It is the best-selling craft IPA in America. The label features a snarling, sword-wielding skeleton — a mascot engineered to look like the most rugged, anti-establishment beer on the shelf. Frat houses stock it. Tailgaters swear by it. Plenty of conservatives crack one open after a long week, never suspecting that the company behind it earns a perfect 100 out of 100 on the Buy Woke Free Woke Scale.
Meet VooDoo Ranger, the flagship IPA of New Belgium Brewing — and quietly one of the most aggressively progressive corporations in the entire American beverage industry. That tough-guy skeleton is the marketing. The activism is the business model.
A Perfect Woke Score Across All Six Dimensions
Buy Woke Free scores brands across six independent dimensions: ESG reporting, DEI programs, Pride sponsorship, the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index (CEI), political contributions, and participation in the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge. Most "woke" brands stumble on at least one. New Belgium maxes out every single category.
This is not a company that drifted left by accident or got caught up in a passing trend. New Belgium is a certified B Corporation — a designation that requires baking social and environmental "impact" directly into a company's legal and operational DNA. It employs a dedicated Chief ESG Officer, runs aggressive climate targets, and has pledged more than $31 million to social and environmental causes. For New Belgium, progressive politics is not a side project. It is the product.
The Wokest Brewery in Craft Beer — By Design
New Belgium does not just check the LGBTQ+ box. It built an entire activist apparatus around it, and it brags about leading the industry there.
- "Biere de Queer." Every year, New Belgium brews a beer named explicitly in celebration of the LGBTQ+ community — currently a tiki-style ale the company markets as "Brewed for All with Pride." It is not a one-off; it is an annual tradition.
- GLAAD cash via "Love Conquers Ale." The brewery partnered with GLAAD to produce a beer that funneled 100% of proceeds straight to the activist organization.
- The "Guide to Rainbow Washing." New Belgium publishes an annual guide lecturing other companies on how to support Pride "authentically" instead of merely slapping a rainbow on a logo — positioning itself as the movement's enforcer.
- "Poured for All." The company launched a free DEI training program for bars and restaurants nationwide, designed to reshape how everyday drinking establishments operate.
- Perfect HRC CEI scores. New Belgium was the first craft brewer ever to score a perfect 100 on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index, and it has held that perfect score every year since 2021.
It also co-hosted the "Queer Beer Festival." When activists talk about a company that has fully fused its brand identity with the cause, this is the textbook example.
Follow the Money
For a brand that markets itself as rebellious and independent, the political giving tells a remarkably one-sided story. New Belgium's political contributions break down roughly 98% Democratic, according to OpenSecrets data, with PAC funding aimed at environmental policy and progressive priorities.
The company maintains a dedicated DEI director, extensive DEIB ("diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging") training under what it calls a "Human-Powered Business" model, and is a signatory to the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge — the same corporate commitment that hundreds of Fortune 500 firms have spent the last year quietly walking back. New Belgium has shown no such hesitation.
And It's Not Even American-Owned Anymore
Here is the irony that should sting craft-beer purists the most: New Belgium — the brewery that built its reputation on Colorado-grown, employee-owned authenticity — is now owned by Kirin Holdings, the Japanese beverage conglomerate. The "craft" rebel mystique is, at the corporate level, a multinational operation with a foreign parent company and a full-time ESG bureaucracy. Every six-pack of VooDoo Ranger you buy helps fund that machine.
Why This One Stings More Than Bud Light
When Anheuser-Busch torched its own brand with the 2023 Bud Light fiasco, the backlash was instant — because the activism was loud, sudden, and impossible to miss. New Belgium is the opposite, and that is precisely what makes it more effective. There was never a viral moment, never a single ad to boycott. Instead, the company embedded its politics so deeply and so consistently that millions of customers fund it every weekend without ever realizing it.
That skeleton on the can is doing a lot of work. It signals edgy, masculine, no-nonsense — the exact opposite of the corporate reality behind it. It is camouflage, and it has worked beautifully.
Drink Woke-Free Instead
The good news: beer is one of the easiest categories in America to shop with your values. The country is overflowing with family-owned, independent, politically neutral breweries that just want to make a good pint — not run a DEI consultancy on the side.
The Buy Woke Free directory tracks hundreds of breweries and beverage makers that score in the not-woke range, from neighborhood taprooms like Bay Bridge Brewing to countless regional independents that have never signed a single corporate pledge. When you want an IPA, you do not have to settle for one that comes with a side of activism.
VooDoo Ranger drinkers deserve to know exactly what they are funding. Behind the skeleton and the swagger sits a perfect 100/100 woke score — and a company that has never once wavered on it, even as the rest of corporate America runs for the exits. The next round is your vote. Cast it accordingly.
Scores reflect Buy Woke Free's six-dimension methodology and publicly available data on ESG reporting, DEI programs, Pride sponsorship, HRC CEI ratings, political contributions, and CEO Action participation. Verify any brand's current standing in the Buy Woke Free directory before you shop.