Higher alcohol Not Your Father’s Root Beer to go national

Not Your Father’s Root Beer started with a 5.9 percent alcohol version. Now a 10.7 version will get national distribution. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)

Source: Chicago Tribune

Josh Noel

April 19, 2016

Not Your Father’s Root Beer is going national – again.

Almost a year after a 5.9 percent alcohol version of the boozy root beer invented by Wauconda’s Small Town Brewery became a national sensation, a 10.7 percent alcohol incarnation will get distribution in 45 states, a company news release said.

Rollout begins in Illinois in May, and will reach every state by fall except Maine, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire and Tennessee due to state laws.

The even-boozier root beer will be on draft in restaurants and bars and released in 22-ounce bottles three times per year in limited markets.

Not Your Father’s Root Beer – an intensely sweet and boozy beverage that tastes just like root beer – debuted in the Chicago suburbs at 19.5 and 10.7 percent alcohol in 2012. After wild local success, Small Town founder Tim Kovac sold production and distribution rights to Eugene Kashper, who owns Pabst Brewing Co., for a 5.9 percent alcohol version that became one of the nation’s biggest selling beer brands in 2014. But the higher alcohol versions were never distributed nationally.

Now that’s happening, at least with a 10.7 percent version that will be made by Wisconsin Brewing Co. in Verona, Wis.