On today’s show, we’re talking about Google’s newly unveiled Pixel 6 and 6 Plus — a phone that has us wondering if the tech giant is finally putting its shoulder into it when it comes to smartphones. Next, we’re discussing New Balances’ new collab with Levi’s, a kind of nondescript dad sneaker that may or may not hold up on closer inspection. And finally, we’ll discuss beer maker Molson Coors killing off 11 brands from its portfolio and what exactly that means. Is this just more ruthless corporate efficiency, or is it a sign of just how far the American palette has come since the 1990s?
Episode Navigation
1:25 — Google's Pixel 6 & Pixel 6 Plus
18:17 — Levi's x New Balance 992
30:35 — Molson Coors Kills Off Its Cheap Beer
Featured:
• New Balance x Levi's Authorized Vintage
• Marketing Dive: Molson Coors to Sunset 11 Economy Brands
• The Verge: Google Pixel 6 & Pixel 6 Pro
• CBC: Recording of discussion of the Ice Beer Wars of the 1990s
J.D. DiGiovanni:
I'm J.D. DiGiovanni and this is The Gear Patrol podcast. It's Friday, August 6th, 2021. On today's show, we're talking about Google's newly unveiled Pixel 6 and Pixel 6+, a phone that has us wondering if the tech giant is finally putting its shoulder into it when it comes to smart phones. Next we're discussing New Balances new collab with Levi's, a nondescript dad sneaker that may or may not hold up on closer inspection. Finally, we'll be discussing Gear Maker, mostly [Coolers 00:00:34] killing off 11 brands from its portfolio, and what exactly that means. Is this just more ruthless corporate efficiency, or is it a sign of just how far the American palette has come since the 1990s. We'll discuss. Today I'm joined by Deputy Photography Editor, Henry Phillips. Hello, Henry.
Henry Phillips:
Hey, what's going on?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Good to have you back, man.
Henry Phillips:
What's going on? Yeah, I'm happy to be here.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Cool. We're also joined by a friend of the program, Platforms Producer, Scott Ulrich. Hey, Scott.
Scott Ulrich:
Thank you so much for having me back. I'm thrilled to get a second chance.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
How's Atlanta
Scott Ulrich:
It's good. It's hot, but it's good as always.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
All right. Moving on to our first topic, Google launched the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphone back in 2016 to decent reception. It had a good camera and, and software, but for a phone made by one of the biggest and most powerful tech companies to ever exist, the ensuing models of the phone have not left much of an impression. This fall, Google is hoping to change that with its Pixel 6 in Pixel 6+. Unveiled to the press earlier this week, the phone distinguishes itself from the Pixel's older siblings in two ways.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
One, it has a high-end fit and finish with a distinctive camera bar, and two, it features a system of a chip they're calling tensor that is putting artificial intelligence at the center of a lot processing required to run the phones key and peripheral features. That means, fancy talk to tech functionality, and most importantly, better photos and video. It looks good on paper, but the question is whether it'll add up when it actually releases. Henry, what do you make of this thing?
Henry Phillips:
Yeah. I mean, just based on the first look that it seems Google gave to a variety of tech personalities, it seems pretty cool. I mean, I think it was the more I dove into it, the less wild and crazy the whole thing sounded, but the Pixel was always a charming line of phones, right? It was a value proposition. I don't know. In my notes, I have a down as like a Volkswagen Golf. It's thoughtful and affordable, and does most of what you need it to do, but isn't flashy.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yes.
Henry Phillips:
I always love that about the Pixels, and the camera was always way better than maybe it had any right to be. It's cool to see them coming out with something a little bigger and maybe towing into the waters of the north of the $1,000 phone. They didn't quite show up when Samsung and Apple really sent it on the big stuff, so it's cool to see them back.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah. They put in the NOS canister in the Golf, trying to make it go a lot faster-
Henry Phillips:
[crosstalk 00:03:38]-
J.D. DiGiovanni:
... and make a lot more noise. Yeah. Scott, what were your impressions on it?
