Big Beer

Twisted Tea continues to be one of the few Boston Beer Company offerings in the green, and the company doesn’t see that changing anytime soon, leadership shared during Thursday’s Q1 2023 earnings call with investors.

A federal judge has dismissed a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that Topo Chico Margarita Hard Seltzer is deceptively labeled because it is fermented and lacks tequila.

Two of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s top marketing executives are on leave amid conservatives’ call to boycott the Bud Light brand for a marketing activation with social media influencer and transwoman Dylan Mulvaney during March Madness.

NoFo Brew Co. has reached a deal to acquire the land, building and assets of fellow Georgia craft brewery Tantrum Brewing.

While 23-year-old Smirnoff Ice is around the same age as Gen. Z, the Diageo-owned flavored malt beverage (FMB) brand has been out of the spotlight in the past few years, as younger legal-drinking-age (LDA) consumers have gravitated toward new flashier beyond beer entrants such as Mark Anthony Brands’ White Claw Hard Seltzer and E. & J. Gallo’s High Noon Sun Sips.

Sales data is out now showing the first week of the conservative-led boycott of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Bud Light brand following the world’s largest beer maker’s March Madness activation with Dylan Mulvaney, an influencer who documents her life as a transgender woman.

Molson Coors and The Coca-Cola Company are partnering again this fall with the launch of Peace Hard Tea, a 5% ABV malt-based version of Coca-Cola’s Peace Tea.

Boston Beer Company is making a convenience play in three markets with the launch of a new high-ABV, single-serve brand: Slingers Signature Cocktails.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for beer both at home (+6.1%) and away from home (+5.5%) outpaced overall inflation (+5%) in March 2023 compared to March 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Constellation Brands recorded an impairment charge of $66.5 million pertaining to what’s left of its craft beer division in its fiscal year 2023 fourth quarter, according to its most recent 8-K form filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Heineken USA has released its first spirit-based portfolio extension of Jamaican beer brand Red Stripe with Red Stripe Rum Drinks. The canned cocktail will roll out in Florida starting today, and is set to hit select markets in the Northeast throughout the spring.

Canadian cannabis company Hexo Corp, a former partner of Molson Coors, has been acquired by Tilray Brands, in a deal valued at around $250 million, the company announced yesterday in its Q3 earnings report.

Heineken USA (HUSA) will halt shipments of all draft products to five states for the next year, a company spokesperson told Brewbound. Those states include Vermont, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. The Lagunitas brand, which Heineken wholly acquired in May 2017, is excluded from the draft cuts.

Constellation Brands’ beer business topped $7.456 billion in net sales, an +11% year-over-year increase (YoY), during its 2023 fiscal year, which ended February 28, the company reported today during its full-year and fourth-quarter earnings report.

Nearly five years after it opened, Diageo will cease the majority of production later this spring at what was its first Guinness production brewery in the U.S. since 1954.