Brewbound Podcast: Hard Seltzer Liquor Store Runs in Utah, Plus NA Lite Beer

[00:00:00] Jessica Infante: Which hard seltzers are you going to have to make a liquor store run to buy in Utah? We'll tell you next on The Brewbound Podcast. Hello, and welcome to The Brewbound podcast. My name is Justin Kendall, and I'm the editor of Rebound. And I'm joined by Jessica Infante, the managing editor of Rebound, who is shimmying her way into Monday. How you doing, Jess?

[00:00:31] The Brewbound: I'm good. So I have to tell you, whenever you read the cold open, when we record in my head, I always hear the podcast music. I do too, which we obviously don't have yet because it gets in afterward. But that's why I'm kind of dancing.

[00:00:43] Jessica Infante: Oh, it's a jazzy little tune. And also joining us is Zoe Licata, Brewbound's reporter extraordinaire, Generation Z correspondent, Mountain Dew, Hard Mountain Dew drinker, not just a Mountain Dew drinker. How are you doing, Zoe?

[00:00:58] Utah Legislature: Great. I didn't know I had all these titles.

[00:01:01] Jessica Infante: I know. Have you been hit up to hook people up with Hard Mountain Dew now?

[00:01:06] Utah Legislature: I have gotten a couple inquiries of where can I get those, and I have to break the news that, sorry, it's not in Massachusetts.

[00:01:13] Jessica Infante: It's tough to do the dude these days, I guess. Unless you're in Iowa, Tennessee, or Florida. Yeah, well, it'll be ending very soon in many states. But let's get into this week's news. And this is just going to be a news-heavy show this week. Jess, you had the story this morning on Athletic Brewing launching Athletic Lite, L-I-T-E, the, what is it, 25 calories, 5 carb, non-alcoholic beer that you can't see it, but I have it in my hand.

[00:01:49] The Brewbound: Ooh, well, I don't have any. Oh, look at you. Give it a taste. Tell us how it is.

[00:01:58] Jessica Infante: Well, I'm cheating because I tried one last night, but it tastes exactly like my expectation for a light beer with the letters L I T E.

[00:02:09] The Brewbound: Wow, that's high praise. Yes. Yeah, Athletic Lite is rolling out nationwide. I had the ability to chat with Athletic co-founders, Bill Shufelt and John Walker last week, and we had a really nice chat. This beer I think is interesting to me, because like you said, 25 calories. Like the one thing that sometimes sticks in my head a little bit about non-alcoholic beer is that some of them, not the Athletic portfolio, I feel like those are all usually under 100 calories, but some of them are, are kind of high. And to me, it's like, well, why? Which that probably says a lot more about me than I realized. But yeah, Bill and John, like this beer has been in the works for like, you know, 18 months to two years. They did a couple of trials through their e-commerce system. That's really interesting to me because it is not out and they have the ability to ship it directly to consumers. So they have like, you know, a ready-made nationwide focus group if they want for new stuff. They did that with this, but they mostly tested it with their own team. And what John told me about how they really get it to taste like a, like an actual light beer that you're familiar with is this proprietary rice product that they had made. And the rice, you know, is something that is in some of the other well-known, you know, alcoholic light beers really helps with the body. And it really helps you feel like you're, you're drinking a beer.

[00:03:28] Jessica Infante: That's exactly what shocked me about it, because with 25 calories, you'd expect this to be very light on the body or mouthfeel, and it's not. It drinks heavier than you expect.

[00:03:44] The Brewbound: Yeah, that's really interesting. I know it's got organic malt. organic barley, wheat, and rice. And yeah, I mean, John said, you know, the rice serves a huge purpose, one we didn't know about earlier on. Through all the trials, we realized that rice delivers an amazing amount of flavor and body to these lighter beers. You honestly and truly get away with experiencing a full-fledged beer that's under half a percent.

