The soda has gone wild at Pacific Western Brewing.
The innovative brewery has a history of pushing the adult beverage envelope. PWB's Prince George factory was the first in Canada to produce beer in cans, the first to sell malt, they even beat the brewery giants to the trend of adding lime to beer. Now it's happening again.
Aside from being one of Canada's oldest and largest craft breweries, PWB also has a line of non-alcohol beverages. Chief among them is Cariboo Root Beer and Cariboo Ginger Ale, two popular pops in grocery stores and convenience shop coolers all over the region. Those products are still rolling off the assembly line on the shores of the Nechako River, but each one now has a brand new adult counterpart. Cariboo Wild Root Beer (RB) and Cariboo Wild Ginger Ale (GA) are getting canned up and fanned out to B.C. stores right now.
"It was the popularity of our pop that got us thinking about this," said PWB's Tom Leboe.
"People love it - the root beer especially. It has been a really popular couple of items for us. We also knew there were hard root beers and ginger ales out there on the market in other places. This whole beverage classification is growing like crazy - with the fruit-flavoured beers and coolers and hard ice teas. It's the kind of thing that's as big as the beer industry these days. We had these two products already, so we saw our own potential to join this category. In England they call it alcopop."
It required special new licenses PWB did not have. It wasn't a beer being produced, so they needed to acquire a distillery license, since mixing alcohol into their soda needed vodka. The potato elixir was sourced from Highwood Distillers in Alberta.
"It was the closest one we know of," said Leboe, staunchly keeping it as local as possible. (Highwood is located in the small town of High River on the Rocky Mountain ramp south of Calgary.)
The new license was successfully obtained and with it comes future possibilities. They are allowed to stir their new emulsions, but they can also consider making their own spirits on-site. Due to the major differences between brewing and distilling, that would be an expansion of jobs and internal economies at PWB, not just making more with the same resources.
"We have no set plans to make our own vodka, but we are looking to the future," said Leboe. "If this (Wild GA and Wild RB products) goes well, it is something we would possibly consider."
The first run of Cariboo Wild RB is 5,0000 six-packs and the first run of Cariboo Wild GA is 3,200 six-packs. They will set their ongoing bottling program to match consumer demand.
Meanwhile, the kid-favourite pops are still on sale in their usual places. The familiar dark brown can with gold trim contains the root beer and the gold can with the dark brown trim contains the ginger ale. The Wild versions are in brighter, busier can designs and only for sale amongst adult beverages.
They are expected to be in participating liquor stores sometime next week and a few locations already have them.
