They tell you when to drink them, from days to occasions: Happy Thursday Spiked Refreshers, Friday Beers, Sunday Beer, Pizza Wine.
They tell you where to drink them: High Noon’s Pool Pack, Garage Beer.
They also communicate who they’re for: Girl Beer, Beer Girl, Mom Water and Dad Water, Happy Dad Hard Seltzer, Gay Water Vodka Soda, Dad Strength beer. Is designating your beverage’s target audience alienating? A step back for inclusion?
People may instinctively roll their eyes at brands named for certain demographics. They carry the baggage of a male-dominated beverage alcohol industry that’s marketed largely to straight white men until pretty recently—a controversial 2023 Miller Lite campaign roasts the way women have been cast as bikini-clad accessories for decades. (The controversy? Men were mad.)
In 2020, the craft beer industry reckoned with its history of racism, followed by a #MeToo moment in 2021. In 2022, Marena Domingo-Young released Girl Beer, a documentary investigating gender disparity in craft beer and the history of how the term others women, casting light, fruity styles as feminine and irrelevant.
Meanwhile, the latest generation of legal-drinking-age consumers, or LDAs, care about inclusivity in beer and beverage alcohol. Underrepresented communities have been pushing for an industry and products that speak to everyone equally. According to NielsenIQ data, 34 percent of Gen Z consumers over 21 say they’re more likely to purchase brands who support LGBTQIA+ rights; that jumps to 46 percent for racial justice.
Why are brands now singling out specific audiences?
Two years after Domingo-Young’s film premiered, in December 2024, Hurray’s Girl Beer won the Pitch Slam competition of beer industry news outlet Brewbound, and with it, a whole lot of buzz. Girl Beer is a 100-calorie light lager with 4.2 percent alcohol in blueberry-lavender and pineapple-yuzu flavors. Whole Foods and Gopuff stock the brand in Southern California.
Founder Ray Biebuyck set out to take back the phrase “girl beer” by mocking the concept and to speak to a growing consumer base. She points to the fact that for the first time in history, female alcohol consumers under 30 outnumber men, and that women are expected to influence 80 percent of consumer spending within the next decade.
Instagram content
Biebuyck intentionally kept Girl Beer’s cans minimalist. The brand’s meme-centric, Brat-green-filtered Instagram content created by local Los Angeles comedians leans into that post-ironic, riot grrl ownership of “girl beer” while communicating inclusion—a “girl of the week” series has featured Martha Stewart, “Saturday Night Live” character Domingo, Moo Deng, and Spirit Halloween stores. Girl Beer speaks right to women, largely left out of the craft beer conversation, and it does so with humor and what Biebuyck calls “chaotic and unfiltered” girlhood ushered in by Charli XCX.
Brands like Girl Beer attract today’s flavor-driven, wellness-conscious, moderation-seeking consumers, garnering attention via social media. “It gave companies direct access to [spaces] that already existed,” said Jen Kaarlo, a content strategist focused on women’s equality. By speaking straight to specific audiences, brands can differentiate themselves in a dizzyingly crowded market.
After Girl Beer won Brewbound’s Pitch Slam, prolific beer writer Ruvani de Silva vented her frustrations that a brand would make light of the term when craft beer isn’t even out of the gender-inequality woods. “Brands like this think they’re being funny and cool and ironic, but they’re not,” de Silva said. “I don’t think we’re at the stage in this industry where we can play things for laughs yet.’”
Instagram content
But Girl Beer isn’t alone. Since launching in 2021, Mom Water, a non-carbonated fruit-infused vodka water, and its counterpart Dad Water (tequila instead of vodka) have been picked up by Target, Walmart, Total Wine, and more across the country. Dad Strength Beer and Beer Girl, a light, Mexican-inspired lager, also competed in the same Pitch Slam as Girl Beer.
“People want personalization, something that speaks directly to them,” said Julie Rhodes, founder of Not Your Hobby Marketing Solutions for craft beverage businesses. Rhodes points to the evolution of craft beer, from taprooms selling similar style lineups to today’s dialed-in venues like German beer halls, Belgian beer bars, and breweries known for IPAs.
“Watching ways women have been traditionally marketed to, you think pink-washing, pandering,” Biebuyck said. “[TikTok] leaning into this ‘clean-girl’ aesthetic leaves a lot of women out of the equation, women who might identify with different things.”
Brewbound managing editor Jessica Infante initially eye-rolled Girl Beer. But she appreciated how Biebuyck taps into rebellious, humorous marketing for a purely enjoyable product. “When do we get to have fun?” Infante said. “So many women’s products are targeted toward health and wellness, or some function to help us accomplish a task…how often is it like, ‘Hey, this is for you, it’s just fun’?”
Self-awareness is key. Beer Girl—not to be confused with Girl Beer— is named simply for how founder Caroline Renezeder Foulk thought of herself. “When people asked, ‘Do you want a tequila soda?’ or, ‘Do you want a wine?’, I’d say, ‘No, I’ll take a beer. I’m a beer girl.’”
Instagram content
Foulk was on the operations team for her family’s Wagon Wheel Brewing Company in Oxnard, California when she realized a lot of the guests ordering seltzers and ciders were women. She decided to figure out what they could brew in-house that those consumers would like, and developed the light lager she and her husband would eventually brand as Beer Girl.
Jill and Bryce Morrison both worked in healthcare before launching Mom Water and Dad Water. The idea sparked when Jill preferred both the less-sweet, more-refreshing flavor and hangover-, bloat-free experience of drinking vodka-splashed spa water while on vacation. She continued making it at home in water bottles, labeled “Mom” so the kids wouldn’t accidentally grab it, said Bryce. The branding is tongue-in-cheek, but they’ve also connected with parents seeking more refreshing, lower-alcohol options—like Dad Strength’s 2.9-percent IPA. They’ve not only engaged that parent community, but also created something fun and recognizable. Bryce says one of their biggest demographics is college-aged to 30-year-old drinkers.
“I think consumers, especially young ones who were raised online, recognize this is not prescriptive,” said beverage alcohol journalist and Sightlines lead reporter Kate Bernot. “What is the vibe of a beverage that moms love? Light, spritzy. It conveys a personality more than a straight-up demographic prescription.”
Not only is today’s (especially Gen Z) consumer driven by flavor, wellness, and moderation, but they’re also more fluid in their perceptions of gender. By taking a more playful, ironic approach, brands like Girl Beer and Dad Water could actually be perceived as less alienating than Budweiser.
Girl Beer filmmaker Domingo-Young acknowledges that at least the Girl Beer brand proves the term is prolific enough to warrant a “taking it back” moment. “For the women saying, ‘I don’t drink beer, it’s gross,’ [Girl Beer] could be an easy entry point,” Domingo-Young said. “Hopefully being in the [beer] community helps them grow and understand the bigger context…And maybe [a] dude learns something when he buys it.”