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At 38 yrs old, Cleveland's Great Lakes Brewing is one of the true uncs of the craft scene, but they're not getting complacent in middle age. CEO Chris Brown told CBN he's hoping the co grows 1-2% this yr after a tuff 2025 when shipments fell to 103K bbls, and they're not wasting time, having rolled out several new products that align with their positive sales trends, even when those cut against industry trends at large. Great Lakes also introduced a THC soda in Jan, and now they're scrambling on several fronts to keep production and distribution going as Ohio's Mar 20 deadline to frontrun Nov's 0.4 mg/container dosage cap looms. Read on to get into the weeds on weed, learn how co is steering into the skid on trends, why NAs aren't on the menu, and more. Leveraging Seasonal Success "Our biggest strength is one of craft's greatest weaknesses," Chris told us. That would be seasonal offerings, with which Great Lakes has reliably done well as others struggle. Its Christmas Ale, Conway's Irish Ale and Oktoberfest have continued to be a boon, and co's seasonal portfolio grew 3% last yr, Chris said, but he admitted that "it's very hard to grow brands when you only have 12 weeks to do it." Part of the co's flurry of new offerings this yr was attempting to leverage its unique advantage by pairing new seasonal offerings exclusively in variety packs alongside new year-round beers and/or old faves. They've already done it twice since the calendar changed, first adding a new Irish Lager to a party pack including Conway's Irish Ale and Irish Stout in Jan, while earlier this mo it released a new seasonal Orange & Lime Shandy to a Sunshine Party Pack including its new yr-round Orange & Honey Wheat and two returning faves, the Mexican Lager and Rally Drum Lemon Shandy.On the Hemp Bev Front Lines Among the lessons Chris has learned during the craft slowdown is that, despite Great Lakes' venerable history, "we can't just be a beer company." The co developed its Float Shoppe line of hemp-based THC bevs over 10-12 mos and was ready to unveil them last Oct when the "loophole" from the 2018 Farm Bill became a political football. Great Lakes held off on the launch as the spending bill to reopen the government closed the loophole and was happy to see Ohio pass a law extending the deadline for cos to sell their stockpiles thru Dec 31 of this yr. But not only did Gov Mike DeWine veto the bill, he moved up the state deadline to Mar 20 - a week from today - for all hemp-based THC bizzes not merely to stop selling and producing the drinks, but to destroy their inventory.At that point, Great Lakes and other craft brewers in the state who play in the THC bev space - notably Fifty West and Rhinegeist - sprung into action on 3 fronts. Working together, they lobbied local politicians to override the veto, which Chris says they have secured the votes to do provided the vote is scheduled before next Thursday - it "just needs to get to the floor. If it gets to the floor, it will pass." If it doesn't reach the floor, the cos are working to obtain 200K signatures to put the measure back on the ballot, which would "push everything back to where it was" under the 2018 Farm Bill, which "is not the avenue we prefer. There needs to be taxes, there needs to be regulation, we need to go through the Ohio tax board and the 3-tier system." He's as worried about bad actors as the gov, but he doesn't want to "throw the baby out with the bath water" because "it's obvious people are interested in this."The third approach involves the courts, and led to a lawsuit filed by Fifty West and 3 other cos this week in OH Supreme Court arguing that DeWine exercised overly broad veto power, illegally nixing whole sections of the bill when he is legally limited to cutting line-items (see Mar 10 issue). The court is expected to rule before the Mar 20 deadline, but Chris told CBN that should the judgment go against them, and the political moves run dry, the fight will continue. If there's a silver lining, he said, it's that craft cos are banding together like they did in the industry's heyday to help lift the tide for all of them.Doing Everything Right (Except NAs) Chris' biggest problem with the gov's veto is that craft cos getting into hemp-derived THC bevs took great pains to do everything "by the book. We worked hand-in-hand with local government. We had a quality guy who inspected the facility the whole way through." Complicating matters, legal cannabis dispensaries opened in OH in 2024, which means that, technically, craft cos could sell their cannabevs there. But "we couldn't do it if we wanted to," Chris said, not leastwise because "dispensaries don't want beverages" clogging up the space. The ~93 licenses to produce cannabis products in the state were obtained long before craft cos knew they'd need one. Which means that if Mar 20 comes and goes without any resolution, neither Great Lakes nor anyone else without a license can produce the bevs to export to other states, nor can they store the product without facing potential jail time.It would be an understatement to say this has been frustrating. "It's tough on us," Chris said. "We're a consumer products goods company. There are tons of beers we make and I don't like them. We make what our customers want. It's just a new innovation." And it's one that's far easier than making NAs, which he said is a non-starter for extremely practical reasons that were the basis for getting into THC bevs in the first place in order to diversify their product lineup. "A pasteurizer is the size of two large conference rooms," he said. "We've got nowhere to put it."Expanding, but "Never Going to be a National Brewery" Chris said co was "a tick down on-premise last year" across the entire footprint but has had a "really, really nice start to the year" in the Cleveland market, up 4-5%. They've also had a "great resurgence" in Pittsburgh and recently, belatedly launched in FL, which he said "took 30 years." They also entered TN with Lipman Bros last mo, bringing its total roster of states to 21. Chris said he's heading down to GA next month and "my goal would be to be in Georgia in the fall," but that would be the extent of any expansion plans outside of potential one-off seasonal shipments, likely of Christmas Ale: "We're never going to be a national brewery."Like many cos, Great Lakes' marketing efforts are focusing back on in-person events, with 4-5 "resident beer experts" heading "back into the on-premise, old-school, blocking and tackling basics, with the focus on remind[ing] the consumer of why you loved beer for a long time." But he's realistic about the state of the industry. "The win is we gotta be flat," he said. "The feeling here is that it's kinda the bottom of the barrel" but "we can't just keep going the wrong way because it puts too much pressure on operations, especially with a brewery as old as ours. We need to find little gaps, more little operations, and be more nimble on these things." And while the THC mess is "beyond dumb," that's often true of "our entire political system, but a lot of times they figure out how to make it right eventually," he said. "We just gotta keep on fighting."

Great Lakes' Chris Brown on the THC Bev Front Lines With OH Deadline Approaching, Leveraging Seasonal Success: "We Just Gotta Keep on Fighting"

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