MAKING THEM A FIRST CHOICE

Quality perceptions are key too. Whereas hard seltzers felt like a compromised choice, consumers educated by the craft beer movement understand hops. These building blocks of flavour have become a key way for them to navigate the plethora of new brews over the years. And their use here, in a way that arguably more fully displays their flavour versus a beer, is both intriguing and comfortingly familiar.

The key to their future UK success will be in brewers that do adopt them presenting them as the first choice in a consumer’s daily repertoire and leading on refreshment and flavour, rather than a compromise for when consumers are not drinking. Non-alc beers already answer that need quite neatly and very successfully.

No, instead — and perhaps counter intuitively — brands will have to present hop water as something distanced from, and quite unique from beer, if consumers are to understand the need for them, the moment to consume them and why they might be a choice above and beyond a non-alcoholic beer.