[00:33:16] Senior Reporter: I also want to touch on Big Little Thing. You've done a complete revamp of that, liquid packaging, ABV. We talked about this revamp and, you know, this is a Big Bend for you. It's a top 30 brand. It's one of the things that stuck out for me was that you said, would this be a productive SKU in five years if you didn't act now? So can you talk a little bit about, you know, the conversations that you both had as far as making some of the changes to this brand?
[00:33:46] Craft Brewers: Yeah, I'll let Brian go first on the liquid perspective, because we had a lot of discussion on this one.
[00:33:51] New Trail: Yeah, so, you know, when you do reformulate a brand, you want to keep it sort of true to who it was, but you need to modernize it a bit. You know, there's a reason why we're changing and adapting it. And we've got these really nice sort of orange, you know, Citroën Eldorado Mosaic Comet in that beer. Really in the nose though, the IBU is actually pretty low at 34, but we wanted to sort of, I won't say modernize it, but sort of bring it up to date a little bit, modernize it. So that's sort of what we set out there for, and with those big orange sort of citric characteristics that people are looking for, plus they wanted a little more alcohol, so we brought it up a little bit to nine and a half percent, and then we just gave it a kiss of orange on it, believe it or not, to really bring up those sort of citric characteristics that are in the hops.
[00:34:34] Craft Brewers: you know, from a packaging perspective, we wanted to signal to consumers that we'd done something a little different while not straying too far from what has built that Brad Avery the last five years, which is why we updated and refreshed, you know, the packaging with just a little bit of the shift of the color, right, bringing the orange in, but not losing fully the purple. It's been out for a few weeks. Early signs, we're seeing some rate of sale increases, some dollar per TDP increases. It's early, but we're really hopeful based on the early reads we're getting from consumers and starting to see in the data.
[00:35:05] Senior Reporter: How important is it to have those conversations between the marketing and commercial side of the business as well as the production side on a brand like that?
[00:35:15] New Trail: Ellie's office is three doors down from mine.
[00:35:18] Craft Brewers: So it's critical and we have them all day, every day when we're both in the office.
[00:35:22] New Trail: I mean, it's a balancing act, right? We Craft Brewers, we really want to make beer-flavored beers that we're inspired by and we're proud of doing while also servicing the consumer. So it's Ellie and her team's job to say, you know, here's the void or here's where I think the area we need to go. And the production teams go, OK, great, you know, let's create something to fill that spot. So we're constant communications.
[00:35:44] Senior Reporter: And as far as doing it with an established brand, though, instead of just creating a new brand. How does that conversation go?
[00:35:52] Craft Brewers: I mean, it's always a debate because there are established brands that will just, you know, will market and talk more from a commercial perspective. We're not going to touch the liquid. And then there are ones that we felt like we needed to pivot a little bit on both fronts. And this was one of those. But it doesn't happen without a lot of intention and focused discussion and not just one, but, you know, multiple to get us to that point and really trying to listen to the consumer. bring them into the room and leave some of our personal bias that might exist aside, which can be really hard to do. But that's why that healthy dialogue and debate internally is really, really important and what we strive for.
[00:36:30] Senior Reporter: Well, I'm going to touch New Trail Pass to sort of wrap up here, and we're heading into that summer selling season. When we talked, you had said Trail Pass sort of follows beer trends. Beer is popular in the summer. Non-alcoholic beer follows that trend. So with Trail Pass, what's sort of the energy that you're putting behind it this summer?
[00:36:52] Craft Brewers: It is, you know, a top priority along with pale and hazy this summer, just to your point, because of the seasonality follows beer seasonality. We also just, you know, have the variety pack that has launched nationally this year, bringing the hazy trail pass and the brew Vesa into the family along with, you know, IPA Shauna Golden. So we now have a great portfolio of beers, no matter that non-alcoholic, someone who's looking to moderate, maybe mix some non-alc into their drinking occasions, can find a style that fits for them. And so that'll ride along with our core portfolio and all of our programming and all of our marketing and consumer communication this summer.
[00:37:32] Nevada and New: Hitting now?
[00:37:33] Craft Brewers: Hitting now. Really, it'll gear up, call it mid-May, but it's starting to unfold.
[00:37:39] Senior Reporter: And Brian, working on this variety pack and building out this brand family, talk a little bit about what it's been like to create these beers in this, I guess, growing segment.
