“If you called me right now and said, ‘Hey man, I want to do a collaboration,’ I’d say, ‘Okay cool, what are we doing that’s over 8% [ABV]?’”
John Gillooly, brewmaster at Drake’s Brewing Co. in San Leandro, California, isn’t speaking hypothetically. While preparing for a recent collaboration with Santa Rosa, California’s HenHouse Brewing Company, he and his counterpart at HenHouse didn’t even discuss any beer recipes under 7%. They decided on an 8.1% Double IPA they called Early Birds.
“It’s got to be something strong, that’s what people want,” Gillooly says.
Contrary to media attention around better-for-you, low-calorie and “lifestyle” beers, American consumers drink a lot of Double IPAs. According to Nielsen, dollar sales for Double IPAs brewed by Brewers Association-defined craft breweries grew +8.7% in 2019, second only to Hazy IPAs in terms of growth. The style had been gaining momentum pre-COVID, and as focus shifts to at-home consumption, breweries of all sizes are seeing a surge in demand for their biggest, booziest IPAs.
Drizly, an alcohol ecommerce platform, reports sales of Imperial and Double IPAs have increased +512% year-over-year as of early October, well ahead of Drizly’s baseline growth of +350% in 2020. The average price of a DIPA six-pack on Drizly is $13.18, more than a dollar more than the average IPA six-pack—but drinkers are willing to pay more for the higher alcohol content. Even at a premium price, these higher-ABV beers deliver bang for the buck.
Breweries are recognizing the value of the DIPA category, and that the style can appeal to more than just a niche, beer-geek audience. There’s been ample opportunity to grow sales of these beers, an opportunity accelerated by the shift to at-home drinking.
Double IPAs are, of course, not a new creation. They’ve been brewed for decades, but recently, they’ve grown beyond their taproom confines, and have continued to move into year-round, flagship territory for nationally distributed breweries. In 2020, a number of breweries around the country have announced new, year-round DIPAs, including Asheville, North Carolina’s Hi-Wire Brewing (Double Hi-Pitch IPA, 9% ABV); Nampa, Idaho’s Mother Earth Brewing Company (Hop Diggity DIPA, 8.2% ABV); Longmont, Colorado’s Oskar Blues Brewery (Can-O-Bliss Double IPA, 8.2%); and Bend, Oregon’s Deschutes Brewery (Royal Fresh Imperial IPA, 9% ABV). Paso Robles, California’s Firestone Walker Brewing Company will release Mind Haze Double IPA (8.3% ABV) in March 2021.
Breweries like New Belgium Brewing Co., Stone Brewing, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, and Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. have proven there’s major success to be had for DIPAs in grocery stores and other chain retailers. Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA is New Belgium’s best-selling beer, having overtaken the flagship Fat Tire Amber Ale for that title within the last six months. A shift to at-home drinking during the pandemic has only boosted its momentum; Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA’s sales in grocery, convenience, liquor, and other chain stores, as tracked by market research company IRI, are up +85% for the first three quarters of 2020 versus the same time a year ago.
New Belgium doubled down on that success with its newest rotating IPA in the Voodoo Ranger line, an 8.5% Hazy Imperial IPA called Higher Plane that debuted in September. Dave Knospe, New Belgium’s senior brand manager for Voodoo Ranger, says the thinking behind Higher Plane was simple: Combine beer’s two fastest-growing styles, Double IPAs and Hazy IPAs, and “make one on a national scale.”
That mirrored the thinking behind Sierra Nevada’s 9% ABV Fantastic Haze DIPA, which launched in January. By the end of August, it had already tallied $4.7 million in sales at grocery, convenience, liquor, and other chain stores, as tracked by market research company IRI. Those sales are roughly the same as Goose Island Beer Company’s Next Coast IPA or Breckenridge Brewery’s Vanilla Porter.
Big Little Thing, the newest extension for Sierra Nevada’s Little Thing line (which also includes the highly successful Hazy Little Thing IPA and Wild Little Thing fruited Sour Ale), will launch in December. Sierra Nevada doesn’t believe having two 9% DIPAs in the same brand family is redundant; the brewery touts Big Little Thing as a non-hazy, but still intensely hopped, alternative to Fantastic Haze.
Sierra Nevada’s communications director, Robin Wilkey-Gregory, says Big Little Thing is a beer that’s not aiming only for hopheads but the “everyday consumer.” This appeal to casual drinkers is notable for a beer style that’s historically been the province of self-described “beer geeks.” It’s also a sharp contrast to the conventional narrative that drinkers are primarily seeking low-calorie, sessionable beers. Double IPAs still appeal to their core fans, but have expanded their reach to include grocery store shoppers of varied demographics.
Consequently, Big Little Thing’s price point will target a more budget-minded consumer than Fantastic Haze: While Fantastic Haze’s suggested retail price is $12.99 per 12oz six-pack, a six-pack of Big Little Thing (9% ABV) should be priced at $10.99. It’s notable that Fantastic Haze (9% ABV) hasn’t cannibalized sales of Hop Bullet Double IPA (8% ABV), another year-round beer in Sierra Nevada’s portfolio. That beer’s sales in grocery, convenience, liquor, and other chain stores have grown +11.4% for the 52-week period ending October 4 compared to the same period a year prior.
In 2020, an 8% or 9% ABV Imperial IPA is effectively mainstream.
But it’s not just large breweries seeing gains for DIPAs.
