BROADCASTS.com

The world of beer is going through an identity crisis\u2014it\u2019s changing the self-defined language of what\u2019s craft and what not seemingly every few years now, it\u2019s doing battle with wine and spirits, except when it\u2019s embracing them in the form of natural wine and barrel-aging, it\u2019s national, regional, local, and hyperlocal, it\u2019s taprooms and bars going to battle over the same customers, it\u2019s exploding cans and day-fresh distribution, and festivals are dying except when they\u2019re growing, and it\u2019s focused on diversity even as it undermines\xa0it\u2019s\xa0own goals by competing for the same 21-34-year-old white males in every market, it\u2019s IPAs except when it\u2019s Lagers, and increasingly it\u2019s juice bombs and hard seltzers and FMBs, and coffee roasting, distilling, and wine/beer hybrids. It\u2019s wild out there right now.\xa0 For today\u2019s guest\u2014I have a feeling all that seems a bit\u2026charming. Predictable, maybe. And\xa0certainly\xa0ripe for exploitation from a manufacturing and marketing perspective. Because as much as we want to think people define themselves by what category of beverage they prefer (beer people, wine people, bourbon people), people like\xa0Jaisen\xa0Freeman of Phusion Projects has long understood drinkers as category agnostic\u2014pursuing flavor, and brand, and functional benefits above all else. And generally preferring to have a little\u2014sometimes too much\u2014fun along the way.\xa0\xa0 Phusion Projects is the maker of Four Loko, a notorious, exciting brand that has an unbelievable distribution footprint in the U.S. despite having\xa0its\xa0product formulation written out of the realm of legality by the federal government after they\u2019d already built their empire. Despite massive lawsuits related to\xa0its\xa0potential for harm and or misuse. And despite taking a massing hit in the realm of $40 million during that traumatic period for the business. Within four years, it had climbed back to its former peak. And now, with that chasm behind them, Phusion Projects is expanding a portfolio of products geared towards finding the next big thing for drinkers. In the recent past, that\u2019s included another infamous product, at least in the small bubble of the craft beer world, with Not Your Father\u2019s Root Beer, a fermented malt beverage that got tried and true beer geeks worked up over\xa0its\xa0root beer flavor and, in some cases, its high ABV. But it attracted a massive mainstream audience as well as it expanded from a small garage into a national footprint. And now they\u2019re exploring the world of vodka, hard seltzer, a flavored FMB that looks like a fancy blended wine or sake, and\xa0Earthquake, which they pitch as\xa0the\xa0highest\xa0ABV Lager on the market.\xa0 None of them come anywhere close to Four Loko\u2019s success. Like, by multiple orders of magnitude. But this is all pretty recent still as they climbed out of that crater that those four years of Four\xa0Loko\xa0left them in. And they got out of it, seemingly, all by themselves.\xa0\xa0 It\u2019s a wild story, and for anyone struggling to understand what their next few years are going to look like in the what might be the beer businesses\u2019 most insane time period ever in this country, it\u2019s a story with a lot of lessons, both encouraging, and exceptionally hard.\xa0\xa0 This is Jaisen Freeman of Phusion Projects. Listen in.