As an established brand name, Great Divide wanted to play it safe when it came to releasing innovative and fresh ideas.
As the Great American Beer Fest gets going this weekend, the Denver brewery announced last month the launch of a new brand imprint, Beach Milk, that will have new styles in smaller runs that aren’t normally associated with the veteran brewery explained Marketing Manager Matt Sandy.
“When we start to consider the types of beer we can brew and package on a production scale, our hands are often tied,” he said. “Beers must have a healthy shelf-life and we must have enough selling points to warrant the current can minimums. We also have to be cost-conscious as these beers are going through a distributor.
“With Beach Milk and the goal of moving these quickly through our taprooms we can be more flexible with styles, ingredients, and price points.”
These beers certainly could see a wider release based on popularity, Sandy added.
“Now that we have our Hoppy Variety Pack which features a rotating Experimental IPA, I could certainly see one of these beers graduating to that placement,” he said.
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The first two releases on September 15 emphasized that diversity of styles. Dream Argument is a New England-Style IPA brewed with Nectaron, El Dorado, Citra, and HBC 586 hops. Solid Together is a Smoothie Sour with blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, strawberry, mango, cherry, black currant, and lactose.
“My goal for Beach Milk Project is to create an outlet for our brewers to have fun making new beers with the highest quality ingredients on a small scale,” explained Innovation Brewer, Tim Batog in a release. “This Project isn’t intended to hit shelves outside of the brewery, but instead, give our taproom customers an inside look at what we can do here and what we like to do here.”
Sandy said they are not too concerned with there being a disconnect for consumers and marketing them as a side brand of Great Divide
“We’re actually passively encouraging it with some of our marketing and the absence of any large Great Divide call-outs on the can,” Sandy said. “We want people to have to do a little digging. If you know, you know.”
As mentioned, there is the potential of these beers eventually making it to retail — most likely small, local, independent retailers — where the consumer might purchase the beer because they know it’s a Great Divide side project or because it’s something new they haven’t seen before.
“In either case, it will eventually lead them back to the source which is our taprooms,” Sandy said.
A recently installed canning line allows the brewery to be much more flexible in terms of the volume of beer they can process in a single run, which opened the door to these small batch releases.
“When we were considering what to name this project, we wanted something that still had meaning to the brewery but would also inspire people to ask questions,” Sandy said in a release. ”Beach Milk Project is an odd but fun word jumble. It’s so weird it works.”
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