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah, my first impression was that it looks really good. I actually really like the camera bar thing. I think that that makes it look really interesting. I don't know how... It has the little raised edges around it so that when you set it down, you're not going to be setting the glass right against something, to protect the camera, which is smart. I don't know if you would run into problems there, if it would have her bump something and scratch it. I mean, you could say the same thing about an iPhone.
Scott Ulrich:
I have mine in a case always anyway, so I guess you can't really even, even make that criticism, but just looking at it, it looks very impressive. It sounds like it's going to be very powerful. Definitely, as they say, they want this to be the flagship phone and they've said that they've had their attempts in the past, but haven't really been fully confident. It sounds like they're saying that this is the one, and looking at the look of, it looks solid.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah, totally. I think sometimes the distinction between one model of phone, or one generation of phone and another can be so subtle. It's like if you're talking about different types of white wine to somebody who doesn't really know wine at all, the distinctions come without too much of a difference. For the uninitiated, it's harder to figure it out.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
This phone, it actually seems like it has an opportunity to be a distinct enough difference from one generation to the next, outside of people who are just super tech nerd focused. There's a lot that's going on with AI capabilities and things of the sort, that I'm not sure that too many people will actually care about, but the fact that it's showing up, or it's supposed to show up in the quality of the photos, in video, is probably going to be the thing that actually makes us stand out. Because frankly, phones are just more or less little content machines that we can also browse the internet on, right? That seems to be the biggest difference maker. I mean, Henry, what do you think about this, the AI... the implications for this, like AI on photo and video?
Henry Phillips:
I mean, it's huge. There's no doubt about it. Even just looking backwards and seeing what has happened in phone photography over the last, I don't know, take your pick, five years, the vast majority of the advances have been through computational and AI processes. The original... right when the Pixel came out and people were praising its camera, it was partly because it had this portrait mode, when the iPhone and Samsung were using two cameras to do that through computational photography, but the Pixel was able to do it with one, which is a lot harder to do because you don't have as much data.
Henry Phillips:
I think they really flexed what... and it was good. They really flexed what computational photography could do, especially with Google's AI behind it. I think they've always maintained the lead, basically, I think, in that race, but I think now that they've got a bit more hardware Umph and some time behind them, I think expect to see pretty amazing results. They showed off a couple of samples when they teased the phone. Most people seem to think that they were impressive, certainly the best available, but maybe not as earth shattering, mind blowing as the tensor stuff might have you think. Ultimately, it is iterative, I think, but it's cool. It's like the last arms race in phones right now, is how to make the cameras bonkers.
Henry Phillips:
People are putting certainly four or more cameras, huge camera sensors, optical zooms through a normal... think of your old point and shoot zoom camera, but also real weird shit, like periscopes. We can go down that road a different time, but it's a series of prisms and mirrors to try and... Optics is optics. It's been around for millennia and there's not a whole lot of manipulating it at the base level. People are coming up with really cool solutions. It's fun to see that arms race go ahead. I think, ultimately, those kinds of pain points where you use portrait mode and it blurs out someone's ear, little things that may not rock your world, but over the course of five or 10 years, you're ending up with photos that when compared to something from a decade ago, look completely unreal.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah. It sounds like they took a really big step with the video, too, because from what I've read, it seems video is a pretty weak point for them in the past. Sounds like a lot of this hardware stuff is just working to get their video not only up to scratch, but surpass that. I mean, what I'm reading is pretty impressive. The demos that they're showing are 4K 30 FPS, which is pretty impressive. All of the HD stuff that goes into the photos they're able to do for every frame of video as well. I haven't taken video with it myself, but what they're claiming it can do sounds pretty impressive.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah. It is amazing to me, too, that all of this development and fancy AI technology that's being put into this phone really only seems to rear its head when it comes to generating or capturing images. It just does a step back from what a smartphone... How they started out was just little pocket planners, right? You had your calendars. It was for work and productivity. Now they really have just turned into nothing but a flat camera, but I was curious, Henry, has any of this AI or computational photography stuff made its way into a dedicated phone or camera, or even video camera platforms at this point? Or is this purely an iPhone thing, or rather a smartphone thing?