Shelburne, Vermont’s Fiddlehead Brewing Company, which expects to produce 32,000 barrels of beer in 2020, is in the midst of a 25,000-square-foot, $6 million expansion financed mainly by sales of its core IPA and its DIPA, Second Fiddle. That DIPA brought in $3.3 million in IRI-tracked sales in grocery, convenience, liquor, and other chain stores for the 52-week period ending Oct. 4, a +26% increase from the same period a year prior. Though its beers once sold only in Vermont, with lines for its taproom releases snaking hundreds of people deep, Fiddlehead now plans to launch 12-packs of its DIPAs for distribution across New England, New York, and New Jersey in 2022.
Portland, Maine’s Lone Pine Brewing Company produced 13,000 BBLs of beer last year, and since then, the brewery has added distribution in new states to the tune of 1,530 new points of sale. That partially explains the +462% growth it’s seen for Oh-J DIPA; but even the brewery’s other DIPAs that rarely hit out-of-state distribution—Tessellation, Diamond Unicorn, Chaos Emeralds—have grown sales organically. Overall, Lone Pine’s DIPAs are up just shy of +65% year over year.
Drake’s, which brewed 49,000 BBLs of beer last year, also has a high-ABV success on its hands with Denogginizer DIPA, whose sales jumped +36% year to date. The beer made up 27% of the brewery’s total production in 2019, climbed to 36% in January 2020, and represented more than 40% of total production in March. Drake’s now sells nearly twice as much Denogginizer—which is 9.75% ABV—as it does its second-best-seller, Best Coast IPA (7% ABV). It’s especially ironic for a brewery that has hosted a Session Beer Festival seven years in a row.
“I don’t believe in that whole lifestyle beer trend,” Gillooly says. “I’m selling beer in that category but nowhere near the volume I’m selling in high ABV.”
A large part of what makes DIPAs appealing for at-home consumption is their strength, both in terms of hop flavor and alcohol content. Survey data collected by the Brewers Association and Nielsen this spring show that among people who buy craft beer, flavor and high ABV are their most important considerations. A high ABV was considered important to 66% of weekly craft beer drinkers who responded; meanwhile, just 44% of weekly craft beer drinkers said low ABV was important. This presents a fine line for breweries to walk in terms of how they market DIPAs. They may want to call out strong ABVs, because that’s something drinkers want, but they’re wary of sounding like Four Loko circa 2008. (Four Loko, a caffeinated, high-alcohol, fruit-flavored malt beverage agreed in 2011 to relabel and repackage its products to resolve a Federal Trade Commission complaint that alleged, in part, that Four Loko “contains as much alcohol as four or five beers, but it is marketed as a single-serving beverage.”)
Deschutes’ packaging for Royal Fresh Imperial IPA prominently displays its 9% ABV; an Instagram post highlights its “whopping 9% ABV” for occasions when drinkers “need something a little stronger.” Flying Dog Brewery’s The Truth Imperial IPA’s secondary packaging displays its 8.7% ABV in large type under the beer name; even ads for Elysian Brewing Co.’s Space Dust—labeled an IPA, but veering into the DIPA range with its 8.2% ABV—boast of its “bold” ABV.
“We’re not like, ‘Drink Denog, it’ll fuck you up,’ but we don’t terribly shy away from the fact that this is a strong beer,” Gillooly says. “When I started at Drake’s, Denog was only in 22oz bombers at the time, and immediately I was like, ‘That’s a hipster 40.’”
The brewery acknowledges the beer’s high ABV in a new promotion around Denog Day, scheduled to coincide with Election Day on Nov. 3. The tagline? “Denog Day: You’re Gonna Need One.”
Gillooly says—diverging from what Sierra Nevada has found with the mass appeal for its higher-ABV offerings—that the core of Denogginizer drinkers are young men in their 20s, “the ones who come up to the booth at a beer festival and ask what the strongest beer is.”
Their age bracket is also true of the core Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA drinker; New Belgium says consumers of its Voodoo Ranger line in general skew younger than overall craft drinkers and are mostly in their 20s.
These younger drinkers, though, are willing to spend more for the elevated alcohol content. Denogginizer retails for $14.99 per six-pack of 12oz bottles, markedly higher than the brewery’s other core beers, which are priced at $9.99 or $10.99. Fantastic Haze, too, has a suggested retail price of $12.99 per six-pack of 12oz cans, $3 more than a Hazy Little Thing six-pack.
Gillooly thinks DIPA buyers still feel they’re getting a good return on investment: They can feel the ABV after one or two beers, and even if they spend $15.99 on a six-pack, that’s still a savings over what six glasses of a DIPA at a bar would cost.
“If cost-cutting is part of your equation, you’re still saving,” he says.
Double IPAs are unlikely to see their popularity wane as winter approaches. High-ABV beers often sell better in packaging than they do on draft; at bars and restaurants, drinkers are more concerned about alcohol’s impacts on their socializing or motor skills than they would be while sitting on their couches. Denogginizer is only the sixth-best-selling beer in Drake’s taproom, for example, despite being far and away the brewery’s best-selling beer. Likewise, Knospe says draft has only ever been “a small percentage” of Voodoo Ranger Imperial’s sales volume.
Having shifted their drinking from bars and restaurants to home during the pandemic, consumers are only likely to continue that pattern as winter weather arrives in much of the country. According to Nielsen CGA’s On-Premise Trends & COVID-19 Impact Report, released on Sept. 24, only 15% of legal-aged American consumers have been out to drink at a bar since venues reopened following COVID-related closures.
Instead, they’re drinking at home, and reaching for the cozy, boozy warmth of DIPAs.
Words by Kate Bernot