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Brew Your Own!

by Angela Sciara «

"We brew root beer for the same reason we brew beer," says Tom Mills, owner of Flying Goose Brew Pub, New London, N.H. "It’s profitable, and we can make it better than you can buy it."
The Flying Goose is among brewpubs across the country that are finding a new profit center in homemade soda. Any skilled brewer can make a great soda, and the process involves much the same equipment as making beer. In addition while beer averages a 28-day production cycle, root beer has a 24-hour turn-around time. And because sodas are non-alcoholic beverages, there’s no hassle with those pesky excise taxes or ATF regulations.
The Flying Goose has brewed root beer and diet root beer since opening one and a half years ago. "The root beer market is having its own spurt right now," Mills says. "A lot of people are making their own root beer; it’s especially competitive in the stores."
Handcrafted sodas are a small but growing market segment nationally, accounting for $334 million in sales in 1997, according to Beverage Marketing Corp.
In addition to profit, the beauty of making soda lies in the enhanced image it brings to a brewpub. It essentially allows the handcrafted concept to be marketed to a wider audience.
"We are draft brewers," says Randy Wilson, brewmaster at Steamworks Brewery, Durango, Colo. "The more craft-brewed items I can offer, the better. It actually helps build my image. It’s really quite a feat. We boast to our customers about it."
Along with the marketing benefits, the profit level of soda makes it hard to resist, says Scott Brown, brewmaster and partner of Flying Goose Brew Pub. "If someone came to me tomorrow for advice on opening up a brewery, I’d tell them to brew soda."
The most attractive reason to brew soda? Profit. Brown says the Flying Goose makes the most expensive recipe of root beer, using only real sugar and pure bourbon vanilla, and the cost is 28 cents per gallon. The brewpub sells the old-fashioned root beer for $2.50 per pint and $2 per glass.
"If everything had that kind of mark-up, I wouldn’t be driving an old pickup truck," says Brown.
Not only does soda cost little to brew, but its novelty status lends itself to top pricing. Steamworks Brewery prices a pint of its root beer 50 cents higher than the same serving of Coca-Cola. "We consider our root beer a premium product," says Wilson. "And we price it accordingly." With a pint of root beer costing Steamworks only 5 cents and Coca-Cola costing 13 cents per pint, it’s easy to see which is considered the beverage of choice among management.

Although beer is considered an adult beverage, it doesn’t follow that fresh-brewed soda is for kids. "Our root-beer customers run the gamut," says Mills. "Mom, dad, kids, grandparents, even our staff loves the stuff. Root beer is just widely accepted."
"Families, college students, and business people alike all buy our soda," says Steamworks’ Wilson. "Our homebrewed sodas make up 11 percent of all non-alcoholic beverage sales."
The Flying Goose Brew Pub reports even higher numbers, with its homebrewed root beer accounting for almost 30 percent of all non-alcoholic beverage sales and 5 percent of gross sales. "People go wild over it because it’s not a sweet root beer," says Brown. "We get local patrons and many tourists who say they haven’t had an old-fashioned root beer like ours since childhood."

Brewing soda also presents many marketing opportunities, says Jack Callanan, general manager of Sissons Restaurant and Brewery, Baltimore. Regional festivals, local carnivals, and charity events are golden occasions to put your product in front of the public and prospect new customers. Soda sails past political limitations and red tape that so often surround beer.
"Our Devin’s Ale root beer has been instrumental in opening doors we couldn’t open with beer," says Callanan. "The annual Artscape Festival had a contract among five microbrewers with the same distributor," says Callanan. "I wasn’t with that distributor and wasn’t allowed to bring my beer. So instead we showed up with food and root beer and still attracted huge crowds of new customers." Now local festivals call Sissons requesting its root beer along with its beer.
"Soda is great for charity events," says Mills. "You can give away soda easily for sponsored events or as gift prizes, but it’s hard to give away beer."

Not all brewpub owners have had a good experience in the world of crafted sodas. Bruce Raymond, general manager of The Pike Pub & Brewery, Seattle, says Pike’s time spent with soda was short-lived. The brewpub brewed its own ginger ale and root beer for six months before finally calling it quits.
"We wanted to focus on our award-winning beers," Raymond says. "Thomas Kemper is a regional root beer brewer with strong brand recognition, so we serve it instead of trying to compete with people who are in the business of crafting soda."
Raymond also cited time constraints and problems with consistency and quality as factors in abandoning the soda business. "We’re just too busy with beer to mess with soda pop."

To help make serving your own soda worthwhile, here are a few tips to get you started.
Product tie-ins are a great way to promote your product outside of the brewpub. Flying Goose Brew Pub now markets its own root beer extract kits for the homebrewer. Each kit contains a jar filled with enough extract mix to brew a five-gallon batch of the sweet sarsaparilla. "It’s very popular in homebrew shops," says Mills.
Capitalize on local identification. Steamworks marketed a tasty peach soda using locally grown peaches.
Promote your root beer any way you can. Brag about it like you would your award-winning pale ale. Steamworks even has a special tap tower adorned with a colorful root beer mug so patrons can spot it easily when ordering. How about a root beer float featuring your custom-made soda headlining the dessert menu? Or open happy hour to all customers by including pints of discounted root beer.
Whatever you do, don’t skimp on quality, advises Brown. "Forget about the cost; just brew a good product," he says. "Make your root beer robust and customers will buy it because they can’t get it in the store."

Flying Goose Brew Pub sells soda for $2.50 per pint and it costs 3.5 cents per pint to make. At Sissons it sells for $2 per pint, and the cost to make it is 12 cents per pint. Steamworks sells soda for $1.75 per pint and makes it for 5 cents a pint.

Initial start-up costs are fairly minimal to begin brewing soda, says Brown. A used 200-gallon tank with fittings costs about $2,200. Buy a tap line and you’re set. Once you make root beer, though, the vessel and draft lines are forever root beer. The nature of the ingredients, such as mint, permeates the line, so it can’t be used for beer. An alternative is to make the soda in kegs (see "Pop Art").

Root beer is by far the style most commonly brewed at brewpubs. Cream sodas and ginger ales are also popular. Some brewpubs try to make their own distinctive sodas, such as Steamworks’ peach soda.
Recipes vary from pub to pub, but there are the basics. Every root beer contains vanilla, molasses, and mint. The rest is up to the brewer. Make yours bold and robust or sweet and mild.
Despite a few misgivings, the resounding opinion by these brewpub owners is brew soda. "You’d be foolish not to," says Wilson. "When you look at the bottom line, brewing soda makes all the sense in the world."

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