Small Town Brewery - Not Your Father's Root Beer?

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la fours

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Has this been discussed?

Personally, I don't think I really care, but did find it interesting. Also, I don't know what the founder has been passing off as his story behind Small Town Brewery.

http://www.joesixpack.net/2015/07/02/the-story-behind-not-your-fathers-root-beer/

SOMETHING smells about Not Your Father’s Root Beer, and I’m not talking about the heavy dose of vanilla extract that flavors the suddenly popular brew.

Described as “ale with the taste of spices,” it tastes exactly like soda and contains 5.9 percent alcohol. Two other versions sold in large bottles contain 10.7 percent and an astonishing 19.5 percent alcohol.

The brew has social media and beer aficionado websites buzzing with excitement and high ratings, and buyers in Pennsylvania have been scooping up $50 cases since they arrived earlier this year. Its manufacturer went from an unknown startup to national distribution in under five years, with one sales survey calling it the fastest-selling new craft-beer product of 2015.

What is this stuff, and who’s behind its incredible success?

Tim Kovac, founder and brewmaster of Small Town Brewery, in tiny Wauconda, Ill. (population 13,823), where Not Your Fathers Root Beer was born, says he’s astonished at his success.

“It has been very much an amazing ride,” Kovac told me. “Going from a few dozen Chicago bars to one of the most sought-after beers in America – it’s a phenomenal beer, it really it is.”

At first, Small Town Brewery sounds like the prototypical independent craft brewery with a quaint back story: The owner is a graphic artist who stumbles upon his best-selling recipe during a carefree day of stovetop home-brewing with his son. It takes him two years to perfect it, finally producing an authentic, old-fashioned hard root beer.

One day, he serves it to a woman and watches a tear roll down her cheek as she declares, “You just brought back memories of me being a little girl.”

There are other gems, including the discovery of a 17th-century “leather-bound scroll” filled with brewing recipes from a seafaring ancestor who, legend has it, won a brewery in a card game.

Kovac shared the homespun tale with me last week during a phone call arranged and monitored by his public-relations agency, Sard Verbinnen & Co., a high-priced New York City firm known mainly for representing Wall Street scoundrels, including the Madoff family and Lehman Brothers’ Dick Fuld.

When I asked for details on how the root beer is brewed, the PR rep interrupted and said, “Parts of the recipe are proprietary.”

Kovac said it’s “brewed and fermented just like any other beer.”

Perhaps, but this is what else we know:

The brewhouse at Small Town Brewery, tucked into a small industrial center that also houses a body-jewelry outlet and a smoke shop, is capable of making fewer than 15 kegs a day.

That’s the equivalent of about 2,500 bottles – or would be if the brewery owned any bottling equipment.

Most of the root beer is brewed and packaged 238 miles away, at the former G. Heileman Brewing plant now owned by City Brewing in La Crosse, Wis.

Kovac said that City Brewing uses his original recipe.

The La Crosse plant, however, is known primarily for the production of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Smirnoff Ice and other so-called malternatives.

These drinks, which are not generally regarded as real beer, are fermented from grains and sugar, then stripped down to their essential taste-free alcohol and reflavored artificially.

It’s a fairly advanced technique, one that no small, largely inexperienced craft brewer would likely tackle on his own.

Kovac and the names of two other area men are listed on Small Town’s state liquor license. Nonetheless, there is ample evidence that the brewery is either controlled by or in a partnership with a much larger company called Phusion Projects LLC.

For example:

Why the subterfuge?

Possibly because Phusion is responsible for the most notorious alcoholic beverage to hit the shelves in the past decade: Four Loko.

Made with caffeine and marketed as an alcoholic “energy beer,” Four Loko was linked to dozens of hospitalizations and at least one death from excessive consumption before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration forced it off shelves in 2010.

The drink has since returned but without added caffeine.

Phusion did not reply to a request for comment about its relationship, and Small Town declined to answer further questions about its ownership.

However, a source familiar with the companies told me that the brand (but not the brewery) was recently acquired by Eugene Kashper, the new CEO and chairman of Pabst Brewing.

