Brewbound Awards 2025: Craft Brewery of the Year - New Trail Brewing

Speaker 1 [00:00] One of the very exciting things that we get to do with these award videos is we get to see breweries move up through the ranks a little bit and sometimes we see rising stars move on to, to bigger and brighter things and one of those cases is happening this year with our 2025 Craft Brewery of the Year, which is New Trail Brewing out of Pennsylvania. Here to talk about what New Trail has going on, we have two of the partners from New Trail, uh, we have CEO Dave Hertwig. Welcome,

Speaker 2 [00:26] Dave.

Speaker 1 [00:28] And, and we have COO Mike LaRosa. Welcome, Mike.

Speaker 2 [00:32] Thanks for having us. We're so excited.

Speaker 1 [00:34] Thank you guys for being here and back. I feel like it just happened that

Speaker 2 [00:39] I honestly felt like I just did this video last year. Like you could have said, like, you know, that was 2 weeks ago, and I would have been like, Yeah, that sounds about right to me.

Speaker 1 [00:47] Yeah, no, another year has passed and you have all moved on from rising stars to crackery of the year. Um, normally, I don't think it happens that fast, but I think we were just very impressed by how Neutralil has continued to find growth in this insert some sort of adjective for the, the current craft beer marketplace. Um, but let, let's start with kind of picking up from where we left off, uh, when you talked to Jess last year, she got to also go to y'all's distributor meeting at the end of last year. Um, and one of the big takeaways was IPAs, quadrupling down, I believe was the word on IPAs in 2025. What does that look like for you all this year?

Speaker 3 [01:31] Uh, it was the right move. It was awesome. Um, you know, we all know IPAs make up what, 49, 51% of craft beer sold. Um, it was, we picked the year where we knew there was not gonna be a ton of innovation. Out there, um, and we leaned into what our strengths were and the new SKUs have done phenomenal. Yeah, very positive. They're very good and they're still growing strong, and there's still plenty of meat on the bone for 2026, so we're excited. That's a lot of

Speaker 2 [02:05] hops to answer your first question. You ask, you ask what IPA, what quadrupling down on IPA looks like. It means a lot of hops, yeah.

Speaker 1 [02:14] And we know folks do love their hops, so it makes a lot of sense. For anyone who's unaware, can you give people an idea of what kind of your core portfolio looks like and what you added with those new additions?

Speaker 2 [02:25] Sure, yeah, so we, um, our core IPA is Broken Heels actually pictured behind us, the, the, uh, So 7% hazy IPA. It's part of the brand family that has a double IPA, double broken heels, as well as a couple of brand extensions throughout the year, you know, tropical double Broken Heels or blood orange broken heels or, or whatever. Going from there, uh, we added a West Coast-style IPA trail marker as well as 24/7 a hazy session IPA. Um, other beers in our core portfolio include Crisp, which is an American lager that's part of the brand family as well. So, Chris Blager, Chris Bamber, and Chris Blime live in that family.

Speaker 3 [03:05] Mhm. Yeah, we also added imperial trail marker as we were entering into the quadrupling down. So yeah, and then

Speaker 2 [03:14] now non-alcoholic broken heels as well. And that's the 4th of the trail marker 24/7 trail marker imperial trail marker and non-alcoholic broken heels.

Speaker 1 [03:25] How is that non-alcoholic game been? You know, some folks have, have dabbled in, but some others are just still, still watching to see how it, how it pans out. It's

Speaker 3 [03:34] doing great for what we've done with it, where we, we're, we're one skew into the NA, um, just with our flagship. Uh, it's been focused and it's been working, so

Speaker 2 [03:47] yeah, it met, it met all of our expectations. Yeah,

Speaker 1 [03:50] that's great. I was just browsing through, uh, some of the scan data from you all, which of course, not a full picture of everything, especially in craft, but you have some pretty impressive growth numbers in there, and one that really stuck out to me was that the CRISP blogger. Um, is that, I know you all partnered this year with West Virginia University Athletics, and Chris Lager was a part of that. Is that from that, is, are you doing other things with that logger what is helping that have success right now?

Speaker 3 [04:18] So we were pretty early in on the, uh, Craft American locker Kraft American locker, I'd call that category. I don't know if it's really been defined yet, um, but, uh, yeah, that it, it's doing great everywhere we've got it. It's a, you know, uh, there's definitely space for that product. We are seeing a lot more people come into that category now, but we're holding our own, and, uh, the West Virginia. Sponsorship, partnership that we entered into, you know, part of when we go to other markets is trying to stay local. Um, that's always what local means to everybody. I mean, we're not actually gonna be local hometown brewery to everyone, but the university to that state is one of the most important things and that state also shares a lot of values that we do here in Central PA with hiking, mountains, the gorge, all those things. So, You know, it, it made a lot of sense and uh yeah, that skyrocketed a lot.

Speaker 1 [05:23] Yeah, I know your distribution market is it 4 states, is that correct? 5 states now.

Speaker 2 [05:29] Yeah, Delaware. So I mean Delaware is our 5th state this year, right? We added that this year, last year, last year, end of last

Speaker 3 [05:36] year. We haven't added any states this year. Yeah.

