Hard cider sales have taken off. Now there’s hard root beer.
Sprecher Brewing, with a long history of making N/A soda’s including its well renowned root beer has just released a fermented root beer with 5% abv.
Packaged in 12-ounce bottles with a suggested retail price of $5 per four-pack, the company will begin an initial limited distribution in Southeastern Wisconsin and Madison.
That’s a fantastic idea. All of the “malternative” booze sodas like Smirnoff/Bacardi/whatever are growing pretty steadily.
I doubt very much that it’s a new idea. But whether it is or isn’t I suppose that considering this age of gimmicky brewing in which we live, it fits right in.
It’s more of an old idea revised. Rootbeer was made fermented long ago. We just forgot about it.
Sprecher should do well with this new product.
Exactly. We make one that is sort of a light brown ale with traditional root ingredients added (sarsaparilla, wintergreen, licorice root, other roots, honey, etc. It comes out at 8% ABV. It tastes nothing like an A&W, but I imagine more like root beer tasted 100+ years ago, albeit with the ABV amped up a bit.
Sam Adams did one about 8-10 years ago in a colonial era pack with an alcoholic ginger beer, an old style porter, and something else.
-Kevin