[00:37:51] New Trail: Yeah, being a traditional beer maker, it's definitely a unique twist for us to go into a non-alcoholic aspect of it. And on this beer in particular, the difference between innovation and pilot to scale up is vastly different. The way that we're making the beers are actually a little bit different. So production scheduling for this has been one of the more challenging things to make sure that we actually keep the beer fresh variety pack and not tie up cellar tanks too much. So this on the production side has been much more of a supply chain logistical sort of puzzle for us to unwind than anything else.
[00:38:24] Senior Reporter: As far as supply chain goes, have you all been affected so far or is there anything that you've seen as far as inputs go recently with tariffs and everything that we're seeing?
[00:38:37] New Trail: Yeah, thankfully we've got a really in tune team that definitely saw some of this coming and we got ahead of it as best as we can. You know, it changes day to day, hour by hour a lot of times. So we have put some programs in place to help sort of minimize those impacts. But we're obviously, I think, like everybody, hoping for some resolution sooner than later. Yeah.
[00:38:58] Senior Reporter: Has it changed any of the scheduling that you've had?
[00:39:01] Craft Brewers: Yeah, of course. We've adjusted and to Brian's point, like our team has been so on top of it and just really making sure that we're having the conversations and discussions and getting in front of it best we can and frankly being agile when it does change, you know, day to day as it has.
[00:39:16] Senior Reporter: And then last thing I'll wrap up with is the CanDo Innovation Center. Is there any update on that and products rolling out of there?
[00:39:24] Craft Brewers: Well, TrailPass and Hopsplash continue to roll out of there, and then we are producing for a number of third-party customers as well out of that facility. If folks are interested in that capability that we have, there is a page. If you go into Sierra Nevada.com and then navigate into the company section, there is a page now dedicated to that if you've got interest about our capabilities in co-packing and what you're looking for, and you can submit. to find out more information right there. But we are, we've got some third party partners that we've brought on board and it's a really kind of fun and evolving business for us.
[00:39:57] New Trail: you New Trail passes coming out of there. That's currently our only tunnel pasteurizer that we have at the, our breweries is in our Chico facility and making sure people know the importance of non-alcoholic beer and making sure it is food safe is a very, very important thing to us. So non-alcoholic beer a lot of times is non-fermented, depending upon how you make it. So it can have the ability to grow something if you're not careful with it. So food safety is a huge, huge thing that want to make sure all the brewers know that.
[00:40:25] SPEAKER_??: Yeah.
[00:40:25] Senior Reporter: Well, I appreciate that. And thank you, Brian. Thank you, Ellie. I appreciate the time.
[00:40:30] Craft Brewers: Thanks for having us.
[00:40:31] Senior Reporter: Thank you. Hi, I'm Jessica Infante, and I am thrilled to be joined by our next guest here in the Brewbound Podcast on Location Studio on the CBC Trade Show floor. We are so lucky to have Mike LaRosa, the chief operating officer of New Trail Brewing of Pennsylvania. I was going to say the town. Yeah, it'The Williamsport, Williamsport, Pennsylvania. I knew that. And then my brain for a second was like, is it Williamstown The Williamsport? And then I panicked. But Mike, it's so good to see you. We were just together last summer at your first ever distributor meeting where you guys put on quite a show. I was super impressed. Yeah, no, thank you. We worked really hard on that. Yeah, it was super professional. The branding was perfect. And the news that you delivered, frankly, couldn't be beat because you've just had insane amounts of growth. Yeah, that's one way to say it. Yeah, I believe Dave, my business partner, had said we have never had a down month in that meeting and that's what you reported on and that is still true to this day. That's wild. So how did 24 end up for you guys? 24, we sold about 44,000 barrels of beer. So that would be close to what, 600,000 CEs? And yeah, this year we're pacing with growth. We'll do about 750,000 CEs, we think this year, or about 55,000 barrels. Wow. I want to see 23, you were like 38,000 barrels. That sounds right to me. Yeah. I love how before we sat down here, I was like, Mike, we're not really going to talk about numbers, so don't worry about it. And here we both are. First 30 seconds. It's just been so, so impressive because we've been watching you guys for years. And how old is the brewery? We just celebrated our seventh anniversary on April 20th. Memorable day. Yes, it definitely is. And, you know, when I was out last summer, we covered your new products this year. Basically, the headline was we are quadrupling down on IPAs, four new IPAs, each touching a different segment of that huge style. So you've got the West Coast IPA. Yep, West Coast IPA is Trail Marker. Trail Marker has a brand family, so there's an Imperial Trail Marker that's available in a 19.2-ounce can, but Trail Marker, the base West Coast IPA, is a 12-ounce 12-pack and a 16-ounce 4-pack. Interesting, no 19.2 for that, but... Nope. And then the other segments were, what, N.A.? N.A. Broken Heels. Yep, N.A. Broken Heels, which was delicious. Thank you. Yeah, we worked real hard on that. Yeah, how's that doing? It's well, doing well. How was dry January? January was insane. We went through far more than we thought we would. You know, we're a little dry now, I'd say, but we're anticipating