Pabst will distribute the root beer in all 50 states

Meanwhile, Small Town Brewery is developing other brands, including Not Your Father’s Ginger Beer and a barrel-aged root beer with 24 percent alcohol.


Thread **** away.
 
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I actually enjoy this one greatly, but I am a root beer whore.

I've always wondered though: is this actually a beer in the traditional sense, or more of a diluted liquor with spices?
 
Root beer gives me a headache. I can't imagine what a high alcohol root beer would do.
 
I got a bottle of this as an extra and loved it. Dangerously awesome. But like arren said, is this a beer or something beer like? Not that igaf. If this shows up on shelves in Texas, I'll drink the **** out of it. At least at first.
 
A drink that tastes of Germolene, then they made an alcoholic version.

For ****s sake. You lot never stop do you?
 
I have tried this stuff. Wasnt grossed out I do like root beer so it was a win there . Never tried Mikes Hard nothing ,Four Loko or any other alco-pop shite out there. Would I buy more? Maybe ... If I was throwing a party for kids and they all wanted to get smashed. Seems geared towards the younger crowd to me. Price wise pretty steep for pop too !!
 
The near 20% (19.5 I think?) version is crazy, crazy dangerous. Drinks just like the 5.9% but just a small amount of alcohol taste. But after a 16oz mug of it you can tell the difference in a hurry. Especially when said mug gets downed in under 10 minutes. Oh Lordy.
 
I was excited to first try it, and barely could get through a bottle split two ways. Was a novelty for me and while it may have a future as an ice cream topping I will skip buying it. Also, I never liked 4-loko or Prime Rib.
I liked it, but the medicinal aftertaste is very strong and off putting. If they fix that, I'm in all day
 
Yes, but the reading is only accurate if it's de-carbed.
That stuff is pretty flat, wouldn't take too long. I was commenting more on the fact he said it wasn't O.G. or F.G. but the actual liquid in the bottle, which should be at F.G. unless they do something else to it prior to bottles?
 
That stuff is pretty flat, wouldn't take too long. I was commenting more on the fact he said it wasn't O.G. or F.G. but the actual liquid in the bottle, which should be at F.G. unless they do something else to it prior to bottles?

It's pretty damn sweet so I think it's safe to assume they back sweetened. Either that or they're adding neutral alcohol to a base which allows them to have a similar product at different ABVs.
 
Wouldn't the actual liquid in the bottle be at Final Gravity?

Not in this case. If it's a clear malt beverage that probably has a way lower FG, i'd guess probably 1.010 or so. Maximum attenuation. It's the sugars and flavorings then added that causes the gravity to go up. That's what makes it so disturbing, that it's sugar content is basically that of wort. That's a ridiculous amount. That's 12.6 Brix, or 136 grams of suger per liter.

And the 1.050 reading comes from a degassed bottle.
 
Not in this case. If it's a clear malt beverage that probably has a way lower FG, i'd guess probably 1.010 or so. Maximum attenuation. It's the sugars and flavorings then added that causes the gravity to go up. That's what makes it so disturbing, that it's sugar content is basically that of wort. That's a ridiculous amount. That's 12.6 Brix, or 136 grams of suger per liter.

And the 1.050 reading comes from a degassed bottle.
Yeah I agree it is very high. I don't think this is real beer to begin with, and since they are going for a root beer flavor you would expect the gravity to be pretty high.
 
My friend met Pat at EBF. Didn't know who he was so after I told him, he goes back and says "hey man can I get a picture?" and Pat says sure. Picture snaps, then my friend says "thanks man... I don't even know who you are"
 
Picked up a sixer of this whenever it first came to PA. I kept hearing so much about it so I figured I had to give it a try. Looking at it as a beer, I'd rather have something else. As a root beer...I'd rather have something else. Too much spice and not enough of a smooth creaminess that I like in root beer, and nothing that reminded me of a beer. As others have mentioned, it finished with a bitter, medicinal taste.
 
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