Firestone Walker Breaks All The Rules with Mind Haze Turbo Radlers

During the craft beer boom, distinct beer styles acted as a helpful compass, setting clear expectations for consumers before they made a purchase. Alongside formal style guidelines, beer marketers often leaned on widely accepted conventions when branding product lines or series aimed at fans of specific styles. Sticking to style had its benefits: if you said to a consumer “IPA,” you provided a shortcut to their taste expectations. But as time passes and today’s younger drinkers, who weren’t part of that original craft beer zeitgeist, come of age, these traditional rules are starting to lose their grip on the market. Firestone Walker is stepping up to challenge the status quo, betting that in 2025, to make something truly innovative in beer, you’ve got to break a few eggs.

Firestone released Mind Haze, their first Hazy IPA, six years ago in January 2019. Considered late by Hazy IPA standards, its launch was certainly not too late to make a big impact. Originally sold as part of Firestone Walker’s core lineup—which has included favorites like Union Jack, Pivo Pils, and DBA over the years, Mind Haze quickly began taking on a…mind of its own (sorry). In the spirit of Hazy IPAs, which thrive on variation, new flavor themes soon fell under the Mind Haze spell, including Tiki Smash, Citrus Cyclone, Cosmic Crusher, Brain Melter, and of course a Double Mind Haze. While the ABVs, hops, and flavor themes varied, each was called out distinctly as an IPA, until now.

Turbo Button 🕹️

In late January 2025, Firestone introduced a new evolution under the Mind Haze banner. The series includes three fruit-centric flavors: Lemonade Rage, Watermelon Rage, and Grapefruit Rage, and though the line utilizes the Hazy IPA’s overarching brand name, those familiar three letters are omitted in favor of Turbo Radler, more than doubling the strength of a traditional Radler to 8% ABV.

“Modern drinkers don’t care about style guidelines, so why should we?” Firestone’s CMO Dustin Hinz explained. “Radlers are traditionally low ABV, call it 4% [ed note: Stiegl’s radlers, among the most popular in the style, are even lower at 2.5%]. But we saw a lane between traditional Radlers and the harder-hitting FMBs and RTDs. We felt like we could thread the needle: build something that smacked the flavor-forward expectations of those drinkers while staying true to the brewing standards we care about.”

Winning Combo 🎰

In addition to the growth areas that Dustin mentions, including “Flavor-Forward”; FMBs; and RTDs, Mind Haze Turbo Radlers combine two of the top growing craft beer styles of 2024: Hazy Double IPAs (+27%) and Shandy/Radlers (+28%).

Fundamentally a beer at heart, the Turbo Radlers benefit from both the Firestone and Mind Haze names, helping stand out among the crowd of high-ABV FMB brands that they’re designed to compete with. Still, with a six-year history of being synonymous with Hazy IPA, I was curious what type of internal debate may have gone into the decision to break through that invisible barrier. From the standpoint of consumer confusion, how would Firestone Walker reconcile Mind Haze’s history as an IPA with its new cousin?

“Mind Haze was built to bend expectations,” added Hannah Barnett, Brand Director. “It’s juicy, fruit-forward, and sensory-driven, so flipping that DNA into a new expression made sense. Turbo Radler doesn’t dilute the Mind Haze identity—it expands it.”

A New Main Squeeze

Back in 2021, Firestone Walker acquired Cali Squeeze, a line of 5% ABV fruited Hefeweizens, from their friends and neighbors at SLO Brewing Co. In addition to fast-tracking their entry into the growing, fruit-forward beer space, the brand name must have been very attractive to a brewery that brands itself “A California Beer Company” on each can.

Cali Squeeze, which co-founder David Walker referred to at the time as “Fruit with Benefits”, provided the brewery with a beer-focused alternative to the hard seltzer trend that felt more natural to Firestone Walker. Acquiring the existing brand family would also allow Firestone’s traditional hop-forward beers, the heart and soul of the brewery, to maintain separation in their portfolio.

The distance created necessary clarity for the Firestone Walker and Cali Squeeze brands to operate under different hierarchies, allowing for smoother communication to their unique target customers, occasions, and value propositions.

Cali Squeeze keeps it simple by operating on two levels: brand + fruit, likely seeking a customer looking for exactly that, with FW mostly absent. Turbo Radlers are much noisier, by design. The pecking order begins with Firestone Walker in a subtle way (similar to New Belgium and Voodoo Ranger), then screams MIND HAZE, followed by the electric flavor like LEMONADE RAGE, then eventually arriving at the new concept, Turbo Radler.

With Cali Squeeze’s fruit-driven approach, it’s still hard not to see parallels between it and the new Turbo Radlers. Each beer’s base, Hefeweizen and Hazy IPA respectively, already provide fruity components. While both incorporate natural flavors as well, Cali Squeeze emphasizes the use of real fruit, whereas the Turbo Radlers do not.

“There’s definitely some overlap. Both brands are fruit-forward, refreshing, and drinker-first. But the energy and occasion are different,” Hannah offered. “Cali-Squeeze is easy-drinking, California-in-a-can. Real fruit, real beer, real life. It’s built for the session. Light, bright, and laid-back. Mind Haze Rage is a jolt. It’s Friday night, not Sunday afternoon. It’s for the drinker who wants something bold, big, and unexpected without tasting like a science experiment.”

While it’s way too early to measure the success of 2025’s gamble, the bet on Cali Squeeze appears to be paying off in spades. The family grew +24% during a challenging 2024 for many craft brewers, reaching a size that—for perspective—is over 72% of the entire Shandy/Radler category across the United States.

Redefining the Rules

Craft beer initially broke through as an alternative to what many consumers saw as a sea of single-style sameness. "IPA" meant flavor intensity, aroma, bitterness and a host of other experiences that the ubiquitous large lager brands weren't delivering. But a funny thing happened on the way to being an agent of change: craft got caught up in faithfulness to style, eventually restricting its ability to innovate.

Concepts like Turbo Radler or Voodoo Ranger might feel like a departure from the norm, but that's kind of the point. And it's a welcome bit of evolution for this segment that we all love. “It’s not about breaking away from the craft,” Dustin added, “It’s about breaking the idea that craft has to live in narrow lanes that were defined by the trends, pricing, and positioning of the past.”