• 📉 Twisted Tea Braces for Competition
• 📰 ICYMI: Boston Beer’s Tuesday News Dump
• 🍻 Fiddlehead Chasing 100K Barrels in 2024
• 🌾 Bart Watson: Hop Overstock Continues
• 🏔️ Holidaily Names New Brewing Ops Manager
• 👩‍💼 Molson Coors New President of Canadian Biz
• 🐐 Scofflaw Releases 16 oz. 12-Packs

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Boston Beer Company's full-year and fourth-quarter earnings report revealed -6% declines in shipments (sales to wholesalers) and depletions (sales to retailers) for the full year. Shipments (-3.5%) and depletions (-1%) improved in Q4. 

So far in 2024, Boston Beer has experienced a “slowdown” in the first eight weeks, contrasted with “a reasonably strong finish to 2023,” founder and chairman Jim Koch told investors. He attributed the sluggishness to Dry January, continued beer category “leakage” driven by Bud Light’s continued catastrophic declines, and the calendar cycling a price increase Boston Beer took in 2023 that drove increased load-in at the retail tier. 

To end 2023, the “traditional” part of the beer category, which Koch estimated accounts for 80% of volume, declined -4%, while the 20% that includes beyond beer grew volume +7%. 

For Boston Beer, those ratios are inverse, as beyond beer has long dominated its portfolio. Twisted Tea accounted for 49% of the company’s dollar sales at multioutlet retailers and convenience stores in 2023, according to market research firm Circana. Truly Hard Seltzer accounted for 31%. The remaining 20% was primarily split among Samuel Adams, Angry Orchard and Dogfish Head.

Retiring CEO Dave Burwick highlighted the performance and opportunities for Twisted Tea and Truly Hard Seltzer. 

In Q4, Twisted Tea dollar sales increased +29% and the brand gained +2.4 sharepoints, accounting for 28% of the total flavored malt beverage (FMB) segment in the off-premise channel, Burwick said. He attributed this growth to the brand’s Q3 college football tailgate campaign, increased media spending and optimized packaging. 

A standout for Twisted Tea has been its variety pack, which was the third-largest and fastest-growing SKU in the FMB segment, Burwick said.

Opportunities for the brand include increasing shelf space, as the company estimates it accounts for 18% of FMB space at retail despite having a 28% share of total FMB dollars and 85% of hard tea dollars. 

This year, Twisted Tea faces a tidal wave of competitors from all corners of the beverage-alcohol industry, including AriZona Hard Iced Tea, Monster’s Nasty Beast, FIFCO’s Lipton Hard Iced Tea, New Belgium’s Voodoo Ranger Hardcharged Tea and many more.

Koch said: “Today, everybody is piling into it – there’s literally hundreds of new competitors. I don't see much traction from the vast majority of them. What I don't know is, will something begin to get traction with a brand name from somewhere else, like AriZona or a Monster? They have a big, high hill to climb because Twisted Tea is the original. We defined the flavor profile, so to a hard tea drinker, it should taste like Twisted Tea.”

Koch doesn’t envision “a strong No. 2 emerging,” but he admitted the segment is beginning to include “great competitors,” which makes sense given the hard tea segment’s trends.

Twisted Tea’s continued growth will depend on the company’s ability to recruit new drinkers to its wide base, which ranges “from upscale college kids to blue collar NASCAR fans,” Koch said. 

Insiders can read more about Boston Beer’s strategy for Truly Hard Seltzer and its evolving outlook on spirits-based RTDs.

Several Boston Beer stories dropped ahead of Tuesday’s call, including news that CEO Dave Burwick will retire later this year. 

Insiders can read details on Burwick’s departure, including his successor.

Blue Cloud and PepsiCo are getting out of the bev-alc distribution business. Hard MTN Dew, Boston Beer’s flavored malt beverage venture with PepsiCo, will expand into all 50 states as it transitions to Boston Beer’s network of beer wholesalers. 

And Boston Beer released its full financial results for Q4 and full-year 2023. 

Insiders can catch up on all the news in the links above.

Fiddlehead Brewing founder Matt Cohen shared an update on the Shelbourne, Vermont-based craft brewery’s trends in 2023 and pace for 2024. The 13-year-old brewery increased its output +22% last year, to 91,000 barrels of beer produced, and 1.286 million cases sold.  

