Case Study: Alpine Dog Brewing Company achieves a winning, production-ready beer label with GutCheck

How a Craft Brewery Created a Winning Beer Label by Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Agile Market Research

Alpine Dog Brewing Co., a Denver-based craft brewery competing in Colorado’s crowded market, needed a fast, budget-conscious way to choose and refine a new beer label that would stand out on shelves and support an upcoming product launch. With six prototype designs and limited time before production and distribution, they partnered with GutCheck to bring consumer insight into the decision.

GutCheck ran a two-phase agile study—first a quantitative Concept Prioritizer (N=400) to identify a clear winner, then a qualitative Concept Refiner (N=30) to pinpoint optimizations. The research confirmed a top-performing design and guided practical changes—larger logo and beer type, removal of complex mountain art, and added color accents—allowing Alpine Dog to move quickly into production and distributor conversations with a stronger, consumer-validated label.

Alpine Dog Brewing Company

Gardiner Hammond

Owner