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Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/674578
www.cheersonline.com 42 • May 2016 THE ROOT OF IT ALL One of the first brands—if not the brand—to jumpstart the hard soda movement is Not Your Father's Root Beer, which came out about a year ago. "We developed Not Your Father's Root Beer because we recognized people's craving for nostalgic flavors they loved from childhood," explains Tim Kovac, founder and brewmaster of Small Town Brewery, which makes the product. Kovac first experimented with hard root beer with his son in 2011, brewing for fun after their vacation plans got canceled. Fresh, fizzy root beer comes into many people's minds as being poured in the soda shops of the mid 20th century. But our love of root beer dates back even further. "Root beer is a classic American flavor, and it was actually made with alcohol in colonial times. So it's really an authentic product that was exciting for us to try to reinvent in our own way," Kovac says. Not Your Father's Root Beer brings the classic recipes into modern times. Small Town Brewery adds in botanical ingredients such as vanilla, oak, wintergreen, sarsaparilla and spices. In this way, hard soda is a meeting point between two current drink trends: contemporary craft and classic revival. Coney Island Brewing Co., owned by Boston Beer Co., launched a hard root beer last summer. Line extensions of hard ginger ale and hard orange cream ale have followed. Wild Ginger Brewing Co. introduced Wild Root hard root beer in November, two months after it unveiled an alcoholic ginger beer. Founder Jamey Grosser wanted to develop "nostalgia" products. "I didn't know a bomb was about to go off with root beer," Grosser recalls. "All of a sudden there were a bunch of hard root beers. I said, 'We gotta get ours out'." Around the same time, Anheuser-Busch launched its Best Damn Root Beer. The company then expanded its hard soda Not Your Father's Root Beer came out in June 2015 and jumpstarted the hard root beer/spiked soda movement. * * * * "Root beer is a classic American flavor, and it was actually made with alcohol in colonial times. So it's really an authentic product that was exciting for us to try to reinvent in our own way." — Tim Kovac, founder and brewmaster of Small Town Brewery