Josh Grenz was walking through a local liquor store in Colorado last autumn when he noticed—and how could he not—the multitude of hard seltzers that were dominating shelf space in what had traditionally been known as the beer aisle. He knew the time was right to get on board the carbonated-booze-water Express.
“We already keg up nonalcoholic seltzer in the back of the brewery for us to drink, and we have a lot of fruit purees in house for the IPAs we make,” says Grenz, the owner and brewer of Verboten Brewing & Barrel Project in Loveland, Colorado. “So this was a logical step and really fits requests we get from people who are looking for low-carb, gluten-free alternatives to our beers in the taproom.”
Beverage fads come and go. There have been sparkling wine coolers, the first iteration of Zima (and then last summer’s limited-edition return), hard sodas, and hybrids such as Four Loko, but nothing that has come before has landed with quite the impact of hard seltzer.