The growth is led by flagship Fiddlehead IPA, which increased sales +31% across its 10-state footprint in the northeast. Forty-two percent of the beer’s sales were on draft in 2023, a +15% increase year-over-year. In the off-premise channel, 12-packs and 19.2 oz singles are also showing “significant growth.” 

For 2024, the brand is on pace to sell 100,000 barrels of beer, which would place the company among the top 30 Brewers Association-defined craft breweries. 

Cohen wrote: “We are particularly excited that even in our more mature markets, such as our home market here in Vermont and in the capital region of New York and in Massachusetts we saw double-digit growth in sales. That kind of growth excites us because it reflects the fact that we are not just attracting new consumers of Fiddlehead in new markets but we are also selling more beer in places where Fiddlehead is already well-loved and well-established.”

Fiddlehead was Brewbound’s Craft Brewery of the Year in 2022. Watch this interview with Cohen to learn more about the company.

This time last year, Brewers Association (BA) chief economist Bart Watson warned that the U.S. hop supply was becoming “unsustainable,” and predicted a drop in hop production in 2023. 

While hop acreage did decline “fairly sharply” last year, declining by nearly 6,000 acres, crop yields ended above 2022 levels, according to Watson’s blog post this week for the BA. That increase adds to the growing overstock of hop supply in the market.

Over the past decade, hop stocks have increased from approximately 115 million pounds in March 2013, to 185 million pounds in March 2023 – equivalent to “roughly two years of usage,” according to Watson. 

While 2023 stock reports were down versus 2022, the rate of decline ”would take nearly five years to get back to the 35 to 40 million pounds of inventory that dealers estimated last year were in excess of needs.” That estimate is also based on 2022 yields, not the elevated 2023 production that was up 104 million pounds year-over-year (YoY). 

One contributor that “may have delayed the U.S. hop reckoning” and production decline so far has been increased hop demand overseas in previous years. Converting exported hops, including extracts, into raw pounds, Watson estimates that hop exports have increased from an average of 40 million pounds per year in the early 2010s, to nearly 65 million pounds in 2021/2022. 

However, exports “took a big step back” in 2022, declining -20% YoY. That decline in demand, mixed with the increase in crop in 2023, suggests that “we won’t see as much of a decline in the 2024 stock numbers,” Watson told Brewbound. 

Insiders can read more, including what this means for brewers.

Gluten-free craft brewer Holidaily Brewing has tapped Jeff Joslin as its new brewing operations manager.

Joslin’s career includes stints at Left Hand, Kodiac and Rogue. He studied at the Siebel Institute of Technology and Doemens Academy.

Joslin will oversee brewing operations for Holidaily’s two Colorado taprooms and its seven-market footprint, which includes Arizona, California, Kansas, Texas, Wyoming and the Kansas City, Missouri, metropolitan area, in addition to its home state.

Holidaily founder Karen Hertz said in a press release: “Holidaily has aggressive production and company evolution goals for 2024 and beyond, and I believe Jeff will be an invaluable addition to an already powerful brew team.”

The country’s only certified gluten-free and woman-owned brewery, Holidaily was named a Brewbound Rising Star in 2021.

Chantelle Butler will succeed Frederic Landtmeters as president of Molson Coors Canada in April, Molson Coors announced Tuesday.

Butler will take over the post on April 2. She previously served as Molson Coors’ VP of sales finance for Canada. She also serves as chair of The Beer Store, Canada’s largest beer retailer.

Landtmeters will exit the company in April after 12 years to move closer to his family in Belgium. 

Atlana’s Scofflaw is adding 16 oz. can 12-packs of its Basement IPA and POG Basement IPA. The company said it is giving away “33% more” beer than the 12 oz. 12-packs via the “Big Goat Cans.”

Scofflaw said: “Be on the lookout at your local grocery or package store.”

We’re taking this show on the road. The Brewbound Podcast On-Location is heading to industry gatherings across the country, starting March 12-14 with the California Craft Beer Summit in Sacramento, hosted by the California Craft Brewers Association. 

Look for Brewbound Podcast hosts Jess Infante and Justin Kendall conducting interviews with industry leaders on the show floor. 

Reach out to podcast@brewbound.com if you’d like to connect at the event. Also, look for more Brewbound Podcast On-Location announcements in the near future.