Beyond Beer: How Breweries Are Partnering with Soda Companies
The craft beverage landscape is experiencing a quiet revolution. Walk into many of the country’s top breweries today, and you’ll find something unexpected sharing cooler space with IPAs and stouts: craft sodas, sparkling waters, and sophisticated non-alcoholic cocktails. What’s driving this unlikely partnership between beer makers and soda companies? The answer reveals a lot about where the beverage industry is heading and why the most forward-thinking breweries are embracing it.
The Changing Face of Taprooms
For years, the craft brewery model was straightforward, make exceptional beer, create a great gathering space, and watch the community show up. But brewery owners started noticing something. The person who didn’t drink beer—whether due to preference, a designated driver role, pregnancy, sobriety, or just an off night—often felt like an afterthought. Their options? Tap water or maybe a generic soda from the fountain gun.
The numbers back this up. According to recent beverage industry data, the non-alcoholic and low-alcohol beverage market has grown exponentially, with the sober-curious movement and mindful drinking trends reshaping consumer expectations. Breweries that once focused solely on perfecting their hoppy creations now recognize that being a true community gathering spot beyond home and work means serving the whole community.
Why Breweries Make Perfect Partners
At first glance, a brewery and a soda company might seem like an odd pairing. But dig deeper, and the synergies become obvious.
Shared Craft Values
Craft brewers and craft soda makers share a fundamental philosophy: quality ingredients, small-batch attention to detail, and a rejection of the mass-market approach. Both industries emerged from a similar impulse, the desire to create beverages with real flavor, made by people who care about their product.
When we approach breweries about partnerships, we’re speaking the same language. We’re both sourcing locally when possible, we’re both experimenting with unique flavor profiles, and we’re both building businesses around community rather than just transactions.
Complementary Expertise
Breweries bring something invaluable to these collaborations, deep knowledge of fermentation, flavor balance, and perhaps most importantly, an existing community of beverage enthusiasts. They understand complexity, bitterness, carbonation levels, and how to create a drink that rewards slow sipping rather than mindless consumption.
Soda companies, meanwhile, bring expertise in different flavor territories—citrus brightness, herbal notes, fruit-forward profiles—and often have relationships with local farms and ingredient suppliers that breweries might not have cultivated.
When these skill sets combine, magic happens.
The Taproom Advantage
From a practical standpoint, breweries already have the infrastructure that craft sodas need, taprooms with foot traffic, distribution networks, credibility with beverage-focused consumers, and a built-in marketing platform. For soda companies, partnering with respected breweries instantly positions their products in front of exactly the right audience.
For breweries, adding quality non-alcoholic options transforms them from beer-only destinations into inclusive beverage destinations. It’s the difference between serving 60% of a group and serving 100%—whether that’s the person cutting back on alcohol, or the craft beverage enthusiast who wants that same artisanal experience and complex flavor but with less than half the calories and sugar of craft beer. Quality craft sodas don’t feel like settling, they feel like choosing something equally special.
Our Brewery Collaborations
POG IPL with Burial Beer Co.
Our newest collaboration with Asheville’s own Burial Beer Co. might be our most beer like creation, a Passion Fruit, Orange, and Guava India Pale Lemonade that pushes the boundaries of what a “soda” can be.
The “POG” flavor combination, originally popularized in Hawaii, has seen a resurgence in the craft beer world, particularly in hazy IPAs and fruited sours. Burial approached us with a challenge, could we capture that same tropical, juicy character in a non-alcoholic format that still had the complexity beer drinkers expect?
The result is an IPL that bridges worlds. It has the bright citrus punch you’d want from lemonade, the tropical depth from passion fruit and guava, all while including Citra and Azacca hops to give it that distinctly beer-like character. These hops add subtle bitterness and aromatic qualities that make it feel more sophisticated than a typical soda, while keeping it firmly in non-alcoholic territory. For Burial’s customers who want something tropical and refreshing but not alcoholic, it’s become a go-to. For us, it proved that “soda” could have the complexity and craft credibility of beer.
Our Other Collaborations
Beyond the POG, we’ve developed unique beverages with brewery partners across the region, each reflecting the distinct personality of the brewery and their community:
- Blackberry Sparkling Water with Noda Brewing (Charlotte, NC) – A clean, elegant sparkling water showcasing locally-sourced blackberries at peak season.
- N/A Blackberry Sangria with Oskar Blues Brewery (Denver, Colorado)– A celebratory, fruit-forward beverage with hints of citrus and subtle spices that captures the festive spirit of traditional sangria.
- N/A Negroni with Burial Beer Co. (Asheville, NC) – Working again with Burial, this bold creation captures the bitter, botanical complexity of the iconic cocktail. It doesn’t try to fool anyone—it celebrates the sophisticated spirit of a Negroni without the alcohol.
- N/A MargaritawithEdmund’s Oast Brewing (Charleston, SC) – Featuring bright lime, orange, and subtle sweetness with just enough salinity for that classic margarita character.
- N/A Paloma withHi-Wire Brewing (Asheville, NC) – A non-alcoholic partner for Hi-Wire’s Paloma Sour, a grapefruit forward favorite.
The Broader Industry Shift
Our experiences aren’t unique. Across the country, breweries are expanding their non-alcoholic offerings—sometimes through partnerships like ours, sometimes through in-house development of NA beers and other beverages.
Athletic Brewing, which makes only non-alcoholic beer, has become one of the fastest-growing breweries in America. Major beer companies have launched or acquired NA brands. Taprooms are installing dedicated NA taps. The shift is undeniable.
But here’s what makes brewery-soda company partnerships particularly interesting: they acknowledge that not everyone wants a beer, even a non-alcoholic one. Sometimes people want something fundamentally different—something bright and fruity, something bitter and botanical, something that scratches a different itch entirely.
By partnering with soda makers, breweries are saying: “We’re not just a beer company. We’re a beverage company. We’re a gathering place. We’re here to serve our community in whatever way they need.”
Each brewery we’ve partnered with has reported the same thing: adding quality non-alcoholic options hasn’t cannibalized beer sales—it’s brought in new customers and kept groups around longer.
When everyone in a group can find something they’re excited to drink, they stay longer, they come back more often, and they tell their friends. Inclusivity isn’t just the right thing to do ethically; it’s smart business.
Looking Forward
The partnership between breweries and soda companies represents more than a business trend, it’s a philosophical shift in how we think about beverage culture. It’s a recognition that craft, quality, and community matter more than rigid category definitions.
Our collaborations with Burial, Noda, Oskar Blues, Edmund’s Oast, and Hi-Wire have taught us that when you bring together people who care deeply about their craft—whether that’s brewing beer or making soda—the results can surprise everyone.
The taprooms of the future won’t be beer-only spaces. They’ll be beverage destinations where quality and creativity matter more than alcohol content, where everyone can find something special, and where the drink in your hand is a choice rather than a compromise.
We’re grateful to be part of this evolution, and we can’t wait to see where it leads next!