“It hurts my brewer’s heart,” Ninkasi’s Daniel Sharp says about getting into hard seltzer. “But,” he adds, “as a fermentation scientist, I love it.”
At times, unquenchable consumer demand for a product outweighs a professional brewer’s resistance to venturing out of a comfort zone. Hazy IPA was like that for many—a radical departure from West Coast–style IPA, perhaps, but still not a departure from beer. Hard seltzer, however, can appear to be antithetical to beer as a whole. There’s often no malt or hops in it, and it’s typical to use wine yeast for fermentation. On the face of it, the only thing that beer and hard seltzer have in common is that they can both be produced at the same brewery.
For Ninkasi Brewing in Eugene, Oregon, it was the opportunity to expand the product line with minimal capital expense that drove the decision to launch sister brand Pacific Sparkling Craft Seltzer.