When Surly first started brewing its beer, consumers could only find them on-tap at their local bar. As Surly expanded capacity, it wanted to add retail sales to their mix. That meant packaging their beer and deciding between cans or bottles. For a brewery built on the site of a former grinding wheel factory, aluminum cans seemed to be the logical choice. Unfortunately, consumers had been conditioned to assume canned beer to be sub-par compared to bottled beer. Surly needed to be sure that their packaging accurately connected with their brand positioning.

In order to meet Surly’s tight timelines, and to ensure we were talking to their kind of beer drinkers, InsightDynamo conducted a taste test onsite during one of Surly’s beer festivals. Beer connoisseurs stated their favorites, and we gleaned an interesting piece of insight: consumers actually did not have a taste preference for bottled beer over canned beer. That was all the data Surly needed to launch their beautiful canned product to the world.

A tiny startup becomes a popular and respected leader of the highly-competitive and ever-growing craft beer movement, eventually building a larger destination brewery and restaurant to meet increased demand.