[00:04:06] Jessica Infante: Yeah, if you're into light beer and you're looking for a non-alc option, this is it. I mean, or this could be it, I should say. No, this is it. Let's get definitive.

[00:04:19] The Brewbound: Bill said it's a great drink during the workday beer, so I'm sure he'll be happy to know that here on 1040 AM on Monday, March 7th, you and he are probably both having one at work.

[00:04:31] Jessica Infante: It speaks to the opportunity. What's the best selling beer in the country? It's Bud Light. you know, in off-premise retailers and pretty much everywhere. But, you know, Coors Light, Miller Light, that's probably, what, three of the top five selling beers in the country. And so the market is there for a light beer. Is it there for a non-alcoholic light beer? Well, that's the question.

[00:04:56] The Brewbound: I mean, half of the adult population of the United States doesn't drink alcohol at all. And those people are probably extraordinarily familiar with the three brands that you just mentioned. And they probably know about light beer, and maybe they've been curious, I don't know. But here's an opportunity for the people who don't drink alcohol to drink non-alcoholic beer.

[00:05:17] Jessica Infante: If they like the taste of beer.

[00:05:20] The Brewbound: Right.

[00:05:21] Jessica Infante: Yeah.

[00:05:21] The Brewbound: So yeah, I mean those three Bud Light, Miller Light, Coors Light combined for $9.4 billion in off-premise sales last year. So huge chunk of the market. Non-ALC beer is obviously much smaller, but it's growing. Non-ALC beer was the fastest growing segment in the entire beer category last year at 24% growth to $236 million. So obviously much, much smaller. I mean, you've got some brands that people are really interested in and athletics really out there raising awareness for non-alcoholic craft beer. And Bill always says they're trying to create more occasions. Bill believes that non-alcoholic beer is the first real occasion driver that beer has had in a long time. Because even if you have people who say there's people who do drink beer, but don't like to drink seven nights a week. Here's a way for them to be able to engage in the beer category on say a Monday or a Tuesday or a Wednesday when they wouldn't normally be drinking beer. It also reaches those people who don't drink alcohol. So it's really a bridge to all of those other occasions that beer wasn't really reaching. So Out Nationwide, hope to try it someday.

[00:06:31] Jessica Infante: If it weren't non-alcoholic, I wouldn't be drinking it at 1040 on a Monday morning. So yeah. Well, that's just one bit of news that's out there right now. But also, we talked about this, I think it was last week, and Utah is going forward with its hard seltzer law that will push, what is it? A few brands over into liquor stores as opposed to being able to sell them in grocery. And you're on top of that, Jess. Tell us a little bit about what's going on now, even though, I mean, when you look at the list, there's a large chunk of discontinued Molson coarse hard seltzers on there.

[00:07:11] The Brewbound: Yeah. So I think I have not been shy about expressing how much excitement I have for quirky beer laws. And this has got to be way the heck up there in quirkiness. The hard seltzers perish the thought, but they're not all made with those real fruits that they claim to be made with, or not that they claim, but there's a lot of flavorings that create the flavors in hard seltzers. And there's two different ways that most of the flavors available can be made. Some of them are made with ethyl alcohol. Some of them are made with propylene glycol. And neither of these things add ABV to the finished product. It's just a different way of creating the flavor. But the legislators of the state of Utah have decided that anything made with ethyl alcohol mixed into a hard seltzer is now not available to be sold at grocery stores or convenience stores. And you have to buy these hard seltzers at their state-run liquor stores. hard seltzers that are made with propylene glycol, those are fine, they can hang out at the regular mass market, they are not relegated to state-run stores. Which begs the question, which hard seltzers are which? And our friends at the Salt Lake Tribune have published this list. I mean, there's five flavors of Bon & Viv have to be sold at state-run liquor stores. Three flavors of Bud Light Seltzer, the lemon, lime, mango, and strawberry. Six flavors of Coors Seltzer, which was discontinued last July. Wine & Kugel Spritzen, also discontinued. Five flavors of Pompette Hard Sparkling Water, which I learned about through this law, seems to be a large format hard seltzer that they suggest you use to make cocktails. in wine-sized bottles. All of the Truly Hard Seltzer iced tea, 13 flavors of Vizzy Hard Seltzer. And that I think is going to be probably the largest effect that we'll see in the market. Vizzy is Molson Coors' Hard Seltzer. It's become one of the five largest hard seltzers in the country. And also eight flavors of Flying Embers Hard Kombucha, four flavors of Giant Hard Kombucha, two flavors of Juneshine Hard Kombucha, And then there's another list of what can be sold in grocery and convenience stores, but I kind of don't.

