Thomas Kemper is a brewer of root beer, ginger ale, and other craft brewed 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. [1]
A brewery or brewing company is a business that makes and sells beer. The place at which beer is commercially made is either called a brewery or a beerhouse, where distinct sets of brewing equipment are called plant. The commercial brewing of beer has taken place since at least 2500 BC; in ancient Mesopotamia, brewers derived social sanction and divine protection from the goddess Ninkasi. Brewing was initially a cottage industry, with production taking place at home; by the ninth century monasteries and farms would produce beer on a larger scale, selling the excess; and by the eleventh and twelfth centuries larger, dedicated breweries with eight to ten workers were being built.
Root beer is a sweet North American soft drink traditionally made using the bark of the sassafras tree Sassafras albidum or the vine of Smilax ornata (sarsaparilla) as the primary flavor. Root beer may be alcoholic or non-alcoholic, most often non-alcoholic. It can be naturally free of caffeine or have caffeine added, and be carbonated or non-carbonated. It usually has a thick and foamy head when poured. Modern, commercially produced root beer is generally sweet, foamy, carbonated, non-alcoholic, and flavored using artificial sassafras flavoring. Sassafras root is still used to flavor traditional root beer, but since sassafras was banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration due to the carcinogenicity of its constituent safrole, most commercial recipes do not contain sassafras. Some commercial root beers do use a safrole-free sassafras extract. Major producers include A & W, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Coca-Cola, Sprecher Brewery, Dad's Root Beer, Berghoff Beer, and Barq's.
Ginger ale is a carbonated soft drink flavoured with ginger. It is drunk 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.
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Thomas Kemper Brewing of Poulsbo was sold to Hart Brewing (later known as Pyramid) in 1992. (Thomas Kemper had been founded in 1985 on Bainbridge Island, and began making soft drinks in 1990.)
Thomas Kemper Soda was first brewed by Andy Thomas and Will Kemper (now brewing at Bellingham's Chuckanut) [2] as alternative to beer at an Octoberfest celebration on Bainbridge Island, WA in 1990. The first Thomas Kemper Soda was handcrafted Root Beer. Thomas Kemper Sodas are still handcrafted and made with honey (although cane sugar is the primary sweetener), Madagascar vanilla, and other flavors available.
The soda comes in eight flavors: Root Beer, Vanilla Cream, Orange Cream, Ginger Ale, Grape, Black Cherry, Ginger Peach and Oregon Marionberry. Previously, there were Thomas Kemper varieties of Birch Beer and Cola as well.
Cream soda is a sweet carbonated soft drink. Traditionally flavored with vanilla and raspberry and based on the taste of a classic soda, a wide range of variations can be found worldwide.
A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus Vitis.
Prunus serotina, commonly called black cherry, wild black cherry, rum cherry, or mountain black cherry, is a deciduous woody plant species belonging to the genus Prunus. The species is widespread and common in North America and South America.
