Cincy Light Vs. Cold Time: Two Lager Brands, Two Very Different Paths

During this decade’s craft lager revival, two Top 50 craft brewers were among the earliest to launch new American-style lager brands. Rhinegeist Brewing and Revolution Brewing, my former employer, share a lot in common. Both sell IPA-led portfolios, supported by a long tail of other styles. Each is the largest independent craft brewery in its home market of Cincinnati and Chicago, respectively. Both launched THC-infused beverage brands in 2025.

Yet when it came to building a lager brand, they took dramatically different approaches. Today, we’ll compare Rhinegeist’s Cincy Light and Revolution’s Cold Time, examining two distinct paths for creating a new-wave lager brand inside a craft brewery.

Craft brewers began tiptoeing around the word “light” in the late 2010s. To some drinkers, the term still felt somewhat antithetical to craft beer, so breweries often got cute with puns and indirect references when working the word into a brand name.

By the time Rhinegeist unveiled 4.2% ABV Cincy Light in 2023, objections to the term had largely faded, if not disappeared entirely. The remaining challenge for “light” centered more on whether a craft brewery could achieve a competitive price, meaningful scale, and enough marketing support to win in America’s most competitive beer style.

The debate over direction is fascinating because across all beer (including craft) Light Lager represents 34% of the market, where American Lager isn’t far behind at 30%. In other words, the opportunity looks relatively similar - and big. When you single out the two lager styles solely within craft, however, American Lager’s market is more than twice the size, though both remain quite small.