[00:09:22] Jessica Infante: Yeah, we don't have to go through that.

[00:09:25] The Brewbound: We get the point.

[00:09:26] Jessica Infante: You can still buy, still reserve hard seltzer though, Spike Strawberry Burst in grocery stores.

[00:09:31] The Brewbound: Thank God.

[00:09:32] Jessica Infante: I know.

[00:09:33] The Brewbound: So yeah, like the question here is if you are one of these brands, do you reformulate or do you just say, well, we've lost some market access in one state out of 50, but in the other 50 states, we're okay. So we're just going to have to move ahead without those sales. A reformulation is an enormous undertaking. So I imagine we're just going to see everybody say, well, sorry, Utah, we'll take your, your state run liquor stores, or maybe they'll pull out altogether. I'm not sure.

[00:09:59] Jessica Infante: Yeah, I don't foresee any reformulations unless you're in state and grocery was a huge part of your business. I can't imagine any of these national companies saying, Oh yeah, Utah, we'll, we'll just, uh, we'll just make some of that for you over here. We already went through this with three, two beer where they're like, yeah, we're getting rid of this. You know, like I think Minnesota is the only place in the country that still has three, two beer. And this is probably like we talked about this before. You mentioned that this has likely been in the works for some time. I'm sure it probably has been. And we just got a Treasury report on competition that was like, yeah, why don't we get rid of some of these laws that are just kind of ridiculous and make it harder to operate? And here we go. Thanks, Utah.

[00:10:49] The Brewbound: Yeah. I mean, under the FAA, all states are allowed to regulate alcohol as they see fit, and that's how we got here.

[00:10:59] Jessica Infante: Yeah. And Utah, they take a harder look at those laws than other places. They certainly do. Yeah. Zoe, on Friday you put together our last call and we got something in, you know, right by the buzzer to get it in, but it looks like Rogue has created a charitable beer for the conflict that's going on in Ukraine to aid the humanitarian effort there.

[00:11:28] Utah Legislature: Yeah, we got an email later in the day on Friday from Rogue, and the whole conflict that's been going on in Ukraine kind of hits close to home for them. Rogue's president, Dharma Tam, has family that was in Estonia that was displaced when Russia invaded there in the 40s. And so he understands what this kind of conflict can do to people and is probably doing to the people of Ukraine. And so they've created this beer, the F. Putin beer, and all of the proceeds from that beer are going to be donated to a campaign called the Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund. And that goes to just help people with education, food, medical services, various things in Ukraine. And they're just really trying to do whatever they can to give money to these people, try to help in any way you can from the US.

[00:12:22] Jessica Infante: Yeah, this is the first of what I'm expecting to be several efforts out there to aid the humanitarian effort in the Ukraine. And I know of one that's potentially in the works. I haven't heard that it's finalized yet, but if it goes forward, it would be an open source collaboration bureau effort. So look for that potentially this week if it does go forward. And I think it will, but I don't want to make any promises before. I don't want to get ahead of myself here.

[00:12:52] The Brewbound: Again, if you're working on one and wanna share the details, you can send us an email at news The Brewbound.com. We'd love to hear what you've got in the works so we can get the word out.

