USA: No beer with AB InBev’s Drinkworks Home Bar

AB InBev admitted last week in a post on its website that its Drinkworks Home Bar, a capsule based beer and cocktail machine developed jointly by Anheuser-Busch (A-B) and Keurig Dr Pepper (inside.beer, 15.11.2018), is still not working with beer. While clients in selected U.S. states can already chose from a variety of 20 cocktails, beer in capsules is still not available.

“We pivoted to cocktails as our main focus because consumers told us that was a bigger problem to solve,” Nathaniel Davis, President and CEO at Drinkworks reported. “We have Stella Artois Cidre available now, and we’re testing variants from some of our US craft brands, as well as Beck’s and Bass,” he said. “However, we’re still perfecting the experience to make it more user-friendly.”

According to Davis, the story started ten years ago, when “our ABI global innovation teams were envisioning the ‘future of beer’, and we wondered if we could capture our brands’ essence in a totally novel format, like a pod. That was the spark for what became a long-range research and development project.”

Nearly three years ago, AB InBev went public with the announcement that its U.S. arm A-B has teamed up with Keurig Dr Pepper to develop an in-home alcohol drink system based on Keurig’s K-Cup pods. (inside, 8.1.2017) “The product would be born in a brewery, distilled to a super-concentrated form, packaged and sealed at peak freshness and then be prepared fresh in people’s homes,” Davis said in his recent announcement.

However, it seems that the problems with a beer concentrate in capsules are not yet resolved and customers still have to wait some time for the first instant beer.

Share this article: