Carolyn Fath
Hard root beer is sweet, and often without detectable alcohol despite beer-like ABVs.
Call it a malternative, hard soda or alco-pop. Whatever you call it, there’s no denying that boozy root beer had a hot summer in the craft beer world. The Wall Street Journal cited market research group ICI in claiming that sales of Small Town Brewery’s Not Your Father’s Root Beer put the Chicago-suburb brewery in the number six spot among craft brewers for the four weeks ending July 12, right behind Lagunitas.
Small Town Brewery (which originated in Wauconda, Ill.) is brewing the product under contract at City Brewing Company in La Crosse; it’s being distributed by Pabst. Labeled “ale brewed with spices,” Not Your Father’s Root Beer is creamy and smooth, with no discernible flavor of alcohol despite a 5.9% ABV. (To compare, Spotted Cow has 5.1% ABV.) It’s available in six-packs at many Madison-area liquor stores.
In Wisconsin, hard root beer is also being made by Sprecher Brewing Company of Milwaukee. In a phone interview, company founder Randy Sprecher says the decision to start making hard root beer was a “no-brainer.” Known nationally for his nonalcoholic root beer, Sprecher says he started experimenting with a hard version years ago; the product was introduced in 2013. To make it, Sprecher adds bourbon, oak and other flavorings to make a base beer taste like a more complex version of root beer. Sprecher’s product has an alcohol content of 5%. “We [make] a heck of a lot of it,” Sprecher says, “15,000 cases per batch.”
Sprecher says the hard root beer was popular this summer at the traveling beer garden run by Milwaukee County Parks, where it was served on tap, along with the brewery’s hard ginger beer. In Madison, it’s served at Sprecher’s Restaurant & Pub at 1262 John Q. Hammons Drive, and is in bottles at area stores.
Other brewers are not eager to make soda-like malternatives. Scott Manning, brewmaster and co-owner of Vintage Brewing Company in Madison, says that making boozy soda would be “too risky” with the number of families that dine at Vintage, too easy to confuse a nonalcoholic and an alcoholic root beer and accidentally serve it to a child.
Andrew Gierczak of MobCraft Beer says he has no plans to make a hard root beer, but might make a hard ginger beer in the future.
Peter Gentry of One Barrel Brewing seems to sum up the general sentiment among local craft brewers: “We don’t want to brew hard root beer because I think it’s just a fad.” Gentry feels that many rely on artificial ingredients and sweeteners. “Frankly, we only have enough space to brew tasty beers.”
But the boom isn’t over yet. MillerCoors has plans to start selling hard ginger ale and hard orange soda in January. Is it too early to declare summer 2016 the summer of boozy Dreamsicles?