[00:13:01] Jessica Infante: Yeah. And then the last story we'll hit for this week is some distribution news out of Minnesota and Vermont's a big deal. Breakthrough is acquiring the beer portfolio of JJ Taylor. And JJ Taylor has a pretty extensive craft book

[00:13:21] The Brewbound: Yeah, I mean, I feel like this is something that we've thought about and talked about a lot lately is consolidation in the middle tier and how it affects craft brewers' routes to market. And it was certainly something that the treasury was thinking about and talking about and writing about in that report. We'll see, I mean, Breakthrough is pretty large. They're in almost a dozen states.

[00:13:42] Jessica Infante: Yeah.

[00:13:43] The Brewbound: We'll see what happens to the craft brands that were in JJ Taylor's house. And does Breakthrough want to take them?

[00:13:49] Jessica Infante: Well, and this is the first deal, I believe, that we've seen since that Treasury report came out. With increased scrutiny of M&A activity, I wonder how this deal will be looked on. I mean, they expect it to close this spring, pending customary closing conditions, and probably will, but I'll be curious to see how that shakes out. They've got a lot of overlapping brands, you know, it looks like Molson Coors, Heineken, I'm not sure about Diageo, but we'll see how that goes.

[00:14:25] The Brewbound: On the other side of this coin, we also saw some more middle tier news last week where Craft Collective, which is a craft distributor in Massachusetts, also has operations in Rhode Island and Maine, is expanding to Vermont. So we do see consolidation, but we also see some expansion of other options in the middle tier. They're gonna move into Vermont. They've purchased the rights to sell the Vermont Beer Makers portfolio. Vermont Beer Makers is one of the 10 oldest craft brands in the state of Vermont. They started their life as Trout River Brewing. They had been doing self-distro for the last 10 years up until now, and they've decided to take a step back from that, sold their portfolio to Craft Collective. They're gonna be focusing on building a new brewery. So it makes sense to make some money where you can by selling your brands off. Craft Collective's really excited to get into the state. It's obviously a huge craft market. So if you're interested, if you're a craft brand looking to sell your beer in Vermont, hit those guys up, because they wanna be building a portfolio.

[00:15:22] Jessica Infante: Yeah, and we're getting word from a few folks on some independent wholesaler activity, craft focused wholesalers coming up, and we'll be reporting on that in the coming weeks. But if you know of alternatives that are sprouting up, another thing to let us know about.

[00:15:38] The Brewbound: Yeah, I mean, the option is huge for craft brands to have somebody that understands that it's interested in selling businesses like theirs, because a lot of these larger wholesalers aren't, and that makes sense. I mean, there's only so much you can do. It's a tough job.

[00:15:54] Jessica Infante: Yeah. Well, anything else you want to hit before we get out of here?

[00:15:59] The Brewbound: Yeah, Zoe, what'd you drink this weekend? What did I drink this weekend?

[00:16:03] Utah Legislature: Yeah. Oh boy. I had, I'm sorry, Jess. I had some Sam Adams from the Wicked Party Pack that we got from Super Bowl. So I tried the new, the tropical part in their new Wicked family. How was that? It was all right. We're going to make an IPA drinker out of you yet. It's slowly, slowly happening. Mostly I drink a lot of cider from down east. We've got a couple, picked up some orders because they're right down the street from us. So I tried their pomegranate cider, which was delicious. They have a raspberry, which is also pretty good. We just get growlers and they take up our whole fridge. So we have to have nights where we just drink a lot of cider to get rid of them. Nice. Do you hang out in their taproom ever? I haven't since before COVID. It is very small in there. And I believe they're still limited to just like you get one flight in there kind of get you in and out of there. But they are very popular all the time. And they just opened an outdoor space last summer, which I believe they're bringing back this year. So definitely will be checking that out. Cool.

[00:17:14] Jessica Infante: I drank beers almost exclusively with the word juice in them. I had Night Shift's Juice Flow and the New Belgium Voodoo Ranger Juice Force that's coming out. And that's an imperial IPA, which is far too boozy for a dad right now. I had to just sample, but I enjoyed it. And I also had a Citrus Rescue from New Belgium, which is their... Collaboration with Imperfect Foods, it's pretty good.

