119 – CODO’s 2026 Beer Branding Trends Review Q&A

Cody and Isaac sit down to field a wide range of questions on CODO’s 2026 Beer Branding Trends Review.

Points of discussion:

CODO Design’s 2026 Beer Branding Trends Report

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Questions:

1. How do you see mid-strength shaking out in the market long term? Seems like it’s in a no-man’s land between non-alc and full strength beer and I’m not sure consumers are willing to pay the same for it they would for an NA?

2. On the hidden risk of launching an non-alc brand. I see your point, but no hangover IS the biggest value prop for an NA brand, or at least it is when reaching for beer-like equivalent. So how do you balance this messaging? Ignoring it seems to miss an important point.

3. If a small brewery wanted to dip its toes into the Function 2.0 / beyond beer world, do you have a general recommendation for where to even begin? Our team has some ideas but we always start discussing which products we could make. That seems like we’re jumping the gun.

4. The coffee programming section is interesting, do you think that should fly under a brewery’s parent brand or its own thing? Also, do you see this as an off- or on-premise play?

5. Re: The Nostalgia branding trend — do you ever see this waning.

6. The hyper provenance newsletter was interesting. And I agree — we don’t see anyone doing this in our market. Not sure we have the scale to do it right though. Do you think this is solely a move for larger breweries or can a smaller brand like ours (around 900 barrels for reference) pull this off as well?