Is it just me or did the beer category just get weird?
Last month, a small Massachusetts-based brewer, Wachusett Brewing Co., introduced Nauti Seltzer, a “healthy alternative in the hard-soda category” in four flavors. Small, craft brewers regularly create and test unusual products—it’s what makes the “craft.”
Interestingly, however, Nauti—Get it? Naughty?—launched nationally, hitting store shelves this month. That doesn’t sound like a craft-beer model!
Also this month, Boston Beer rolled out its own “spiked sparkling water” under the new brand Truly Spiked & Sparkling. While not going as far as calling the drink “healthier,” Truly’s marketing materials do underscore that the drinks (in three flavors) are low-calorie and made “with simple ingredients, using absolutely no artificial flavors or sweeteners.”
I call it Hard-Soda Syndrome.
As I see it, the success of Not Your Father’s Root Beer did more than create the hard-soda category; it actually kicked down the door for the beer category to go in any direction brewers see fit. What Not Your Father’s Small Town Brewery did for hard soda—first mover into a new category and thus the one to catch—Wachusett and Boston Beer hope to do for hard seltzer.
Now, I haven't had an opportunity to try either of these new brews, but Nauti and Truly also took an interesting cue from the nonalcohol-beverage world, extending beer in a new direction. Just as consumers are moving away from sodas in nonalcohol—too much sugar, empty calories, zero nutrition—they could also rebel against the hard-soda movement, looking instead for a, yes, “healthier” way to catch a buzz.
“A few years ago, I began noticing many of my friends and family members giving up traditional soda for flavored sparkling water,” said Casey O’Neill, a member of the innovation team behind Truly Spiked & Sparkling.
So expect more players in this arena soon. But more than that, watch for innovation in the beer industry to branch out in ways we’ve never seen before.
"We believe Wachusett may be the first craft brewery in the country to research and develop a clear malt base formula and create its own line of ready-to-drink beverages," said Ned LaFortune, co-founder and president of Wachusett Brewing.
This means the innovation door is wide open for LaFortune and Wachsett. Hard sports? Hard protein? Hard cappuccino? Heck, hard water! Count on it.
Some might call it a rebooting of the flavored-malt-beverage category, but I look at it differently. We’re entering a remarkable era in beer brewing, dually driven by the entrepreneurial nature of craft brewing and the desire to be the first to score a home run in a new subcategory. It's a place where the rules are thrown out and creativity blends with hops and barley in an idea fermenter.
That sounds like a nice place to be to me.
Steve Holtz, who writes the Fluid Thoughts blog, is the online news director and beverage editor for Winsight Media. He has been covering the convenience-store industry and the beverage category for more than a decade. Contact him at sholtz@winsightmedia.com.
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