From suds to soda
Kichesippi Beer Co. has already signed on a dozen restaurants and retailers
Ottawa’s Kichesippi Beer Co. is branching out to serve the younger crew with a line of all-natural sodas.
Ottawa’s Kichesippi Beer Co. is about the pop the cork on a sparkling new product line: allnatural sodas. And while the less-than-three-year-old beer company has had remarkable success in the crowded microbrewery market, it looks like there might be even more appetite for its sodas.
Kichesippi has not yet made one drop of pop, but it has already signed on more than a dozen restaurants, retailers and a food truck who want to sell the new Harvey & Vern’s sodas.
“It has been remarkable,” says Kichesippi owner Paul Meek. “We just announced it on Twitter and quickly had 20 people jump on board saying they like the idea. There really is no one else in Ontario who is doing this.”
Gezellig, Brothers Beer Bistro and The Black Tomato have already said they want to carry the new sodas on draft. The Piggy Market wants to sell bottles of it and chef Ben Baird plans to carry bottles on board his new Ottawa Streat Gourmet truck. A new ice cream shop planned for Carp is to make floats with the new soda by summer.
What will be different about Harvey & Vern’s sodas — “we don’t want to call them pop,” says Meek — is that they will be all natural.
“This is where the 40-yearold dad comes in,” says Meek. “I don’t want them to contain anything I don’t want to give my kid. No artificial colours, no sodium benzoate or ingredients you can’t pronounce, and real cane sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup.”
The first two flavours, in the sampling stage this week and to be ready for sale by the end of April, will be cream soda, which will be clear, not artificially pink, and ginger beer, which will be made with natural ginger extract and ginseng.
“We had a family meeting at home to decide on the flavours,” says Meek. “Cream soda was my wife Kelly’s choice, and I chose ginger beer. Our son Alexander voted for root beer, and we’ll have that before Christmas.”
In fact, just about everything about the new sodas has a family connection.
Meek says he has a passion for pop because of childhood memories of driving to his grandparents’ farm near Quyon, on the Ottawa River. Hot and dusty, he would be treated to a 750-mL bottle of soda, the kind with a metal cap you popped off in a metal opener attached to the store wall.
Harvey was his Quyon grandfather’s name; Vern is his wife’s father’s name.
“It’s nice to be able to pay tribute to those who taught you stuff,” says Meek. “We want to pay homage to an older time, old-fashioned community values and doing things right, not doing things quick. That’s what we’ve been all about at the brewery.”
It’s a formula that has been remarkably successful.
In 2010, Kichesippi sold 30,000 litres of beer; in 2012 it sold 290,000 litres. Meek says people are always asking him if he wants to open a pub, but, he says, “Why would I when I have 140 great customers — Ottawa-area pubs and restaurants that sell my beer?”
‘We want to pay homage to an older time, oldfashioned community values and doing things right, not doing things quick. That’s what we’ve been all about at the brewery.’
PAUL MEEK
Owner, Kichesippi Beer Co.
The capacity to make soda has come about because the brewery has expanded, buying new, bigger tanks, and leaving some smaller ones available. In addition, Kichesippi is about to get a new bottling line that will fill 1,500 bottles in one hour, a process that used to take six.
Kichesippi’s brewmaster, Don Harms, has experience making sodas from when he worked at Propeller Brewing Company, Nova Scotia’s best-selling microbrewery, which makes root beer and ginger beer.
Meek has already bought himself an old-fashioned soda jerk hat and apron and plans to outfit his staff in matching attire for special events, right down to crisp, white paper hats and Converse sneakers. He’s also outfitting a Kichesippi bicycle with a Harvey & Vern’s sign and a portable keg so he can deliver soda by cycle.
“We could go into the ByWard Market giving samples on a summer day,” says Meeks. “I’m very excited. This is going to be a lot of fun.”