Henry Phillips:
It's Interesting. It's a lot less than you might think. There are a couple really notable examples of people trying. The most main most... Yeah, the most well-known version is this company called Light. I believe that's what it was called. The Light phone. Or no, no. Ooh, [crosstalk 00:11:01]-
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah, that's like the dumb phone.
Henry Phillips:
No, that's the dumb phone. The camera itself I believe is called the L16.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Okay.
Henry Phillips:
Yeah. Light was the company. They didn't make the Light phone. Man, I do not remember. Anyway, it was this camera that had probably more than eight lenses, and it was about the size of a really thick phone. Think like a phone with a battery pack on it. Its whole premise was using all these lenses that had all these different focal lengths, and then combining all that information to get you really high resolution, really high dynamic range photos.
Henry Phillips:
It worked to an extent, but I think a lot of people found that it was somewhat unnecessary. On the consumer and even the pro photography, and reasonably pro video side, these phones are using a lot of this tech to work around shortcomings of being so small. Once you're willing to go into a larger form factor and get sensors that are significantly larger, and lenses that weigh 10 times as much as the phone, you end up not really needing as much of it. You can achieve a lot of it optically instead of computationally. Not to say that there aren't a ton of advancements in processors and certainly the image sensors themselves, but I think it's been slow to take, surprisingly.
Henry Phillips:
I think there's probably an exception at the absolute highest end of video. Don't think expensive camcorder, think industrial light and magic, and Marvel movies. I think once you cross the $10 million mark, things start to get really interesting, and they're busting out all sorts of crazy computational stuff, but at the core of those is still a really fairly traditional camera capture system. I'm curious when it'll make the jump. It seems inevitable that it will, but it's a matter of who and when, and I think there's a little bit more runway before that happens.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Definitely. I think, as a general rule, you could say at the $10 million mark, most things get pretty interesting. Was there any...
Scott Ulrich:
Or it's boring because they're for rich people to flex at that point, which-
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Exactly.
Scott Ulrich:
... I no longer care about. Yeah.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah, yeah. I guess maybe there is some limits to that rule. Scott, was there anything else about this phone that really caught your eye or made you even halfway consider wanting to switch from the current phone you have?
Scott Ulrich:
I'm not the most discerning phone customer. Every smartphone I have had has been an iPhone, and I was asking myself what it would take to draw me away from that.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
$10 million.
Scott Ulrich:
Yes, that would be a start. It's not even that I'm so loyal to Apple, but I don't know, the thing... I don't know what it would take.
Henry Phillips:
It's iMessage. It's only iMessage.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah, exactly. It's not going to be hardware. I don't really care. I want my messages to be blue. It's weird when I'm in a group chat and somebody doesn't have the tap back, and it's not because, oh, I have to be cool to have the blue message. It's not even about that. It's just the dumb little features that Apple bakes into its products I'm no longer even really willing to live without. It sounds like this phone is not going to be really any less expensive. Yeah, I don't know. It's hard and I feel dumb for it, that they could make the world's best phone and I just wouldn't even really give it a second glance as far as purchasing habits. Yeah, I don't know.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah.
Scott Ulrich:
What do you guys think? I mean, do you guys have iPhones, and what would it take to get you to buy a Pixel?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
I think there's actually something to the camera stuff for me. I think just being able to shoot stuff around the city is interesting. I think it actually speaks to the challenge that Google has here, is that they need to build a strong enough feature set within the phone, and try to grow off of the cute golf attitude into something that's really... like it can capture enough of the market to, I don't know, warrant the Google name. Google's a behemoth and a giant. They're so large, the federal government's considering breaking them up. Kick ass with your phone. Come and show up, and really get people engaged with it. I think that's the thing I'm curious to see if they'll be able to actually deliver on after this spec sheet reveal, is that are they going to be able to capture enough attention and then market share?
