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Next month, Odin Brewing will launch its latest round of brews, beginning with the much anticipated Odin’s Quest Hazy Pale, and Loki’s Lemon Sour. Then, in August, Odin will drop the Dragon Slayer Mix Pack, featuring the whole range of Dragon beers to date plus a new one: Galactic Space Dragon IPA, Sonic Sea Dragon IPA, Super Galactic Space Dragon Double IPA and the all new Super Sonic Sea Dragon Double IPA.

As Odin’s Canadian licensed sales and manufacturing partner, MOD’s innovation team developed each of these new products.  To mark the occasion of these releases, we caught up with Wes Peterson, co-founder of Odin, and see how things have been going for them throughout the pandemic and to hear what plans are in store in the near future.

[MOD] What was the thinking behind the new releases?

[Wes Peterson],We wanted to develop some new concepts that would fit the Canadian market while also playing to Odin’s strengths. The Dragon Slayer, in particular, seemed like a perfect fit, with the rise mix packs, and themed mix packs more specifically.

With Odin’s Quest, we saw that the market has shifted away from malty ales toward hazy and juicy ales, so we thought we should replace Odin’s Gift, which had been a core beer of ours for a long time. But that’s the nature of this business – products come and go.

Loki’s Lemon Sour is actually a rebranded version of Lemondrop, which we’ve released as a limited release the past few years. We wanted to keep that beer consistent with the rest of our offerings.

[MOD] How are things going with Odin in the US right now?

[Wes Peterson] Things are going well on both sides of the border. We’re actually in the process of relocating our main operation out of Tukwila down to Tacoma. We added a second brewpub in Tacoma, which has helped us sustain this transition of transplanting our operations. We’re still in the middle of a lot of that work right now, but it’s exciting.  We hired a chef there, Kristen Lyon, who was just competing on FireMasters on the Food Network. We’re looking forward to sort of coming out of this pandemic and hopefully upright like everyone else.

Looking back a bit, how was it launching into Canada? How’s it been operating a transnational craft beer brand?

For the most part, it went relatively smoothly. It was about flexibility on both parts. We came in with a bunch of recipes that we thought would work, but we had to be flexible on those recipes. And we were.

A good example of that was Galactic Space Dragon, which used to be a filtered, traditional IPA, but adjusted to more of a NE Hazy IPA. And we also worked to adjust the branding to localize it to this market.

We came in and were willing to adjust to a new market, so it wasn’t a particularly painful process. It is a matter of understanding that, as much as we like to think that craft beer drinkers are ubiquitous, they aren’t. Canadian craft beer drinkers do vary somewhat from American ones, in their approach and the style of beer they like, and sort of in what gets them motivated to buy craft.

Yeah, Galactic Space Dragon was a big hit here for Odin. Did you change it in the US?

GSD in the US remains filtered and fined. It is a traditional West Coast IPA. So that hasn’t changed, it only changed in the Canadian market. But we adjusted our branding to reflect a more consistent brand on both sides of the border. So we actually took on the brand marks that we have in the Canadian market for the US.

Speaking of COVID earlier, have you visited the US operation since COVID began?

I haven’t been down to our facility in Washington in… it’ll be two years as I think August.

Whoa!

My last trip down was August of 2019. I was planning on going down in December and got pulled away to some other stuff. Then the pandemic was declared early in 2020, and I couldn’t get anywhere, the borders closed down.

Dan [Lee, Wes’s business partner and the other co-founder of Odin] has been looking after a lot – obviously the operation, the transition of facilities, the opening up of the new brewpub and everything else that goes along with that. All in a pandemic environment. It’s been a hell of a challenge, to say the least, but I think it’s gone over pretty well. I’m optimistic we’ll be coming out of the pandemic in better shape than we went into it.

What are your plans are for the brand in Canada over the next couple of years?

I would like to see it continue to grow and thrive. We’re looking at getting a brew pub or restaurant in key markets. We’ve been looking at it for a while now, but the challenge has been, one, the proliferation of craft breweries in these markets. I’m based in Kelowna and I think there are 15 breweries here now. If you look at Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, even Winnipeg, you’re not only dealing with a proliferation of craft beer and craft breweries in the market, you’re also dealing with what I can only call egregious rent rates. I don’t know what you’re seeing in Vancouver right now, but last I checked some of the Kelowna rental rates probably rival what’s in Vancouver right now, per square foot.

So it’s a challenging market and you can’t just come in with models the same. The model’s got to reflect the market, but the model also has to reflect something more. We want to localize it, but it creates challenges when you’re up against the gun on just getting the facility up and running. We’ve explored a couple of partnerships now and, at least as far as I’m concerned, they haven’t been the right ones. We’re still open to that approach.

So you’re staying the course and waiting for the right opportunity?

