Brace Yourselves, Winter Trends Are Coming 🗡️

In the game of beer sales, there’s very little winning taking place in Winter. It’s an exercise of holding your ground and staving off loses. The preceding holidays provide an opportunity to get creative, embrace this festive time of year, and sell some beer. The cold months that follow however are a lot less festive, kicking off with dry January, powering through the drudges of February, until finally St. Patrick’s Day provides a little bit of relief. In states that experience the seasons, the falloff in sales is so drastic compared the peak Summer that breweries are always fidgeting with their portfolio and release schedule during these dismal months, in search of a win, regardless of how small.

Today we’re going to look into the armory of strategies that craft beer has to attack during Winter, including:

• A breakdown of why Sierra Nevada Celebration and why the G.O.A.T. continues to win

• How listening to the vocal minority led to the two biggest mistakes we made with our Revolution seasonals

• Embracing darkness in the core (but not using malt)

• The Winterized +1

• The big Winter trend heading into 2025

The G.O.A.T. 🐐

Sierra Nevada’s Celebration Ale is not only one of craft beer’s original Winter seasonal beers, it has managed to stand the test of time by incorporating all the right variables to have a successful Winter. Whether due to early-mover advantage, foresight, nostalgia, or luck, acknowledging each component of the GOAT’s continued success is a healthy exercise. Three notable qualities to consider are:

❄️ The style builds off the style of their original flagship, Pale Ale, making it a natural extension for Sierra Nevada fans. Once called a Fresh Hop Ale, Celebration was able to sneak in an update to Fresh Hop IPA once those three letters became too popular to ignore.

❄️ At 6.8% ABV the recipe adds a little weight for the colder months compared to Pale Ale’s 5.6%, at an equivalent price, thus giving consumers extra value.

❄️ The brand double dips into two seasonal styles at once: 1) hop harvest, and 2) the holidays, without being so Christmas-themed that the beer feels out of season in your refrigerator come January and even February.

No brewery can easily emulate the success that Sierra has seen, but understanding all the forces coming together to make Celebration the perfect seasonal can layer in the necessary self-awareness when building/critiquing your own or refreshing/replacing an existing brand.

Beware The Vocal Minority