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, I agree with you, Scott. It's hard to transition off. There's so many just tiny little features that make a really compelling case for staying exactly where you are, which I guess is the whole point. But just, anecdotally, I think all of the people I know at Gear Patrol who have an Android phone use a Pixel, or have used a Pixel, simply because it's the cleanest implementation of Android that there is. There's no weird stuff. It's all Google apps instead of you get the Samsung messaging app, or whatever, that just doesn't do it. If those little tiny barriers can be overcome, then it's a great user experience, and one that could really work. It's wild how actively iMessage is holding me hostage in terms of phones.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Totally.
Henry Phillips:
It's crazy. It's completely bonkers, but here I am on the iPhone upgrade program.
Scott Ulrich:
I had a friend, a very good friend, he got a Pixel and he was super excited about it. He's like, "Oh, it's so cool. It does all this cool stuff." He had it for a while, and then the next month cycle, he was like, "Yeah, I love it, but I'm getting another iPhone. I miss being in group chats and not feeling weird about it." It's just so funny that he was broken, even though he really liked his Pixel.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
That's awesome. Well, all right. I think you've gotten our take on this new phone. Whether or not you are admitting that iMessage is holding you hostage, you will, without a doubt, be having this phone marketed to you in the most aggressive ways in the last quarter of last year, so you'll have plenty of time to think more about it. As always, write in. Tell us what you think about the phone at podcastgearpatrol.com or on social. All right. Let's move on to our next topic. Wash denim and a pair of New Balance sneakers have been, for quite a long time, the staple of suburban dads all over the country. They're also a staple of young, urban, incredibly knowing and undoubtedly cooler-than-you people that are willing to line up for floating releases.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
On Friday this week, today when this podcast releases, we're seeing the world of wash denim chunky sneakers get even more closely meshed with the Levis and New Balance 992 Sneakers Collab. The chunky silhouette is paired up with some subtle elements for Levi's, the red tag, a red insole, and an upcycled no two pair is alike authorized vintage washed gray denim used as materials on the shoe's upper. It is part of a broader release for the shoe brands that include a pair of patched together gray jeans and a trucker jacket. Scott, you're cool. Are you buying me sneakers?
Scott Ulrich:
I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to get off work to go stand in line, to get a pair. Even if I was, I don't think it's me, but looking at them, I mean, they are really cool. I don't wear a ton of sneakers. I have a couple of pairs, but they're pretty run of the mill. I kind of keep up with the sneaker game. I think it's really cool. I like the culture of it. They look really cool. I like the dad vibe, but these don't look like you're going to be mowing the lawn in them, and I like that aspect. I do really like the silhouette. Normally, I'm not really a fan of denim stuff on shoes or materials like that, but this is subtle enough to where it really matches with the other fabrics that they use, that it doesn't stand out in a bad way. Yeah, I'm into it. If I ended up having the opportunity to cop a pair, I would consider it.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Henry, how about you?
Henry Phillips:
You can head to stockx.com and buy them right now. We'll wait. No, I like them. They're not quite generally my style. I was, I think, for a while, deep into sneakers, and then for a long while have been enjoying it from the outside and wearing Birkenstocks for the last year and a half. But they're cool. I think it's a really good execution of a Levi's collab. There's that interesting tidbit of using vintage denim so that each one is unique. It's a subtle execution. I loved the little Levi's tag, and it felt like a weird silhouette choice for me. The 992 is pretty chunky. It's a fat sneaker.
Henry Phillips:
To me, it never quite felt classic in the way that something like their 990 or the 1300, which are both... people use them for collabs a lot because they're that classic New Balance sleek thing. Or semi sleek. I don't know how you describe it, but the 992, it's got that '90s kid chunk to it, but this one does a pretty good job of concealing that, I think.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah. Remember Osiris sneakers-
Henry Phillips:
Oh, yeah.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
... skate shoes, that just look like pillows?
Scott Ulrich:
Oh, man. They made you look like a Kingdom Hearts character, or something. Just so ridiculously huge.
Henry Phillips:
If you want...
J.D. DiGiovanni:
I wanted those things so bad as a kid. My mom would not let me.
Scott Ulrich:
Well, did you skate, JD?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah, I didn't. No.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah. Good thing you didn't get them then because you wouldn't want to be a poser.