Yeah. I value the relationship we’ve had with MOD – it’s been a good, productive relationship. We want to continue to support what they’re doing and hopefully they want to continue to support what we’re doing. We’ll continue to bide our time and look for that right opportunity. It’s really about not being just another craft brewery in the marketplace.

Keep an eye out for Odin’s Quest, Loki’s Lemon Sour and the Dragon Slayer Mix Pack, due later this summer. For more info on Odin Brewing, following them on Instagram at @odinbrewing and visit their website: odinbrewing.com

When a character in pop culture resonates with the public in a big way, they’re often pulled out for a spinoff. It’s happened with Han and Chewie, with Wanda and Vision, with Saul Goodman and, yes, Joey Tribianni.

Now it’s happening with Margarita Gose. That’s right! Spectrum Beer’s Margarita Gose has been pulled from the top-selling Sour Pack to star in its very own mix pack

Today, we introduce the Margarita Machine Gose Mix Pack, including three brand-new and exclusive margarita-inspired beers: Watermelon Margarita Gose, Strawberry Margarita Gose and Blue Raspberry Margarita Gose. (Before we go any further, yes, blue raspberry is a flavour and that flavour is best described as “blue”…).

Rather than utilize the standard 12-pack carton everyone else uses, we’ve done something a little different, offering a more elongated carton that, when placed upright, mimics the look of those actual margarita slushy machines you see in restaurants and resorts all over the world.

Indeed, the experience we’re hoping to achieve with this new mixer is to offer a mini vacation away from home while stuck at home, back to that wonderful beach resort from however long ago. Remember that? So fun.

Each of these new recipes are based on the original Margarita Gose, which we launched in 2018 and has been a top-seller for Spectrum ever since, in both its six-pack format and as part of the Sour Pack mixer.

Speaking of the Sour Pack, if you’re asking, “If Margarita Gose is leaving the Sour Pack, what does this mean for the Sour Pack?”, then you are indeed a keen observer and probably a superfan. Good for you. We’ll have an announcement about that coming soon.

The Margarita Machine Mix Pack will be widely available throughout Western Canada beginning this week. To find out more, visit our website spectrumbeer.com and follow us on Instagram at @spectrumbeer.

Remember those ice pops from when you were a kid? The ones you’d need to break in two and they’d melt all over your hands? Then you’d lie in the sun and let the flavour take you over completely? Yeah. Good times.

With that memory in mind, Parade Hard Seltzer launches its very first mix pack, the Double Pop Pack, aimed to take you back to that place so many of us can recall. By combining the brand’s two core flavours– Fruit Punch and Pink Lemonade – with four new ones, Parade is offering balanced, flavourful hard seltzers alongside a dollop of nostalgia to get you through this summer.

New for this mix pack are Lime, Grape, Orange and (not at all controversially) Banana flavours, all of which are designed to emulate the classic ice pops without all the added sugar. Each flavour in the Double Pop Pack is sugar-free and 100 calories.

“We’ve seen enormous growth with hard seltzers and RTDs generally over the past year, but in our opinion, they were all missing that wow factor we like to see in new product launches,” says Paul Mroczek, President of MOD Beverage and Founder of Parade Hard Seltzer.

“The market seems ready for more advanced flavours in their hard seltzers – something that’s both familiar, but totally unexpected from a brand like this. I think the Double Pop Pack offers the kind of experience people are looking for this summer.”

Parade utilizes MOD’s Cold Fermented Sugar process, which a variation on the malt-flavoured beverages available in the US. We use a special Seltzer yeast and proprietary fermentation strategy to get a clean fermentation that all but removes the phenolics and esters and allows for a fresh flavour and smooth drinkability.  

Parade launched in Summer 2020 and is MOD Beverage’s first foray into low-calorie RTDs. The mix packs will be widely available throughout. British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba

For more information, visit paradehardseltzer.com and on Instagram at @paradehardseltzer.

What can the beverage alcohol industry do to curb climate change?

We ask ourselves this every day. How can we not? The good news is there’s a lot we can do. We can reduce our waste, for one, and we can begin giving renewables a go. We can raise awareness with our employees, clients and various stakeholders. All are important.

Where it begins, though, is with curbing our carbon emissions and becoming fully sustainable as soon as possible.

Earlier this year MOD Beverage partnered with Vancouver-based Offsetters to develop a plan to get us to zero emissions sometime in the next decade. Our operations and carbon emissions are still being analyzed, so we don’t yet have a realistic target set out. But we are committed to getting there and hope to be a leader in the Canadian beverage alcohol and a beacon for like-minded companies to do the same. By educating ourselves, our employees and our clients, we hope we can raise consciousness on this issue.

We’re excited to go through this process and know it’s the right thing for our business, for our community and for our planet. We were hoping to have the plan unveiled by today, but it’s always better to get it done right than done quickly.

Stay tuned for more info in the coming months as we unveil our plan.