• 🌞 Constellation Brands Taking Time with Pacifico
• 🦁 Young Lion IP Sold to K2 Brothers Brewing
• 🇯🇵 How a New Law May Open Doors for Shochu
• 🍺 Brewbound Live: Future-Proofing Flagships
• 👩‍💼 Best Day Adds Industry Vets to NA C-Suite

Patience is paying off for Pacifico.

Constellation Brands is giving its third-largest beer brand the time and space it needs to grow, Beer Division president Jim Sabia said during the annual Beer Industry Summit last week.

Sabia said: “We're taking our time and being very disciplined.”

Pacifico finished 2023 as the 22nd largest beer category brand family – ahead of Molson Coors’ Blue Moon, Mark Anthony’s Mike’s Hard Lemonade, and Sierra Nevada – in multi-outlet retailers and convenience stores (MULO+C) tracked by market research firm Circana. 

In its first appearance on Circana’s top 25 beer category brand families list, Pacifico’s dollar sales increased +28.8%, to $349.6 million, accounting for 0.76 share of total beer dollars (+0.16 share points compared to the prior year).

Pacifico gained +5.3 points in ACV in the 52-week period ending December 2, according to NIQ data provided by 3 Tier Beverages. At 35.3% ACV, it has a lot of runway compared to its elder siblings Modelo (76.9% ACV) and Corona, which has an ACV in the high 90th percentile where distributed and in the mid-80s overall, according to NIQ data and 3 Tier consultant Stephanie Roatis. 

Sabia said: “If we nurture it properly, it’s going to be a big brand.”

In Los Angeles, Pacifico was the third-largest beer brand in dollars sales for the 52-week period ending January 7, according to Circana data shared by a Constellation spokesperson.

Insiders can read more about Pacifico’s growth markets and Constellation’s lessons learned in past launches. 

Rochester, New York-based K2 Brothers Brewing has acquired the Young Lion Brewing brand. 

The sale of Young Lion’s intellectual property follows Other Half Brewing Company acquiring Young Lion’s 10,000-barrel production brewery and taproom in Canandaigua, New York, last November.  

Young Lion was founded in 2017 by Alicia Wolk and Jennifer Newman, who also served as CEO. K2 was also founded in 2017 and forged a contract brewing relationship with Young Lion after exceeding its capacity.

Last May, K2 acquired a former elementary school in Walworth, New York, which will become a second production brewery and taproom for the brand. The taproom is open now, with brewing operations expected to begin next month.

Newman, who will join K2 to continue to lead the Young Lion brand, said in the release: “We are thrilled about this new chapter for Young Lion. In addition to a strong relationship with them, K2 is known for their incredible beer. We know they can execute our recipes with the same high quality. I look forward to the exciting possibilities that lie ahead for the brand and am grateful for the support of our friends and customers."

K2 Brothers Brewing president Bradley Kennedy added: "The Young Lion brand has had a positive and unique impact on Western and Central New York's craft beer industry. It was a natural fit for K2 to become Young Lion's new home."

The transaction is expected to close in February.

For decades, the Japanese distilled beverage shochu has been mislabeled in the U.S. as Korean soju, but a new law is clearing up the difference for consumers— and clearing a path for category growth. 

AB 416 in California – modeled after an identical law established in 2022 in New York –  passed last November, gives shochu distillers access to a new channel: Type 41 soft liquor license holders, putting it in the same category as beer and wine. Previously, sochu at less than 24% ABV could be sold to Type 41 licensees, but it had to be labeled as soju, which is a Korean distilled product. 

The confusing labeling practice was established in the late 1990s, when the Korean soju industry obtained an identical exception that allowed them to sell soju with an ABV of 24% or less to Type 41 licensees. 

When Japanese interests inquired for the same permissions, the Alcoholic Beverage Control gave the nod as long as they labeled their product as soju, overlooking an important cultural distinction. While made with similar ferments, sochu also differs from soju by the stricter regulations governing its production, particularly the highest quality style honkaku that dominates imports into the U.S. But the average U.S. consumer likely doesn’t know the difference.

Chikako Ichihara, U.S. liaison officer for the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association (JSS), said: “The biggest hurdle in the U.S. is education. While Japan’s other cultural treasure, sake, is fairly well known, shochu is at this time somewhat an unknown product.”

Insiders can read more, including trends in the space and the impact of state-level regulatory changes.

As craft beer enters a new uncharted era, leaders of established breweries shared how they keep decades-old flagship brands fresh and relevant for new generations of drinkers during the Brewbound Live business conference last month in Marina del Rey, California.

Joining the conversation were:

• Bell’s Brewery EVP Carrie Yunker
• Rogue Ales president Steven Garrett
• CANarchy Craft Brewery Collective CCO Chris Russell
• And Lawson’s Finest Liquids CEO Adeline Druart.

Yunker said: “Something that's really important, particularly with a decades-old brand, is you don't want to alienate your fan base that has built and followed you just to chase innovation. You really want to make sure that it makes sense for that family and that is what they expect to be drinking.”

Yunker discussed how Bell’s has evolved two of its biggest beers, flagship Two Hearted IPA and seasonal Oberon, into brand families. For Two Hearted, Bell’s found drinkers appreciated classic styles brewed excellently, but Oberon fans were different and “gave us a lot of permission to play with flavor.”

Garrett discussed Rogue’s journey to launching an entire family of Dead Guy-branded beers, named for the brewery’s flagship.

Garrett said: “There's a risk to innovating, but there's probably a bigger risk to just standing still. Now that we're doing it, now that it's starting to work, it's interesting to see all the people that have worked at Rogue for a lot of years that are like, ‘Oh, we thought about this for a long time, and it's just hard to pull the trigger.’”

Insiders can read more and watch the discussion in its entirety.

Non-alcoholic (NA) brewery Best Day has hired Jane Armstrong Hockman as chief operating officer and Todd Karnig as chief sales officer, the company announced in a press release yesterday.

Armstrong Hockman joined Best Day in August 2023 from Molson Coors, where she spent more than 17 years in a variety of roles. Her most recent title was business unit leader and general manager of the company’s emerging growth division.

At Best Day, Armstrong Hockman “will lead and scale the company’s growth and national business operations including finance, operations, and commercial and business development,” according to the release.

Karnig joined Best Day this month from hard kombucha and spirits-based RTD maker JuneShine, where he served as chief commercial officer for three years. He also led sales for Stone Brewing from August 2013 through March 2019. 

Karnig is tasked with guiding Best Day’s sales team “through a robust national expansion strategy,” according to the release.

CEO and founder Tate Huffard said in the release: “Focusing on national expansion and integration across our business will allow Best Day Brewing to do what it does best: provide a premium non-alcoholic beer to this sector’s rapidly expanding consumer base. Our brand momentum strengthened significantly in 2023, and we look forward to deepening our strategy and potential in 2024 and beyond.” 

Best Day is approaching nationwide distribution, with sales in 31 states in major chain retailers including Whole Foods, BevMo, Target, Total Wine and H.E.B., according to the release. The NA brand is also available via Amazon and directly to consumers on its own website.

The brewery was the fourth-largest NA craft brand (excluding hop waters) for the 26-week period ending November 4 in total U.S. retailers tracked by NielsenIQ, according to the release.