Brewers jump onto the nitro bandwagon
Oh dear, do they really call this innovation? The U.S. craft beer scene has been abuzz with talk about nitro beers for months, ever since Boston Beer, the number two craft brewer in the U.S., announced they would launch a series of nitro beers early next year, thus making several gassed-up commentators wonder if these beers will be the new IPA.
In fact, nitro beers are really old hat. They have been around, well, like forever. In the 1950s the Irish brewer Guinness started experimenting with the process and introduced its nitro stout in 1964, if records are to be believed. Today Guinness sells its nitro stout on draught and also in cans.
While most beers rely on carbon dioxide for fizz and flavour, nitro beer is infused with nitrogen gas, which results in smaller bubbles and a smoother, creamier beer.
“Changing from carbon dioxide to nitrogen is absolutely transformative,” said Jim Koch, founder of Samuel Adams beer and Chairman of Boston Beer Company. “The two will give you different flavours. It is a much more dramatic change in flavour than changing the hop variety.”
Mr Koch should know, especially when he let it be known that they had to put in several million dollars of special equipment just to fill these widget cans properly.
The brewer will release a white ale available on draught only as well as an IPA and a coffee stout, which will be sold in cans using nitro widgets. All three beers will begin national distribution in February 2016.
Guinness was the first to use a “widget” – their term – in 1989, in an effort to give beer drinkers at home the same creamy head that they’d come to expect on draft in a pub. The widget is a small pillow-like object that contains N2 under pressure; the widget is placed in the can before filling and, when opened, the change in pressure in the can is such that N2 is released rapidly from the widget into the stout/beer, forming the desirable head. Modern day widgets are spherical, not pillow-shaped.
But as sales have slowed in the face of an abundance of consumer options, Guinness has been branching out beyond stout. To that end, Guinness released a Guinness Nitro IPA in October 2015. Through brewed in Ireland, the beer will only be sold in the United States.
While Guinness Nitro IPA and the forthcoming Samuel Adams nitro line will bring more attention to the style, smaller U.S. craft brewers have already found success with it in a craft beer landscape currently dominated by IPAs.
Mr Koch doesn’t expect the new nitro line to be a high volume category. So why did he push for it? The answer is clearly that he wants to enjoy the first mover advantage. With the battle for shelf space becoming more and more brutal, he hopes store owners will be willing to make space for something which is a little different.
Mr Koch admitted: “Our feeling was that to really deserve more shelf space we need to do something special and unique. When they have zero nitro craft, then they might be willing to put in two or three.”
So it’s all marketing, isn’t it?