Henry Phillips:
If you guys want a nice little blast from the past, evidence of both how old we are and how cyclical fashion is, the French House Lanvin or Lanvin actually did a vague reissue of that shoe.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Oh, really?
Scott Ulrich:
Yes.
Henry Phillips:
Of the Osiris. It's a fat, chunky skater that's $900 and I can't help-
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Did you get it?
Henry Phillips:
... but really want one, but it's absurd. I think the guy who originally created the Osiris T3 got pretty about it.
Scott Ulrich:
Wow.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
I think when a European luxury house rips your style decades later, that's a sign of you did something right. That's really good, because I knew what... even Burberry or maybe Givenchy, or something recently did plays on the Sokoni running shoes from the late '90s and early 2000s, and just, yeah, $1,200. It's fine.
Henry Phillips:
Yeah. No, that's fine.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
[crosstalk 00:23:12].
Scott Ulrich:
[inaudible 00:23:13] speaking of these brands that are doing stuff, what does confuse me about this release, though, is, I don't know, the Levi's Collab. I get that denim is part of it, and credit where credit is due, I do think that it looks nice and I think that they did the denim well. I think that it's a good execution, but I guess I'm just having Collab exhaustion. I guess I'm not sure who's asking for this, and even just looking at other 992s, I think I'd prefer most of those over these even just because I don't really love the Levi's tag that's on the New Balance thing.
Scott Ulrich:
That's my biggest criticism, is that red tag really stands out. If it were a collaboration with maybe a different brand... I mean, don't get me wrong. I love Levi's, but Levi's are in every Macy's in your hometown ever. It doesn't really feel like it's bringing a lot to the table, and especially with how many collabs get made these days, I just am not sure what the draw is here, personally.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah. I can see... I have a couple of things to say about this [inaudible 00:24:27]. First, I think I can see it in just the no two pairs alike thing, and using upcycle authorized vintage denim from the brand. I think there's something interesting there when it comes to reusing material and just the uniqueness of any pair, but there is something there about... Sneaker culture has gotten so mature, that the subtlest of things can set people off. This is an exciting release for this week, and people are looking forward to it and hyped on it. I found myself wondering last night, too, is why exactly? Kind of in the same vein as you, Scott. What is going on here?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Honestly, I think that on the one hand of sneaker collab world, you have something that's super loud and announces itself. Earlier this year, Salehe of Banbury did a collaboration with New Balance. The colors are really bright. It really stood out. They're super popular. On a similar hand you have something this where it's essentially almost like an antique collab, it just like from the outside, it just looks like the same gray New Balance, right? It was only really on closer inspection where you can notice the tag or notice the fact that that gray is actually a washed denim. I don't know. It's almost like talking to someone with a super refined pallet who knows coffee really well.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
They can identify the different types of bean or roast, or whatever's going on, while you or me can't quite do it. Honestly, I think a lot of these collabs at this point, aren't for people who don't get it right. It's this very self-referential and self-aware exercise. I think there's a part of me that hates it, but I think that... I can also just appreciate that the fact that sneaker taste has evolved to a point where really, all you've got to do is slightly change that gray, or slightly change that material, and all of a sudden you've got people who are really raising their eyebrows and getting interested.
Henry Phillips:
Yeah. I mean, I totally agree. It's fun to see the spectrum of collaborations. On one hand, you've got Adidas, and... you guys remember those Adidas and Jeremy Scott sneakers with Teddy bears and shit on the tongue?
Scott Ulrich:
Yes.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah.
