Hard soda, also referred to as flavored beer, adult soda, fermented soda, mature soda and alcohol soda, is a type of alcoholic beverage and craft beer that is manufactured in the style of a soft drink. [2] [3] It has gained recent prominence in the United States after the success of the Not Your Father's Root Beer brand manufactured by Small Town Brewery. As of late May 2016, at least 39 hard soda brands exist in the United States.
Hard soda is a relatively new category in the craft beer segment of the alcoholic beverage industry that gained prominence in the United States after the prosperity of the Not Your Father's Root Beer brand manufactured by Small Town Brewery based in Wauconda, Illinois. [3] A partnership between Small Town Brewery and Pabst Brewing Company led to a significant increase in sales, whereby distribution of the product in the U.S. was expanded and then later expanded to be nationwide in June 2015. [2] Small Town Brewery first began brewing the product in 2012, [2] and it has a 5.9% alcohol by volume content. [3] The company released a Hard Ginger Ale in September 2015, and has plans to market a Vanilla Cream Ale hard soda. [2] The company also plans on marketing a separate version of the Not Your Father's Root Beer brand with a higher alcohol content. [2] In January 2016, the Not Your Father's Root Beer brand was the market leader in the hard soda category. [4]
As of late May 2016, the hard soda category comprises over 1 percent of total overall beer category sales in the United States. [2] In the U.S., many new hard soda brands have emerged beginning around early December 2015 and numbered to at least 39 brands by late May 2016. [2] One of them is the Best Damn Root Beer brand manufactured by Anheuser-Busch InBev's Best Damn Brewing Co., which was the second best-selling brand in May 2016 after Not Your Father's Root Beer, which realized double the overall sales compared to that of Best Damn Root Beer circa this time period. [2] Anheuser-Busch InBev also produces the Best Damn Cherry Cola brand product. [2] The Henry's Hard Soda brand ginger ale and orange soda are produced by MillerCoors, and brands produced by the Boston Beer Company include Hard Ginger Ale, Hard Orange Cream ale and Coney Island Brewing Hard Root Beer. [2] The Boston Beer Company root beer brand began development by the company's Alchemy & Science branch in 2013. [3] Diageo produces the Captain Morgan Spiked Root Beer brand, which is packaged in tall cans, and the Molson Coors Brewing Company produces the Mad Jack Premium Hard Root Beer brand. [5]
In Canada, the Mill Street Brewery in Toronto, which is owned by Labatt Breweries, produces a hard root beer using its house-made root beer mixed with its vanilla porter bierschnaps. [5] As of June 2016, the product was only available in Ontario. [5] Crazy Uncle Hard Root Beer is a hard root beer brand produced by the Brand Fusion company in Toronto, Canada. [5] It is packaged in cans. [5] Crazy Beard Apple Ale is produced by the Dusty Boots company in Canada, and is a mixture of beer and cider. [5]
In Indonesia, Multi Bintang produces a non/low alcohol flavored beer named Bintang Radler, which is produced in grapefruit and lemon flavors. [6] The grapefruit flavor was introduced in 2015 and the lemon flavor was introduced in February 2016. [6]
In addition to being drunk as-is, hard soda root beer products are sometimes used as an ingredient in the root beer float. [3] [5] [7]
Budweiser is an American-style pale lager, a brand of Belgian company AB InBev. Introduced in 1876 by Carl Conrad & Co. of St. Louis, Missouri, Budweiser has become a large selling beer company in the United States. Budweiser is a filtered beer, available on draft and in bottles and cans, made with up to 30% rice in addition to hops and barley malt.
Root beer is a sweet North American soft drink traditionally made using the root bark of the sassafras tree Sassafras albidum or the vine of Smilax ornata as the primary flavor. Root beer is typically, but not exclusively, non-alcoholic, caffeine-free, sweet, and carbonated. Like cola, it usually has a thick and foamy head. A common use is to add vanilla ice cream to make a root beer float.
Ginger ale is a carbonated soft drink flavoured with ginger. It is consumed on its own or used as a mixer, often with spirit-based drinks. There are two main types of ginger ale. The golden style is credited to the Irish doctor Thomas Joseph Cantrell. The dry style, a paler drink with a much milder ginger flavour, was created by Canadian John McLaughlin.
