Ballast Point's New "Clear Hazy IPA": Marketing So Stupid, It Sounds like Satire
By Jim Vorel | March 2, 2021 | 12:15pm
Photos via Ballast Point, Kings & Convicts, Brewers Association
It’s been a while at this point since the last time we checked in on the still mind-boggling story of Ballast Point, the San Diego, CA craft beer icon that first sold to Constellation Brands for a record $1 billion back in 2016, at the height of the craft beer boom. In retrospect, this remains by far the most massively overinflated of all overvalued brewery sales of this era, taking place at precisely the moment when the “fruited IPA” wave came to a crest, bringing Ballast Point and Grapefruit Sculpin IPA in particular to their highest point. That year, in 2016, they sold a company record of 431,000 barrels of beer and Constellation was no doubt projecting that the brand would become the next Boston Beer Co.