According to BrewBound, The Boston Beer Company’s Truly Hard Seltzer will launch its Wild Berry flavor on draft nationwide on March 2, replacing the unflavored Truly on Tap draft offering that rolled out in August.

“We are planning to transition our draft lines to Wild Berry on Tap,” senior product development manager Casey O’Neill wrote in an email to Brewbound. “It’s not to say the original is going away, but we know the space for hard seltzer draft lines is already limited, and Wild Berry will give us a better opportunity to provide an on-tap Truly option to drinkers.”

Truly Wild Berry includes flavor from strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, which O’Neill said will not affect on-premise accounts’ draft lines.

“Our testing has shown that if the account is performing standard draft line cleaning between products per the Brewers Association’s recommendations, there is low risk of line taint,” she wrote.

Dollar sales of Truly Wild Berry, which is available in 6-packs of 12 oz. cans and single-serve 24 oz. cans at off-premise retailers, increased 265% in the 52 weeks ending January 26 to $31.1 million, according to market research firm IRI.

The on-premise channel represents “huge white space” for hard seltzer, according to Evercore ISI analyst Robert Ottenstein, who noted in a report that Truly on Tap has fewer than 3,500 draft handles. Ottenstein added that while draft offerings give retailers higher margins, “draft presents challenges in terms of flavor varieties (tough to get multiple draft lines), consistency, and barrel handling.”

California’s Figueroa Mountain Brewing Company Cuts Staff

Figueroa Mountain Brewing Company has laid off at least eight employees, according to the Full Pint, which confirmed the news with the brewery’s president, Steve Almaraz.

The employees included members of the marketing, sales and brewing teams; Almaraz joined the company last November.

The Buellerton, California-based craft brewery operates a taproom at its headquarters along with outlets in Arroyo Grande, Santa Maria, Los Olivos, Santa Barbara and Westlake Village.

Read More at Source: BrewBound

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