Anheuser-Busch Companies, LLC, is an American brewing company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Since 2008, it has been wholly owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, now the world's largest brewing company, which owns multiple global brands, notably Budweiser, Michelob, Stella Artois, and Beck's.
Stevens Point Brewery is a regional American brewery located in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. The brewery is the fifth-oldest continuously operating brewery and the third-oldest privately owned brewery in the nation.
Sprecher Brewery is a brewery in Glendale, Wisconsin, U.S. It was founded in 1985 in Milwaukee by Randal Sprecher, and is Milwaukee's first craft brewery since Prohibition. Sprecher produces an assortment of beers, flavored malt beverages, and craft sodas, and it is famous for its root beer.
Thomas Kemper was a brewer of root beer, ginger ale, and other craft sodas under the Thomas Kemper Soda Co. label. Formerly owned by Pyramid Breweries, Inc., it was sold in 2007 to Adventure Funds of Portland, Oregon, which is running the company under the Kemper Co. name.
Beer was introduced to Canada by European settlers in the seventeenth century. The first commercial brewery was La Brasseries du Roy started by New France Intendant Jean Talon, in Québec City in 1668. Many commercial brewers thrived until prohibition in Canada. The provincial and federal governments' attempt to eliminate "intoxicating" beverages led to the closing of nearly three quarters of breweries between 1878 and 1928. It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that a significant number of new breweries opened up. The Canadian beer industry now plays an important role in Canadian identity, although globalization of the brewing industry has seen the major players in Canada acquired by or merged with foreign companies, notably its three largest beer producers: Labatt, Molson and Sleeman. The result is that Moosehead, with an estimated 3.8 percent share of the domestic market in 2016, has become the largest fully Canadian-owned brewer.
The Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company, doing business as Leinenkugel's, is an American beer maker based in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Leinenkugel's was historically distributed only in the Upper Midwest, but is now available throughout all 50 states. The company is the seventh oldest brewery in the United States, and the oldest business in Chippewa Falls. It is a subsidiary of Molson Coors. It produces both traditional beers, including lagers and ales, as well as a popular line of shandies, which are a mixture of beer with fruit juices, such as lemonade.
Beer in the United States is manufactured in breweries which range in size from industry giants to brew pubs and microbreweries. The United States produced 196 million barrels (23.0 GL) of beer in 2012, and consumes roughly 28 US gallons (110 L) of beer per capita annually. In 2011, the United States was ranked fifteenth in the world in per capita consumption, while total consumption was second only to China.
Fordham & Dominion Brewing Company, founded in 2007 in Dover, Delaware, is a brewery that produces a variety of craft beers and craft sodas.
Genesee Brewing Company is an American brewery located along the Genesee River in Rochester, New York. From 2000 to 2009, the company was known as the High Falls Brewing Company. In 2009, High Falls was acquired by the capital investment firm KPS Capital. Together with newly acquired Labatt USA, KPS merged the two companies as North American Breweries. Along with this change, High Falls Brewery changed its name back to the original "Genesee Brewing Company" operating under the North American Breweries name. In October 2012, North American Breweries was purchased by FIFCO.
Blue Moon Belgian White is a Belgian-style witbier brewed by Molson Coors under the name the Blue Moon Brewing Co. It was launched in 1995, and was originally brewed in Golden, Colorado.
Monster Beverage Corporation is an American beverage company that manufactures energy drinks including Monster Energy, Relentless and Burn. The company was originally founded as Hansen's in 1935 in Southern California, originally selling juice products. The company renamed itself as Monster Beverage in 2012.
The A-Treat Bottling Company was a beverage company headquartered in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that manufactured and bottled the A-Treat brand of carbonated soft drinks. A-Treat stopped production on January 23, 2015, but the brand was purchased by Jaindl Companies and production resumed.
Bundaberg Brewed Drinks Pty Ltd is an Australian family-owned business that brews non-alcoholic beverages. Based in Bundaberg, Queensland, the company exports to over 61 countries across the globe and is most known for ginger beer and other carbonated beverages.
Fentimans is a botanical brewery based in Hexham, Northumberland, England.
Anheuser-Busch, a wholly owned subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, is the largest brewing company in the United States, with a market share of 45 percent in 2016.
Small Town Brewery was a brewing company based in Wauconda, Illinois, best known for creating the Not Your Father's brand of flavored beers.
