Witbier “translates from Dutch to ‘white beer,’ hence our own Allagash White,” notes that brewery on their website. They go on to differentiate witbier from wheat beers and hefeweizen. But don’t worry, that won’t be on the quiz.
Considering a comprehensive view of beer in the last ten years feels overwhelming. So I will focus on one example of your author as a consumer: buying beer in Walgreen’s. Like so many sacred texts, this is a story about lamenting. But this is a more profane, and less sacred lament, because it is a table stakes piece and not a tablet written in stone. Does it matter that I’m sad Walgreen’s is no longer selling Allagash White? Probably not. But I believe my short lament is worth mentioning as it will allow me to examine the market we find ourselves in today. The beer aisle may feel like a market that is amorphous to unassuming consumers but upon closer inspection it’s more like large players and their distributors are shaping our market.
Consider the words of Bourcard Nesin, VP Research, Beverages at Rabobank, on Liquid Assets: “I do wonder if there’s just like, it used to be easy, it was just easier to sell stuff before.
And now, you have to try so much harder. And I’m not sure everyone’s up for it. And that might be one of the reasons that these big brands are cracking the whip, because they’re like, if you’re not up for it, get out.”
This certainly seems to be playing out at Walgreen’s. There’s a smidge of craft or craft adjacent if you accept the Brewers Association’s definition that craft is small and independently owned. Voodoo Ranger (though I’d argue most consumers don’t know its connection as a New Belgium product; the Fort Collins, Colorado company is now owned by Kirin) sits alongside Fat Tire in the Walgreen’s cooler. There’s Flying Dog on the shelf, though as we reported nearly three years ago, it’s now being brewed in Utica, New York. Sierra Nevada has Pale Ale and Hazy Little Thing, and then there’s Fair Winds Brewing Company, perhaps the smallest brewery in the cooler.
The Brewers Association’s 2022–the last year Flying Dog brewed in Maryland–numbers state that Sierra Nevada brewed 1,062,495 barrels, Flying Dog brewed 76,268 bbls and Fair Winds brewed 5,000 bbls. And while Fairwinds, Sierra Nevada, and Flying Dog have been on Walgreen’s shelves or in their coolers since 2021, there’s no more Allagash White.
So what’s replaced Allagash White? Hard to say exactly. What wasn’t there in 2021? Unsure. And what’s there in 2026? Now that question I’ve got answers to. There’s Mickey’s Fine Malt Liquor and there’s Schlitz Bull Ice. There’s Coors Banquet and Coors Light. There’s Pabst Blue Ribbon, and there’s Steel Reserve. And while I just listed six brands, there’s only two breweries that own these/have these brands as subsidiaries: MolsonCoors and Pabst. There’s Modelo, Modelo Michelada, Budweiser, Bud Light, Busch Light, Michelob Ultra, Devils Backbone, and Stella Artois. These are all owned by Anheuser Busch InBev. Then there’s Lagunitas, Tecate, Heineken, and Heineken Silver. Guess who owns all these?
I think a lot of consumers don’t know that multinational breweries and smaller, sometimes independently owned breweries, often come off of the same truck. That is to say, these breweries share distributors. So the shape of the beer aisle in Walgreen’s is because the distributors built it that way. Premium Distributors of Virginia distributes Fair Winds, but they also distribute Heineken, Tecate, Coors, Miller, and the list goes on. Allagash is also distributed by Premium of Virginia. They do not distribute the Anheuser Busch InBev products, so there’s at least two trucks stocking Walgreens.
And while I was a bit surprised to find Allagash White in this Walgreens in 2021, it was nice to see an old friend like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale still there today. I reached out to a place I know that consistently has Allagash White in stock, The Brew Shop. I asked Julie Drews, co-owner, for her thoughts.
Anecdotally, from a retail perspective what I see is how very well known Allagash White is. It moves when it’s on the top shelf, on the bottom shelf, on the eye-level shelf… no matter where we put it, people come in for it, they seek it out, they ask for it specifically, and they love it. It’s also definitely noteworthy (at least to me!) that we also sell almost as much Port City Optimal Wit every year, even with Allagash White sitting there in the same door. We do 50-60 cases of Optimal Wit per year on top of those Allagash White numbers. I know it’s still early in 2026 but we’re on pace with both of those beers to maintain the per year numbers from the prior 3 years.
For the uninitiated reader, distributors do cut deliveries to say, Walgreens. Especially when the “sales trajectory” isn’t quite as high as it should be, or when the “high velocity” selling of beer isn’t as speedy as projected. All of this distributor speak to say: if it ain’t moving, they ain’t stocking.
It’s important to keep in mind that the market is still shaped by your consumer decisions. I haven’t bought beer in Walgreen’s in years, but it’s clear that distribution is paying more time and possibly attention to what’s getting stocked than your DC Beer team is.
Of course I’ve said nothing of RTDs – ready to drink cocktails- hard seltzer or similar “beyond beer” beverages. I’ve left out Surfside, a product we’ve mentioned before which sold 11 million cases last year, but Walgreens is certainly selling this. It would be irresponsible of me to say “Allagash White is gone because Surfside or Happy Thursday (a Molson Coors brand) ran it out of Walgreens.” However, it is irrefutable that in 2021, this specific Walgreens stocked Allagash White. In 2021, Surfside didn’t exist, though in 2022 they did. In 2024 Molson Coors brought Happy Thursday to market. And so while in 1995 Allagash brought White to market, today it remains just a memory of five years ago from a chain drug store.
For more on Allagash and the importance of the DC market, check out the DC Beer podcast episode 226 with Rob Tod, founder of Allagash.
