Small Town Brewery is a

brewing company A brewery or brewing company is a business that makes and sells beer. The place at which beer is commercially made is either called a brewery or a beerhouse, where distinct sets of brewing equipment are called plant. The commercial brewing of bee ...

based in

Wauconda, Illinois Wauconda ( or ) is a village in Lake County, Illinois, United States. Per the 2020 census, the population was 14,084. It is the site of the Wauconda Bog Nature Preserve, a National Natural Landmark. Wauconda Community Unit School District 118 ...

, best known for producing the Not Your Father's brand of flavored beers.

History

Small Town Brewery was founded by John Dopak and Tim Kovac in Wauconda in 2010.Tripp Mickle
"Not So Soft Drink: Brewers Add Booze to Root Beer,"
''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', August 14, 2015. Kovac first started

homebrewing Homebrewing is the brewing of beer or other alcoholic beverages on a small scale for personal, non-commercial purposes. Supplies, such as kits and fermentation tanks, can be purchased locally at specialty stores or online. Beer was brewed dom ...

in 1988. After three years of development, Not Your Father's Root Beer was released in Illinois in 2012. It was initially sold in its 19.5%

abv Alcohol by volume (abbreviated as ABV, abv, or alc/vol) is a standard measure of how much alcohol (ethanol) is contained in a given volume of an alcoholic beverage (expressed as a volume percent). It is defined as the number of millilitres (mL) o ...

incarnation in kegs at local bars and liquor stores. The brewery then did two small bottling runs of a 10.7% abv root beer in 22-ounce bottles, and in November 2014, they released 12-ounce bottles of a 5.9% abv version. In March 2015, Small Town partnered with

Pabst Brewing Company The Pabst Brewing Company () is an American company that dates its origins to a brewing company founded in 1844 by Jacob Best and was, by 1889, named after Frederick Pabst. It is currently a holding company which contracts the brewing of over ...

to distribute the Not Your Father's brand nationally. Shortly thereafter, Pabst owners, including Pabst CEO

Eugene Kashper Eugene Kashper ( rus, Евгений Кашпер) is an American beer entrepreneur and Chairman of Blue Ribbon Partners. He also served as the Chairman and CEO of Pabst Brewing Company. Biography Kashper was born in the Soviet Union to Russian ...

, acquired a stake in the brand and the company.Kyle Stock
"Boozy Root Beer Is About to Be Huge,"
''

Bloomberg Businessweek ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...

'', July 21, 2015. A new category in the alcoholic beverage industry was created due to the success of Not Your Father's Root Beer, referred to as "

hard soda Hard soda, also referred to as flavored beer, adult soda, fermented soda, mature soda and alcohol soda, is a type of alcoholic beverage and craft beer that is manufactured in the style of a soft drink. It has gained recent prominence in the Unit ...

" or "flavored beer." The Small Town Brewery tap room in Wauconda was opened to the public on October 15, 2015. It serves a rotating cycle of 16 Small Town beers, with beer flavors including French Toast, Bourbon Pecan and Strawberry Rhubarb.

Products

Not Your Father's Root Beer is a traditionally-made beer brewed with

botanicals Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

, spices, and herbs such as

wintergreen Wintergreen is a group of aromatic plants. The term "wintergreen" once commonly referred to plants that remain green (continue photosynthesis) throughout the winter. The term "evergreen" is now more commonly used for this characteristic. Mos ...

sarsaparilla Sarsaparilla often refers to the sarsaparilla soft drink, made from Smilax plants. Sarsaparilla may also refer to: Biology *Several species of plants, of the genus ''Smilax'', including: **''Smilax ornata'', also known as Honduran or Jamaican sar ...

bark,

anise Anise (; '), also called aniseed or rarely anix is a flowering plant in the family Apiaceae native to Eurasia. The flavor and aroma of its seeds have similarities with some other spices and herbs, such as star anise, fennel, licorice, and ta ...

cinnamon Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus ''Cinnamomum''. Cinnamon is used mainly as an aromatic condiment and flavouring additive in a wide variety of cuisines, sweet and savoury dishes, breakfa ...

nutmeg Nutmeg is the seed or ground spice of several species of the genus ''Myristica''. ''Myristica fragrans'' (fragrant nutmeg or true nutmeg) is a dark-leaved evergreen tree cultivated for two spices derived from its fruit: nutmeg, from its seed, an ...

vanilla bean Vanilla is a spice derived from orchids of the genus ''Vanilla'', primarily obtained from pods of the Mexican species, flat-leaved vanilla ('' V. planifolia''). Pollination is required to make the plants produce the fruit from which t ...

and

honey Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of plants (primar ...

, to give it the taste of an old-fashioned root beer.Gary Dzen
"A mysterious Midwestern brewer toys with dessert,"
''

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'', June 27, 2015. It is currently available nationally in two

levels: 5.9% and 10.7%. Not Your Father's Root Beer 5.9% abv 6-pack bottles was the best-selling craft beer in the United States in 2015. Not Your Father's Ginger Ale was released in November 2015. Not Your Father's Vanilla Cream Ale, at 4.1% abv, was made available in 2016. However, the only products currently sold in the Not Your Father's line are Root Beer and Lemonade.

Honors and awards

* BeerHoptacular Beer of the Year, Second Place, 2013 * 94 out of 100 rating by

Beer Advocate Beer rating is assessing and evaluating beer using a point system. The process is similar to that used in beer judging competitions, such as those organised by the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) in America, though the participants are con ...

for Not Your Father's Root Beer (10.7% abv), 2014

Controversy

Michael Agnew, owner of ''A Perfect Pint'', after visiting the brewery, argued that the equipment he saw could not produce such a high alcohol content using grain, and that therefore perhaps the root beer was spiked with

neutral grain spirit Rectified spirit, also known as neutral spirits, rectified alcohol or ethyl alcohol of agricultural origin, is highly concentrated ethanol that has been purified by means of repeated distillation in a process called rectification. In some countri ...

, as opposed to fermented like other beer. Strange Brews host Andrew Gill speculated that perhaps it was not even beer but rather a

flavored malt beverage An alcopop (or cooler, spirit cooler n South African English">South_African_English.html" ;"title="n South African English">n South African English or malternative

n American English N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''. History ...

is any of certain flavored alcoholic beverages with relati ...

. Kovac's claims that no sugar is added to the beverage, but that its sweetness comes solely from grains and spices, have also been questioned.

References

External links

Official website
{{portalbar, Beer, Companies, Drink American beer brands Beer brewing companies based in Illinois American companies established in 2010 Pabst Brewing Company Root beer Ginger ale