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October 12, 2021
Grapefruit Hard Seltzer Now On Tap
by Gary Ritz
9/3/21
W e’re excited to introduce Hwy 50 Brewery’s first craft hard seltzer. It’s a grapefruit seltzer we named “Chains Required”—an icy drink for the middle of summer (or any other time of year); crisp, cold, refreshing, and gluten-free.
Many people aren’t aware of the process for making a hard seltzer. It’s not simply seltzer water with alcohol and flavoring added. It is actually made through a type of brewing process. Like in beer, the alcohol in hard seltzer comes from fermentation that involves yeast and the right balance of water chemistry, sugar, and nutrients that make for happy yeast.
Figuring out the right combination of these has been fun and an interesting challenge. At the start we made 5-gallon batches, and each failed miserably, to say the least. So we took a closer look at every aspect of the process.
First, we took a hard look at our yeast choice and ultimately went with champagne yeast which we knew would ferment very dry and would easily handle the alcohol level we wanted (which came out perfectly at 4.4%).
But wine yeast comes with requirements that are different from ale yeast. For one, this meant the need for us to study and tweak the water chemistry.
As with everything we do here, we ran the water through activated carbon filters to remove any chlorine and chloramines, anything “off” that might be in there. Then to make the water more favorable to champagne yeast I raised the calcium level, tweaked the magnesium and lowered the pH to a more accommodating range.
Typically, ale yeast likes a pH of 5.2 to 5.4. But for wine yeast, the pH happy spot is 3.6 to 3.8. This pH range also accentuated the grapefruit profile we were seeking.
Next, we needed the right sugar and yeast nutrients to feed the yeast in order to sustain a healthy fermentation. In my opinion, hard seltzer should be bone dry with no sweetness to it. That's what makes it refreshing. But yeast needs plenty of nutrients or it stresses—or worse yet, stops fermenting.
With no grain in the making of seltzer, to supply the necessary nutrient requirements, the sugar needs to be supplemented with those nutrients.
We ended up using corn sugar because, unlike cane sugar—in my thinking anyway—at least corn has something to do with grain. After all, we are a brewery (and have our iconic grain silo out front)!
We found other solutions for providing nutrients as well, including actual grapefruit puree—45 pounds of which went into the final batch. It added nutrients and more sugar for the yeast and—because we never use chemical flavors or syrups—it brought a natural grapefruit flavor to the seltzer that’s 100% nature-made.
We knew the yeast would scrub through a lot of that flavor but then leave a refreshing light grapefruit taste as well as the acidity from the grapefruit which would lend itself well to the finished drink.
Too good to wait for, I had to enjoy a glass before filtering!
With all these elements in place, instead of another 5-gallon batch, we rolled the dice and went with 310 gallons (10 bbls). Fermentation took off and everything went great.
We gave the seltzer a final filtering to remove unwanted color, cloudiness, and any residual off-flavors. Finally, we carbonated it, chilled it, and put it on tap.
This has been a lengthy process and we've had our fingers crossed, so to speak, from the beginning. There's a lot of predictability in brewing, but there’s always the aspect that we’re dealing with yeast—a living organism that sometimes doesn't behave as predicted. That's when we scramble to see what we can do to obtain consistency in something that's not always 100% consistent.
Let me tell you, in making this first craft hard seltzer, we’ve done our share of scrambling!
Hard seltzer is a relatively new thing and only during the last year or so has our industry provided products targeted directly at hard seltzer. I can buy nutrient blends specific to hard seltzer now that I could not buy when we started. It just wasn't out there in a collective package.
That’s okay. Like everything else we produce at Hwy 50 Brewery, this seltzer is our own. And I’m happy because I know people will like it. Of course we want it to sell well so we can make more of it and perhaps try a new flavor or two down the road. But making sales has never been our main objective.
As you’ve heard from me before, Diane and I have always had the objective of providing quality products that people can come together over and relax and enjoy pleasant times here at HWY 50 Brewery.
To help promote this enjoyment, and after hearing many requests for a gluten-free option, we wanted to be responsive to those requests. We believe our icy cold “Chains Required” hard seltzer brings something new to that equation. I think it’s a good fit.