Henry Phillips:
Yeah. On one end, you have that. Somewhere in the middle, you've got Travis Scott and Nike. Then on this side, you've got a completely different consumer. I think New Balance has done a really great job of curating this 30-year-old dude who lives in Nolita and very much enjoys Café Leon Dore and reads [Jound 00:27:22], and idolizes Chris Black. You've got this guy, and I think they've realized that that customer doesn't necessarily want loud as hell, but they do want something that's exclusive and interesting, and limited. You end up with a ton of collaborations that are like, oh, this suede is different. It's a different nap of suede, or it's a burgundy or something. They're cool as hell. I appreciate that there's room for this hyper-specific niche of sneaker collabs. I'm definitely on team more the merrier, but I'm not sure I will head StockX and pay however many hundreds that they're worth.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah. That's a good point.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah. I think we see this in a lot of different product categories, like watches, for instance. I mean, the subtlest of changes, literally something you don't even see, like a different movement. All of a sudden, everyone's like, "Oh, my gosh, this watch has new movement." It's like well, I mean, not to discount it, but if we're looking at a wash in the same way, you could look at that sneaker like this. I mean, it does the same thing. There's no real difference. But if you just have that level of understanding and appreciation of what's going on, I think it up's it. But yeah, I can see both ends of the spectrum there.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah. I definitely don't think I'm the target audience, so not enough to criticize, and they do look cool. But yeah, the collabs thing is just so funny. There's so many. The most confusing one that I can remember was '47, the hat brand did a collab with Stranger Things. I was looking at this Braves hat. I told you all how I ended up talking to the Braves. It has the Stranger Things logo on the front of the hat and then whatever NLB team's logo on the side of that. What do these two properties have in common with each other? Why would I want both of these logos on a hat? It's just so confusing to me. I just don't really understand who's green-lighting these things.
Henry Phillips:
That one is objectively confusing. Let's not... we don't need to make [inaudible 00:29:39] That one is bizarre.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah. This New Balance makes a lot more sense than that one.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah. Yeah, without a doubt. Well, it sounds like we're divided but, but let us know if you're getting a pair. You can get these on Levi's app today, Friday when this podcast releases, and you can also get them on new balance.com or nb.com. They're going to be retailing for $250 bucks. Again, let us know what you think via email or social. We'd love to hear from you. All right. Next topic.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Okay. This week there was a small outpouring of emotion after it was announced that Keystone Ice, Old English HG 8800, Steel Reserve, 211, and Miller Highlife Light, and about eight other beers brewed by Molson Coors were heading to the chopping block. The CEO of the beer makers cited premiumization and a drive towards hard seltzer, and a more streamlined and smaller portfolio of legacy brands as the reason for killing these off. Henry, what is really to blame for the death of these beers?
Henry Phillips:
A small aside that isn't really an aside, when I was in college I went to school in Michigan. If you were real bottom of the barrel, you needed beer, and it was a means to an end, there was the 30 rack of Hamm's, which I believe was one of the canceled beers, and it was $13 for 30 beers.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Wow.
Henry Phillips:
It was objectively terrible. Then you go down the roster of ice beers which are among the canceled, which we'll get into in a moment, but also terrible. As you go down this list of beers, you will find a lot of terrible beers, but that being said, my only note at the very top of this list here is it's seltzer season and we're all living in it.
Scott Ulrich:
I'm going to demand that you put some respect on the good name of Hamm's because I just will not-
Henry Phillips:
[crosstalk 00:31:49]
Scott Ulrich:
...take that slander. I love that brand and I had a minor panic when I saw Miller Highlife... Light. For a second, I thought our beloved Highlife, the chosen beer of-
Henry Phillips:
That would be [inaudible 00:32:04].
Scott Ulrich:
... shitty dudes across the country was going to be gone, but it's safe. Yeah, I wanted to be sad about some of these, but I don't know. I don't think I've had more than two of these. It's the Hamm's Special Light, it's the Miller Highlife Light. It's just a bunch of offshoots of other brands, even Keystone Heights. I was like, oh, the Keystone Heights. If I had that, and I looked it up, and no, I don't even think I have... I don't know. Personally, I almost wanted to be sad about some of these, and then I looked more closely at the list, and it's like, shoot, I don't think I'm going to even notice any of these are gone.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah. The extent to which I'm seeing any sadness over these beers being put out to pasture is I think derived from the fact that they're cheap high alcohol content, and they were probably top of the lists when it came to underage or college drinking, which is sounds like a fit.
