Hark, the age of Guinness is dawning.

This week Diageo unveiled Guinness Cold Brew Coffee Beer, a new version of the stout which, despite being infused with coffee, contains a marginal amount of caffeine (Guinness says it’s roughly the same as a cup of decaf). The brand says it’s designed to tap into the “excitingly vast consumer space” of Britain’s coffee enthusiasts – without having to enter the questionable territory of adding caffeine to alcoholic drinks.

It’s clear to see why Guinness is taking this approach. Coffee-infused stouts have been a mainstay of the independent beer world for some time, and it doesn’t require moving too far away from the core drink’s recipe or flavour. Plus Guinness, despite being a massive brand, commands greater respect among many craft aficionados than the likes of Budweiser and Heineken.

What’s more, the UK market for RTD coffee is booming: sales rose more than a third (37.6%) in 2021, according to Kantar. So the financial imperative of giving that sector a nod is clear, even if Guinness isn’t really targeting that occasion [52 w/e 13 June 2021].

But this launch is particularly interesting because it can tell us about Diageo’s ambitions for Guinness and what we might expect to see from the ubiquitous stout in future.

Guinness has always been cautious with NPD. Sure, it’s had spin-offs, like the Brewer’s Project, a range of beers which included the likes of Guinness Rye Pale Ale and Hop House 13, which was unceremoniously canned last year after its sales nosedived. There’s also its Foreign Extra Stout, Nigerian Stout and Guinness Original, which it stills sells.

Some of these launches seemed to have been carefully designed not to play too close to the core brand. Hop House 13 didn’t carry the Guinness logo on its packs (although it did bear Arthur Guinness’ signature in a nod to the heritage), while small-batch brews like the Rye Pale Ale were bottled in distinctive formats to separate them from the frontrunner. 

It appeared as if Diageo didn’t want to risk polluting the core offer. And when Guinness ditched Hop House, its biggest spin-off, in 2020, citing a desire to focus on the core brand, it was hardly surprising. Diageo had finally realised the core Guinness was more valuable than any experiment on the side.

Guinness’ recent moves are anything but cautious. Since dropping Hop House it has rolled out the non-alcoholic Guinness 0.0% and kicked off work on building a gargantuan £73m microbrewery and brand hub in Covent Garden. Behind the scenes, Diageo is also ploughing £40.5m into expanding its capacity at beer packaging sites in Belfast and Runcorn to support the growth of Guinness. You don’t spend that kind of money on something unless you’re deadly certain of the outcome.

The launch of Guinness’ Cold Brew Coffee Beer shows the brand has given up on playing in craft lager and ales simply because it’s trendy. Instead, it is looking for genuine adjacencies where it can leverage the things it is already loved for, better. It is a smarter and bolder approach. The recent launch of a range of Guinness sauces, too, which it created in partnership with The Flava People, shows it sees potential even outside the drinks sector (it launched a selection of recipe mixes and cooking pastes last year, too). 

Still, Diageo should be careful not to expand the Guinness brand recklessly. When you start relying on brand extensions to drive growth and encourage trial among new shoppers, there is a risk of overloading the proposition, making the range too complicated and difficult to navigate, or losing the magic of the core brand, which has stayed so popular over the years largely thanks to consistency. 

Diageo’s Gordon’s brand, despite being one of the most powerful drinks brands in the UK, has arguably fallen victim to this with its excursions into flavoured gin – every few months it seems to add a new SKU to its range, like the recent launch of Tropical Passionfruit and Morello Cherry gins. These are fun, novel flavours, but it’s questionable whether they will stick around for the long term. Novelty makes for good headlines and can help provide a sharp bump in sales in the short term, but if not managed well, it can leave brands feeling aimless and muddy.

Still, Diageo has laid firm foundations for Guinness to build on. It has always maintained its premium positioning by avoiding wading heavily into promotions. Speaking to The Grocer in February, one senior industry source described Diageo’s attitude towards Guinness as treating it “like a spirits brand compared to the high-volume, low-margin beers of companies like Budweiser”. “It has a relatively low abv and its wholesale price to the trade is really high because there’s no competition,” they said.

If Diageo can expand the range thoughtfully and authentically, a whole new generation of shoppers could be turned onto the ‘ebony nectar’.

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