[00:17:48] The Brewbound: I thought that was a very clever bit of activation around that. Are they using the discarded fruits in the beer?

[00:17:57] Jessica Infante: I believe they are.

[00:17:58] The Brewbound: Yeah. Yeah. We don't, we don't have discarded fruits in my house. My husband eats, I don't know, like, like 10 pounds of clementines a week.

[00:18:06] Jessica Infante: That's a lot. Before we go, Jess, I want you to tell us about your experience of going back in time to a tap takeover because I think you got in a DeLorean and you went back in time to a time where there are still tap takeovers. And I mean, I know there are still tap takeovers, but I can't remember the last one that I've been to. So what was it like in the year 2022 to be at a tap takeover?

[00:18:40] The Brewbound: Let me tell you. Well, so as you know, because we talk about The Brewbound, we get press releases. So we had gotten a press release about this one particular event a few weeks ago, a tap takeover by Bentwater Brewing. They are in Lynn, Massachusetts, which is down the road from where I live. And they were having a tap takeover at the Blue Ox, which is a pretty buzzed about restaurant also in Lynn that I've been meaning for us to visit since we moved to Salem, like, I don't know, four and a half years ago. The half of that was COVID time. So I got this and I was like, Ryan, we're going. So we went to this tap takeover. I made a reservation on Rezzy, because you do that. And we get there, it's packed. It's totally packed. The bar area is just full of people. Like I can tell that there's a bunch of Bentwater people there because they look like they were wearing some branded stuff. If not Bentwater employees, then certainly Bentwater fans. I don't know if there was swag. We got sat in the dining room. They had a special like poutine made with their beer. Ryan and I each had a cup. He had two. I had one bent water beer. It was like going back in time. It was nice to see people out and about enjoying themselves. The restaurant worker seemed a little frazzled. So I felt bad about that because I've been a frazzled restaurant worker and it's not fun. But yeah, man, people out and about for the tap takeover. I was very happy for all of them.

[00:19:57] Jessica Infante: That's wild. Right? It still amazes me that in this day and age, like people are coming out for tap takeovers, but that's awesome.

[00:20:06] The Brewbound: Yeah. I mean, it's also like a, I think a pretty busy restaurant. Like they're always on like best of lists. We'd been meaning to get there forever. The owners own a restaurant in our town that we go to all the time, but they're also like, they've been open a while. Like I want to say they open at like 13, 14. So that our restaurant is, is maintaining this level of buzz. Clearly they're doing something right.

[00:20:27] Jessica Infante: Zoe, I hate to even ask the question, have you ever been to a tap takeover?

[00:20:33] Utah Legislature: Never. Do you even know what one is? I know what they are. I have never been to one and have never sought one out. No, not a part of my life.

[00:20:46] Jessica Infante: Have you ever had a flight of beer? Yes. Okay. Yes. All right.

[00:20:51] Utah Legislature: Flights are very, very, very popular with me and my friends and I would assume most of my generation because we can't commit to things. This comes back to what we always say about Gen Z is we don't like to commit to things. So having a bunch of small portions and different options is like the best thing ever.

[00:21:10] The Brewbound: I mean, the world you grew up in was volatile and unsteady, so of course you can't commit to things. There's nothing that you can commit to. Right, exactly. And I should point out that this was not a pure tap takeover. They did reserve a tap handle for Allagash White. I don't think anybody would be mad about that.

[00:21:28] Jessica Infante: No, I'm not shocked that that would be the one beer that would survive a tap takeover or at least, you know, make the cut to remain on. Well, with that, I think we're going to call it a show for this week. This is just our little abridged show. Thanks to our one man audio team, Joe, for putting it together. Thanks to all you for listening. And we'll be back next week with a lot more.