Scott Ulrich:
[crosstalk 00:33:03]
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah. It seems like, JD, as you mentioned earlier, a lot of ice beers, which definitely felt like a certain thing in the past, what's the deal with that? Is that just done? Are we seeing the end of ice beers as we know them?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
I think what stood out to me most about this news of these beers being put to bed is just that a lot of the things that have been outlined in this list were pocketed in the 1990s when ice beer was a thing. Ice beer, for those of you who aren't familiar, truly speaking, it's a type of beer that involves, during the brewing process, lowering the temperature of the batch of beer until ice crystals form, and then those crystals are removed. What happens is the alcohol concentration of that beer increases because other elements from beer get removed, and of course, alcohol has a lower freezing point, so it doesn't freeze and isn't removed when the other ice crystals are.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah, I mean, that kind of beer was just the trend for quite a while in the 1990s. In that packet we all read through for this episode, it was being talked about as all the rage on radio shows at the time, but I mean, like any trends, you see a cycle, right? There's some excitement, there's a leveling off, and then there's a slow ride as public interest shifts, and this has been quite a long ride, I think, for some of these brands. Ice beer has really been left for both craft and new things like seltzer.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah. What's funny to me is, I think that people do get really attached to the brands that they like, which I think is a good thing in many ways. But what is funny is all of these brands fall under the same mega corporate umbrella. It's not the mom and pop brewery making your favorite cheap beer that's been around forever is ceasing production. It's Keystone Ice and that ilk. That's sad if a beer you really like is going away. I do get that, but at the same time, we are inundated with so many choices, and so many of them don't really bring anything new to the table. Yeah, ultimately, I say ax them. Let's raise our standard. We are seeing a ton of better beer and the more Icehouse Edge that's cleared out of gas stations is more room for better beer to be put in there.
Henry Phillips:
I feel like I have good and bad news for you.
Scott Ulrich:
What's that?
Henry Phillips:
They're bringing a lot of... I don't know if Keystone Light is giving... I hope it is. I hope Keystone Lights gives way to some cool shit, but-
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah.
Henry Phillips:
... I think we're going to end up with Visy hard seltzer.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah. Let me not get ahead of myself and say, I guess I would even prefer Visy over [inaudible 00:36:15], as long as they have PBR, Highlife and the other couple. All right, we'll make some room for some players.
Henry Phillips:
Yeah, that's true.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah.
Henry Phillips:
Yeah. That's the thing, right? You realize that there is so much diversity in a section of beer that can't possibly be that popular.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah. Scott, I like the optimistic take for sure, but it definitely feels like it's the new schlock replacing the old shock, but I think there is something about the death of big beer that's hard to feel too sentimental about, that actually helps paint a broader picture about what's happening in the world of beer. A lot of the narrative around the troubles in the beer industry, and there's been some talk about it for the past few years now about the shrinking market size of craft beer, ends up being framed around just that. That like the regional brewer that you like or you thought was cool because it was different from a Budweiser or a Miller Coors, or something like that.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
There's more incentive to write about and cover those kinds of stories because there's just more interests to follow and read it, but it does obscure the broader picture as to what's going on with beer, is that it's not just shrinking on the craft level, but the market is shrinking on the lower end as well. I think according to the... we're reading some stats here, and according to IWSR Drinks Market Analysis Research, beer consumption dropped 7.5% over the past five years, or from 2015 to 2020. In the market share for beer in the US slips 3.5 percentage points down to 44%.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
A lot of that stuff is being talked about in terms of, oh, man, my regional craft brewer is having a hard time, but it's brought on that. It's not just people who have developed more of a palette for a nicer beer, but it's also people who just are tired of drinking Icehouse. They want to drink something different, and maybe that's something different really is something more in the vein of either like a bigger and more well-known beer, like a Miller Highlife, or something new like these hard seltzers. Because I can assure you, Henry, at some point you were buying those $13 30 racks of beer, and I'm pretty sure most college students are going and trying to find that high ABV seltzer now.