Speaker 1 [05:38] What has been, why have you had that kind of more Smaller compared to some other folks, uh, focus and what was key to kind of mapping out what that looks like. We're

Speaker 3 [05:48] aggressive, but we're cautious and we try to go 100 miles deep. I know that's a cliche, but it's really what we lock into. Um,

Speaker 2 [05:58] it's been since day one too. Dave and I, you know, we've always said local, local, local, and local to us at that time and. You know, Lycoming County where we're located in the surrounding 10 or so counties, and they're like, oh well, local could be a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger, you know, yeah,

Speaker 1 [06:13] I mean, it's working, yeah,

Speaker 3 [06:15] we want to be able, I guess, to be familiar with wherever we're going.

Speaker 1 [06:20] So you mentioned that the IPA strategy works this year. How else did this year compare to your expectations?

Speaker 3 [06:27] Uh, so we had Planned on doing about a 12% growth for the year. We're gonna, we're at 19.6% right now, uh, possibly gonna hit that 20% growth this year, which is pretty awesome. Um, but it's really, I mean, it's the heavy lifting, it's going to work every day, um, selling beer, uh, producing great beer. Um, we've had a mixture of these innovations. We're still having fun though, like, Mike flew out, uh, talked at hop school,

Speaker 2 [07:03] Compton Brewer School for Yakima for

Speaker 3 [07:04] Yakima Chief, and then he went out to the farm, picked the hops. We overnighted. He got on a plane with him underneath him. You know, working with bailbreaker on that and flew him back to Pittsburgh where our driver met him with a truck and we're brewing by 120 that day, you know, like, the true friend, like, we're still doing the expedition pack. We did it once this year where it's a, a, a variety pack with 4 collaborations in it, you know, trying to make sure that we're still having fun and

Speaker 2 [07:34] Having fun and staying relevant too, you know, like keeping the consumer engaged. Well,

Speaker 1 [07:39] you're doing that with still having beer as the focal point, which I think is, is not always the case these days. Why is that such an important part of your business if it's, it's not like you're going out and doing that with, you know, maybe some, some fresh new like RTDs or something. It's still beer is really core to what, yeah,

Speaker 2 [07:58] I mean, we're 100% beer. We don't, we don't make RTDs or THC beverages or anything. Thing like that we're not opposed to doing it, but we've had, we've had success with, with beer, and we don't want to take our eye off the prize. Like that's what we're, that's what we're passionate about. That's what we're good about. It's not to say that I'm not gonna be passionate about an RTD or THC drink at some point, but not right now, not right now.

Speaker 3 [08:19] And we really like what we do, yeah, and it's beer. I like to drink it, sell it, you know, it's been my life.

Speaker 1 [08:29] I can respect that. Um, given that there are so many things now out there for consumers to choose from, why do you think New trail is still able to connect with consumers with that beer focus?

Speaker 3 [08:40] We've got a very narrow focus, I think, in some

Speaker 2 [08:43] ways. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's also the basics like it's good beer, it's good branding, it's good, it's good salespeople, and it's a good message. Like, yeah,

Speaker 3 [08:53] people tend to like the outdoors. Yeah, I think Patagonia is doing pretty good.

Speaker 1 [08:59] Yeah, I think they're doing all right. Yeah,

Speaker 3 [09:00] and we try to be authentic in that, you know, like a large part of what we do is to give back to our state forest, parks, all that kind of stuff. Like, it's not just a marketing ploy, like we do the hiking, we're involved in the outdoors, um, and I think that lends itself to You know, whether you're once a year you go camping or you sit by a campfire in your backyard, whatever chimney, depending on if you live in a city or not, you can get the vibe as

Speaker 1 [09:31] I we're recording this, I am visiting my parents in Western Massachusetts and it's very much the similar outdoor vibe surrounded by woods.

Speaker 2 [09:38] It's awesome up there, yeah,

Speaker 1 [09:41] I love it. Um, so now looking ahead to 2026. Continuing on this growth path, what are you all looking forward to in this next year?

Speaker 3 [09:51] Uh, we're continuing to support what our innovations were this year. That's a lot of this year, um, some programming built around that, um. You know, same focuses, yeah, I mean,

Speaker 2 [10:04] if, if we're quadrupling down last year, I guess we're splitting eights this year, right? Yeah, you know, we're, yeah. So we've got a,

Speaker 3 [10:13] we've got a really cool rebrand coming out for Chris Blogger. Yeah, it was an interesting thing because that beer was supposed, like the names of everything was a placeholder as we were developing it, and then it took off.

Speaker 2 [10:28] The name, the label, the box,

Speaker 3 [10:29] everything, everything was not supposed to see the public, but we figured after 4 years it's time to actually You know, make it look the way we feel it looks. Put the. Same thing happened with Broken Heels, our, our flagship, when that originally was released, it was an aerial view of the PA Grand Canyon.

Speaker 2 [10:48] Well, the funny, the funny thing about that is that Broken Heels wasn't even supposed to be our flagship when we started. It was going to be this beer that we were going to make every once in a while, and it went from being like once a, once a month to once a week to twice a week to all the time, very, very quickly, very, very

Speaker 3 [11:03] quickly. So when you got something working, you

Speaker 1 [11:06] I was gonna, it seems like the takeaway here is sometimes you just gotta stumble into things and follow it through afterwards.

Speaker 2 [11:14] Yeah, yeah, I mean, luck is the, is the, the cross between hard work and preparation.

Speaker 1 [11:19] So. Well, you guys all seem prepared and you are putting in the work, and that's why you are this year's craft brewery of the Year. So we're really excited to, to give this to you all and to see what happens next.

Speaker 3 [11:31] We're super excited. Thank

Speaker 2 [11:32] you. Humbled, really. Thank you.