How to Innovate Like an OG: Sierra Nevada Positions Its Core To Advance in 2025

Developing new beer brands has always been a creative thrill, but the tougher, and often more rewarding challenge is breathing new life into a longtime best-seller. With beloved classics, it's rarely about changing the recipe; it’s finding fresh ways to draw new attention to the brand while still connecting to its roots. With trend-driven, rapidly-evolving styles, on the other hand, there's more freedom to tweak both the flavor and the packaging to better resonate with today’s quickly shifting tastes. And in a market that bombards consumers with endless choices, clarity and simplicity are becoming necessities as new brands try to fight through the noise and build trust. Just last month, Sierra Nevada—a brewery so many of us admire—rolled out three portfolio updates that perfectly illustrate each of these three scenarios.

As far as US craft beer goes, Sierra Nevada is as OG as it gets. After launching Pale Ale commercially in 1981, the brand went on to redefine what beer could be and the role hops could play. Its aggressive Cascade hop profile—citrusy, piney, floral— didn’t just introduce the Pale Ale, it popularized it. Today, Sierra Pale Ale outsells any other in the US by 9X and represents 45% of the style’s market, per NIQ¹.

Data generously provided by 3 Tier Beverages

That legacy of innovation didn’t end in the ’80s either. One of the most pivotal moves in craft's history was Sierra Nevada’s early adoption of the term “hazy” in 2018. While many regional brewers were still rejecting the trend, Sierra jumped in early—and they built what few others have: a second flagship. Hazy Little Thing took off and now powers a growing family of spin-offs like Tropical, Rad, and Cosmic Little Thing that helped power the brewery toward 5% growth in 2024, in NIQ, and remain the #3 largest BA-defined craft brewery by volume.

But when it comes to the legendary Pale Ale though, the general rule has always been: you don’t mess with it. Or do you?

National Brewery Celebrating National Parks

Starting this month, the brewery began releasing limited-edition package designs of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale highlighting a new partnership with the National Park Foundation (NPF). The classic Pale Ale design has received subtle modifications and tweaks over its 45 year history, but until now the iconic mountain scene had never changed. As part of the four-month campaign, evocative images of the country’s most famous national parks, including Yosemite, Big Bend, Yellowstone, and Great Smoky Mountain National Park, will grace the outer cartons of all 6-packs & 12-packs.

All in all, Sierra Nevada nailed this partnership—and it got me thinking how any brewery whose flagship could use a spark, no matter the size, can take a page from this playbook and apply it to their local community. A few things stood out to me:

• It’s fresh without feeling forced. The National Park packaging doesn’t mess with what makes Pale Ale iconic—it just gives it new reasons to be noticed again, and that’s a rare feat.

• It fits the brand’s DNA. This isn’t a gimmick. Conservation and outdoor culture have always been part of Sierra’s identity, so this partnership doesn’t feel like a marketing play—it feels earned. Remember Resilience?

• Future layers still available. If they had brought the designs onto the bottles and cans as well, something even more collectible and lasting may have been unlocked. Practically speaking though, for their first time changing up the Pale Ale artwork and for such a limited time, leaving this added complexity for a future evolution of the campaign is wise.

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