some growth coming into the summer months with it. Yeah, for sure. And then there's the Session Hazy Pale Ale. Yep. 24-7. We just launched that about a month ago, and that's already beating targets. So another huge engine driver for you guys has been the Crisp Lager family, and you've got a few brands in there. There's Original Crisp, Crisp with Lime, Crisp Amber. Yep. That's it. That's it. Look at that. Yeah, you did it. Look at me. Yeah, Crisp, Crisp Lime and Crisp Amber. They're doing well. We are producing about 10,000 barrels a year of the Crisp family, and we're seeing growth there and starting to try to figure out how to do more of it. Awesome. Any new styles you think? Under the Crisp family? I'm really hoping that we're going to end up with like a Black Lager within the family, some sort of Schwartz beer. I would love. Yeah. That's my fave. Yeah, it's my fave too. Oh, look at us. Yeah. So you guys are a little bit of an anomaly in that your 16-ounce four-packs do really well for you. And that's not common throughout the rest of the industry. Yeah. Data's still showing that it's growing or at least maintaining for us. We're placed well in a lot of grocery stores and we don't understand it either. But I mean, hey, if it works, just keep it going. So what's on the jacket for this year? What are you excited about? What are you looking forward to? We are just trying to keep up, to be honest with you. You know, it's been seven crazy years and we're excited to have another really promising year as far as growth's concerned. But this is the first year that we're not adding additional infrastructure into the building. So there's no new tanks, new canning line, new brew house, new whatever. We finally are at a spot where we have breathing room to grow into ourselves. That's awesome. Yeah. So very exciting for me. Yeah. And how tired are you? Extremely. I bet. People always ask me about how the growth goes and whether I'm tired or not. I'm like, it seems like it was yesterday that we were a company that was three, you know, three people was me, my business partners and a couple Craft Brewers. And now, you know, 55 full time employees later. And it seems like yesterday and forever ago. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, how many people are on your brewing team right now? Between the hot side and the cellar, I'd say there's probably about 10 people. Packaging's about the same. And then we do all of our warehousing and logistics ourselves. So that's another five-ish people there. Dude, that's a lot of work. Yeah. And then admin and marketing and sales. You've had a really impressive career. You've worked at a lot of breweries that I admire a lot. And you've kind of been all over, like you were at Kane, at the Jersey Shore. What do you think you've learned from all these places that is helping you drive New Trail to be so successful today? When I was in the earlier parts of my career, and I don't know that I'm any different now, but I was just sponging everything. Anything anybody said in any given moment, I was just so hungry to be successful and do whatever I could do. And maybe that is why I bopped around a little bit, but I learned so much along the way about what to do and what not to do. And I think, you know, behind it all, I had a really solid basis of brewing knowledge. You know, I came from a rock bottom. The guy that trained me there was 15 years into his career. So a bit of a horseshoe up my ass, I suppose. I love that you started at Rock Bottom because I feel like there are so many people who did. And it's been interesting to watch that particular segment of the brewpub business change and evolve. And not always for the better. I think we've got a lot fewer of those national brewpub chains than we ever used to. But I think those chains were so important. I do too. I think about, you know, the amount Craft Brewers that have come out of the Rock Bottoms, the Gordon Beerishes, Iron Hills, places like that. They provided a really great training ground because there was just more network and infrastructure for them. So they were able to communicate quicker and learn faster. Yeah. God, that's why, you know, so in terms of just training people, but I think they did a lot to educate consumers. Like some of those places were the first, for many consumers, the first time they ever encountered the idea that beer was a product that had to be made. It's not just something that showed up on a shelf or poured out of a tap for them. Like you could see the tanks and the vessels and sometimes depending on when you want, you could see somebody actually working. So I think a lot of those businesses really set the stage for what craft eventually became. And it's just been interesting to me. A couple of months ago now, maybe, I think I probably went a little too hard on writing a story about how under new ownership, Rock Bottom and Gordon Beers are going to start pouring domestics and beers that they didn't make on site. And I get it. There's only so many times you can have a consumer walk in and say, hey, what do you have that's like Bud Light before you finally just say, why don't we just give them Bud Light? I wonder what that particular change is going to end up meaning to brewpubs. Yeah, I mean, I know with Rock Bottom along the way, just because I was part of the organization for a little while, it was changing as I entered there in 2010, I suppose, when I started at Rock Bottom. And they had just switched to mandates for their brewers, moving away from the brewer, having total control over every beer that was there, to having Rock Bottom IPA and Kolsch and whatever the five styles were, and then letting the brewer have however many lines were left. So I think it's a natural transition, I guess, is the point that I'm trying to make.
