Social Media Standouts

Coming off two predictions posts to kick off the year, anything that ties into Nostradouglas’ forward-looking themes has been jumping off my social media page. This week’s features include hatred toward IPAs reaching viral status (again) on TikTok, a local brewery’s venture into Premium Lager including one of the few terms I thought was off limits, then lastly the rise of cannabis terpenes as an ingredient, which are set to drive the next wave of beverage trends.

1. IPA Hate Account

Her name is Emma, and she hates IPAs. So she reviews them. Emma Lewis is based out of Minnesota and her TikTok account @IHateIPAs has only existed for one year. In that time, she’s managed to accumulate over 40K followers, 12K of whom signed up in the last week when a video of Imperial Anti-Hero amassed over 1.1 Million views and 140,000 likes. Using her deadpan expressions, monotone voice, and disdain for IPAs, Emma puts her suffering on full display while playing the role of heel to IPA fans as she tears them to shreds. The fun of TikTok is that every video shared on the platform is pushed out to a test group of users outside their following and if its resonating, has the possibility of going viral to an exponentially larger new audience who have never seen Emma’s schtick before.

@ihateipasImperial Anti-Hero #perfectpour #revolution #revolutionbrewing #antihero #antiheroipa #imperial #imperialantihero #revbrew #revbrewchicago #chicago #chitown #ipa #ipareview #beertokcommunity #beertok #chicagobeer

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IPAs have been a social media punchline for young content creators since COVID, giving young 20-somethings a easy piece of ammunition to sling at their elder millennial rivals. Between the high price and domination on store shelves & draft lines, IPAs have left potential beer fans jaded toward craft breweries. The more that videos like Emma’s go viral, the bigger the challenge that IPAs face if they ever want to be considered “cool” again.

The reach that this video gained reaffirms my’ (wishful) prediction that craft breweries begin to disassociate from the term craft in 2024. My theory is not that existing craft beer fans view the term negatively, as it’s often tied to quality in their minds. It’s the much larger potential audience who does NOT like craft who I believe associate craft and IPA synonymously. While mostly symbolic, disassociation would serve as an early domino that local, independent (2 terms that do resonate) breweries will need to take as they attract their next wave of loyal customers who are turned off by IPAs. Sure some people will always say craft, just like some still say microbrews, but over the course of a decade the entire rhetoric could shift.

2. Domesticated Craft

I still can’t believe that I unironically predicted 2024 to be the year of the lager. The wheels have actually been in motion for years as IPA-centric brewers built more one-off lagers into their rotation. This strategy helps them stay new and change with the seasons, however the ABV% and price are still too high to infiltrate any meaningful portion of macro drinkers who are open to trading up. Personally, I don’t believe in blanket statements that attempt to classify “the macro drinker” because I think they’re too vast and wide of a spectrum with varying degrees of loyalty. There’s always enough of a percentage willing to move on to something more flavorful.

In a recent Social Media Standouts post, I shouted out Indianapolis powerhouse Sun King for their relaunch of Indianapolis Brewing Company as a vehicle to enter the American Lager category. Their neighbor Daredevil Brewing went the opposite direction last year by keeping their existing name and branding on the can, though still making the design feel familiar for a more affordably priced Premium Lager. A year into it’s market launch, a particular word stood out to me on this graphic that they shared 👇 Domestic.

Notice I naturally used the term “Macro” above as my way of summarizing Bud/Michelob/Miller/Coors/Pabst/Hamm’s/Stella/etc. but that’s probably more of an industry term, perhaps specifically a craft beer industry term. Casual beer fans and especially bar & restaurant menus are more likely to use the term Domestic. I hadn’t considered a local brewery attempting to weaponize that term to help bridge the gap and perhaps see their Premium Lager positioned accordingly. Notice the word “Craft” isn’t anywhere on the graphic either, which I assume was a very easy decision for the brewery. The question that I’d ask myself and have yet to decide on is whether the word Domestic pairs well with Premium? Or conflicts with it? Either way, I’m into it, but let me know what you think in the comments 🙏

3. Terpenes

While “the year of the lager” requires some caveats as far as the scale and impact it can have in a single year, there’s a newer prediction I’m 100% certain of because it’s already underway. We’re seeing a head on collision between between 1) THC Beverages (Delta 8 & Delta 9), 2) Breweries looking for their next growth mechanism, 3) THC’s connection to hops and IPAs, and 4) beyond. A new ingredient that will help weave this connection is terpenes, the source of flavor and aroma in cannabis without the psychoactive components. It’s already being used in new, one-off IPAs and Hop Waters, but being the foundation of this Dry January-influenced NA cocktail from WhistlePig caught my attention.

For an non-alcoholic cocktail to simulate the real thing, it needs to have intense flavors that slow you down. That could be driven by factors including sweetness, potent botanicals, and now perhaps a concentrated dose of the “dank” flavors of Cannabis. If it drinks like a La Croix, it’s not going to create any semblance of the experience of drinking a cocktail. So WhistlePig developed a creative a product “crafted with 100% Rye Non-Whiskey, Barrel-Aged Maple Syrup and Terpenes cultivated from cannabis grown in whiskey barrels, then isolated by Satori Premium Cannabis in the Green Mountain State.”

Their description adds that “terpenes add hazy aromas and a toasty mouthfeel for taste that flies high above other non-alc cocktails.” Notice the connection to both IPAs (Dank + Hazy) and THC (flies high) in their copy and one more cool aspect of this experiment is that their passing 100% of the proceeds from its sales to the bartending community this January who face their most challenging month for tips.

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So what’s the commonality between an IPA Hate account on TikTok, a small brewery using the term “domestic”, and a distillery releasing a Cannabis-themed NA product with cues toward IPA? They all showcase a need or an effort to break down the walls and find overlap between categories. Like combining both a love and hatred for IPAs:

@beeraficionado @beeraficionado ♬ original sound - BeerAficionado

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