Those starting a brewery often have a clear idea of what they want to achieve with it: The kind of beer they want to brew. The type of drinkers they aim to reach. The shelves and counters they hope to find their cans and bottles on.
At Sunriver Brewing in Oregon, head brewer Brett Thomas says their range of styles was first determined based on where the beer was going to be sold back in 2014: the brewery’s restaurant. “The beers were very pub oriented, and they were geared toward more of a transient tourist demographic,” he says, as Sunriver’s 2,000 year-long inhabitants can welcome up to 15,000 additional visitors on weekends. “Our beers were really geared toward those people with very basic styles for craft beer: a blonde ale, a pale ale, an amber ale, and a stout.”
Soon though, as the brewery attracted wholesalers’ attention and opened other taprooms and pubs, Sunriver Brewing began to expand its offerings in order to find that sweet but challenging spot “between making cutting-edge beer and making beer that people know and love.”
Sometimes breweries find that the clear path they had in mind is not so clear to others. That’s what Humble Sea cofounder Frank Scott Krueger discovered when he launched the California-based brewery in 2015. “We originally set out to be a lager-first brewery—that’s what we were passionate about, and still are,” he says. “But back when we launched, the lager love hadn’t really caught on yet in California. So, to keep the lights on, we pivoted and leaned hard into hop-forward beers, especially our foggy IPAs, which put us on the map.”
At first, 95% of their beer was on the hoppy side of the spectrum. Today, having gained trust from their consumers, they were able to return to their first love: 30% of their beers are now lagers.
As time passes, breweries are struggling to find the answer to the following question: how does one find balance in an always evolving industry, where trends come and go and drinkers are either adventurous, loyal to their favorite brew, or a bit of both?
Expand Your Crowd
Between bold new releases and familiar brews, Sunriver Brewing decided not to choose and instead dug into a little bit of everything for everyone. “We want to make sure that we have a beverage that fits everybody’s needs,” Thomas says. “Not everybody wants craft beer, so we’re going to make some craft seltzer, but if you would have asked me two years ago if we would be making a hard seltzer, I would have said never.”
Sunriver’s Coolwater American light lager appeals to its OG consumers—tourists—while the barrel aged and wild series speak to a more “high-end” demographic. And then there are the people in between: “We still live in an IPA culture—that’s what everybody wants,” Thomas believes. “Half of the tap handles anywhere you go are IPAs or some variation, so we have to be very strong in that realm.”
Humble Sea took the opposite route, first appealing to a very specific and picky demographic. “We were focused on beer nerds, the kind of people who trade cans, track every release, and fly across the country just to drink the next thing,” Scott Krueger says. “As we’ve grown, we’ve also connected with a wider crowd, people who just want to hang out and have a great beer with friends.”
Now the team even tailors its offerings to fit the audience of their different taprooms. “In Pacifica, West Coast IPAs fly,” Scott Krueger says. “Santa Cruz leans hard into Pilsners and lagers, and Alameda has a solid group of beer nerds who love big, bold stuff like triple and quad IPAs.”
Finding that balance isn’t just about the beers they brew, but how and where they sell them. With experience, breweries had to learn not to put all their eggs in one basket. With their comfortable margins, leaning hard on their pubs and taprooms may seem like a good idea until an unexpected pandemic hits and everything has to close down, while relying solely on wholesalers can backfire when a trusted partner gets acquired and changes its portfolio entirely.
But this also leads to conflicting priorities: “When you sell beer through so many channels, you end up with competing agendas,” Thomas says. “What does the wholesaler want? What does a tavern owner want? What do our pub operators want? What does our ownership want to see? What do we want to make?”
In short: it’s a never-ending stream of adaptation while keeping in mind to not take anything for granted, precisely not your customers.
Back to the Flagship
While they can’t predict what’s coming next, brewers have seen a shift happening in the last few years. “People still love trying new stuff, but there’s some beer release fatigue out there,” Scott Krueger says. “More folks just want a reliable, delicious beer they can drink while catching up with friends.”
Beer writer Jeff Alworth has also been wondering about how the power of nostalgia is serving mainstay beers such as Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale and what breweries have been doing about it. “Beer has spent a lot of the last decade focused on novelty and discovery,” he writes. “Many breweries didn’t even bother with flagship brands, offering only a steady stream of new products. Breweries dating to earlier eras watched interest in their flagships dwindle, and many neglected them.”
While Humble Sea and Sunriver Brewing haven’t been there as long as breweries like Sierra Nevada or Guinness, they’ve seen the power flagships hold for their brand and their consumers.
“We never saw ourselves as a flagship or core beer kind of brewery,” Scott Krueger admits. Their drinkers decided otherwise though, and made their Foggy IPA, Socks & Sandals, stand out. “The return of flagships makes sense. People want something familiar and great, and [Socks & Sandals] fits that bill.”
It’s thanks to wholesalers, Thomas says, that Vicious Mosquito became Sunriver’s flagship IPA. “Back to 2014, wholesalers were still very interested in brand building and if they found something that sells a little bit, they’d latch onto it and do everything they could to exploit those sales,” he says. “That’s what happened with Vicious Mosquito. People may not have had any of the other beers that we make, but they know that one, and they love it. It’s really the beer that built our brand, and we treat it as such.”
Anaïs Lecoq is a French freelance writer and author focusing on the French beer industry, its culture, and history, for French and English-speaking publications. Her first essay published in 2022, “Maltriarcat — quand les femmes ont soif de bière est d’égalité,” explores beer, gender and sexism. In 2023, she won first place in the Best Brewery Profile category at the North American Guild of Beer Writers Awards.
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