[00:48:36] Sierra Nevada: Yeah, for sure.
[00:48:36] Senior Reporter: To get them to selling other people's beer. Yeah. And how has CBC been for you? What have you been getting up to since you've been an indie? It's been a lot of meetings, just trying to, you know, sponge, right? I'm trying to talk to as many people as I possibly can and learn more and more and more. And yeah. Yeah, well, so next year we're going to be in Philly, Philadelphia. It's a little bit of a hometown-ish thing for you guys. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of my hometown too. I grew up in Downingtown where Victory is, which is about 30-40 minutes outside the city. So I'm excited. I'm excited.
[00:49:05] Sierra Nevada: I love Philly. A lot of my friends live in Philly. I love Philadelphia.
[00:49:08] Senior Reporter: I love Philadelphia. I am pumped. It's going to be great. Yeah. Also, one of my go-to hangover fixes is a Wawa chocolate milk. Sure, sure, sure. It should make life easy. I don't know that I would ever think to drink chocolate milk as a hangover cure. I don't know where I learned it. And obviously, I live in Massachusetts, so I cannot normally partake. And also, now I'm old, so I generally don't need it anymore. What do you think it is about the brand that is delivering this consistent growth where other parts of the industry are maybe not finding it? You know, I think it really just comes down to the basics for us, where it's good people, it's good beer, and it's good marketing. And we really eat, sleep, drink everything that we do there. So that's the driver behind all of our success. Yeah. Amazing. Well, can't wait to see what's next. Really looking forward to those new Brewer details coming out in the next couple of weeks so we can actually get into all those numbers.
[00:50:03] Sierra Nevada: I'd love to see them.
[00:50:04] Senior Reporter: Yeah. Mike, I was so excited to see New Trail crack the top 50 this year. I was ecstatic. So I was actually getting onto a Zoom call, and I was sitting in the lobby or whatever of the Zoom call, and I'm scrolling through my emails, waiting for it to come up, and the top 50 pops up. I was like, oh, let's go see who number 50 is, because we didn't anticipate it. So I'm reading, scrolling, scrolling, looking at number 50. And then I was like, wait, does that say New Trail? It's like, holy shit. And I jumped out of my seat. And of course, the Zoom call opens right up. I was like, I'm sorry. I need a minute. I need two minutes. Oh, that must have been so exciting. I can't believe that you don't get a heads up. No, no. It's like we don't, but I would expect that. No, no, no. We didn't get a heads up. Amazing. What did you guys do to celebrate? Um, I ran around the brewery and told everybody. Thanked everybody. Yeah, no. Went and had a nice meal. Number 50? 46. 46? I know. That's why I was like going down. I was looking at number 50 and then it was like, I was like, wait, did I scroll past my own name? Holy smoke. Yeah. Wow, because I want to say you were just knocking on the door last year. We were like 66 if I'm picking a number. Something like that. Yeah, yeah. I was anticipating like 55 this year. Oh. Yeah, so I was not anticipating it at all. Oh my God, I bet it was like Christmas morning. Yeah, it sure was. But in the middle of the afternoon. Yeah, Bart Watson delivered my Christmas presents. Bart Watson is your Santa Claus. Well, I can't wait to see the rest of the numbers and I love that we have an open conversation these days and we should keep it up. Thank you so much for joining. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Thanks. That's our show for this week. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoy the Brewbound Podcast, please rate it five stars on Spotify or Apple podcasts and leave a review on your podcast platform of choice so more people can find the show. As always, a big thank you to Joe, Joshua, Nate, Ryan, and the whole Brewbound BevNET technical team. And of course, thanks to Justin and Zoe for always being great co-hosts. We will see you back here next week.