Henry Phillips:
Oh yeah.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah. I actually happen to have a friend from high school who's he's actually pretty high up, or he was, at Budweiser. He worked in St. Louis, at the Budweiser place as one of their brewers. He was telling me... I had dinner with him last week actually and he was telling me that he really loved to beer and loved getting into it when he was getting that job. He was just telling me, in the past couple of years, so much of his job shifted away from beer, into just making seltzers or whatever weird new thing, and he hated it.
Scott Ulrich:
He didn't like that process and he ended up quitting. He was like, "I hardly make any beer anymore." I don't think that was the reason, but maybe it factored in. So much of his job had nothing to do with beer at that point. It was all about seltzer and whatever new things are cooking up. It is hard to believe that a generation of college kids is just going to automatically be reaching for seltzers and other stuff.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Drinking seltzers, smoking vapes, and doing stuff on TikTok. All these kids, I can't get it.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah, man. A new generation.
Henry Phillips:
You wonder how far that trickles down. You start to think about, okay, what does the craft beer industry look in 10 years when all of those college kids are turning 30 and drinking craft seltzers?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
I would love to see a craft seltzer boom. I also wonder at what point everything that we've... at what point ice beer and cheap things like Steel Reserve come back into vogue maybe some premium television series or something like that will bring it back, in the same way Magnum brought back whiskey.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah. What I would hope this would turn into is more canned cocktail options, because I feel like that's had a really big boom, and I love having that option. The stuff that you're going to get in grocery stores nationwide is still pretty bad, the Cayman Jack margarita stuff. Those are just incredibly sugary and they're pleasant to drink, but not something I would want very often. But yeah, I feel like that's a good logical next step for someone that's really into seltzers, is like a canned cocktail.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Well, whatever they want to drink next, they should come to Gear Patrol because we have the taste of direction-
Scott Ulrich:
Yes.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
... to get people drinking the right stuff. Yeah just live rolling here. I'm noticing now that we're deep in this segment and I didn't give off the whole list of all these different beers. Just in case you're fond of any of these, I'm going to read through these so you can rush out to the liquor store and grab as many as you possibly can before they disappear, never to return. Keystone Ice, Keylightful, Icehouse Edge, Mickey's Ice, Milwaukee's Best Premium, Miller Highlife Light, Hamm's Special Light, Steel Reserve 211, Old English HG 800, Magnum and Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve.
Scott Ulrich:
How many of these have you guys had?
J.D. DiGiovanni:
A handful.
Henry Phillips:
I pretty much exclusively drink Keylightful's-
J.D. DiGiovanni:
That's because you're Keylightful.
Henry Phillips:
... which, for the record, are a thing of a truly, except the seltzer water is beer.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Ooh.
Henry Phillips:
No, I've never had one, but I Googled that very quickly because that one stood out to me. No, I have not had... I'm sure I've had Hamm's Light at some point in the last decade maybe, but I don't know. It's been a while since I've sought out anything dubbed high gravity.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
Yeah. I do not drink beer that much anymore, but there was a time when Steel Reserve, Mickey's and Old English were all in the rotation. Yeah, I'm a different person now, so I don't do that anymore, but yeah. Mickey's in particular. I love that little bumblebee. He's so angry.
Scott Ulrich:
Yeah, that's a good one.
Henry Phillips:
Is that a west coast thing? I feel like I never saw Mickey's, or maybe I was just an idiot seeking out the Old English logo.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
I don't know if it was a west coast thing or not. There's definitely less pride when it comes to Mickey's. If it is the case, then there are things like In-N-Out and never-ending forest fires. All right. Well, you should let us know if you're going to be missing any of these beers in particular. We'd love to hear any final goodbyes, if you want to share them with us.
J.D. DiGiovanni:
You'll find links to what we talked about on today's show page. You can go find that at gearpatrol.com/gearpatrolpodcasts. You can email us at podcast@gearpatrol.com or reach out to us on social. We'd love to hear from you about any of the topics we discussed today, your thoughts. If you enjoyed the show today, please rate, review us on Apple podcasts. It really helps us out. For Henry Phillips and Scott Ulrich, J.D. DiGiovanni. Thanks so much for joining us.