It’s quiet in the back of East End Brewing Company. The 20-barrel brewing operation, separated from its buzzing taproom by a bright red door, is simmering at a light hum, the super-sized, steel tanks sitting quietly for the night under the gaze of the brewery’s unofficial mascot (and the face of their flagship beer, Big Hop), a frog.
But, there are two people left in the space after brewing hours: head brewer Brendan Benson and his wife, Eliza, the team behind the sparkling, small-batch, hidden gem, Barmy Soda Company.
Their hands work in sync, manually filling, capping, and sealing 12 oz. cans of their craft soda. (That night, they were canning a sparkling lemonade.)
This is a typical canning night for Eliza and Brendan, who operate Barmy by themselves (sometimes with the enlisted help of one or two of their nieces.) Everything — down to the syrups — passes through their hands before taking flight to the front of East End Brewing Company or one of their many wholesale locations in the city.
Barmy Soda Company was started in 2010 by Brendan — who has been with East End for the past 17 years — as a way to serve a market the brewpub was missing: kids.
“People were bringing their kids [to East End], and there was nothing here for them,” he explained. “Root beer is a no-brainer in a brewpub, so that was my first flavor.”
With that, Barmy Soda Company was born. Brendan took it on as a side business, selling the soda by the growler and eventually developing his second flavor, a ginger beer, using fresh lime and real ginger.
Their staple line has since been rounded out with a grapefruit soda and — capitalizing on the rise of brands like La Croix — a handful of flavored seltzers. (If you have noticed, all of their beverages also make great cocktail mixers.)
All of the Barmy sodas are — and were — all-natural. Every fruit flavor in the soda is real; Eliza and Brendan juice their citrus and make the syrups by hand. (For the seltzers, they use an all-natural powder.)
“You’re not going to open up a can of 7UP and see pulp, even though it’s a lemon-lime soda,” Eiza says. “Our [ginger], you open it and you see [lime] pulp in there.”
The difference is clear. Barmy is not like a La Croix, where the taste is barely an echo of flavor, or a Coke product, which tastes fake. There’s a strong, authentic flavor that comes through with every Barmy beverage, one that tastes real.
This idea of “all-natural” goes further than ingredients. Brendan and Eliza try to reuse packaging from East End where possible and compost all of the vegetal matter at their house. They’ve also used reclaimed food to make their sodas, taking limes and lemons off the hands of Maggie’s Farm Rum and Wigle Whiskey if there are leftovers.
And while there are some similarities between “brewing” beer and soda — carbonation, for one — Brendan says, smiling, that making soda is “so much easier” than beer.
“With making wort (the beginning of beer) for fermentation, you have to take grains, crush them, pour the liquid out, add hops and yeast, and that whole process takes about 10 days on average… with aging, et cetera on top of that, it could be a few weeks or more,” Brendan explained.
“Soda, you just make the syrup.. and there’s a two to three-day turnaround,” he continued.
What they do have to be careful about, however, is a contaminated canning line. Running the natural sodas on a beer line (via kegs in the East End taproom or through one that was previously used) is an opportunity for cross-contamination, which, Brendan explains, can lead to “kaboom:”
“Two years ago we ran a pallet of root beer, ginger beer, and seltzer water on a mobile canning line. We made the pallets, I left for vacation, and then I got a call from my boss saying, ‘This ginger beer is… something’s building pressure,’” Brendan said. “I get over there, take the cans over to the drain, and I knew everything was going to explode.”
As Eliza says, Barmy has been a lot of trial and error. After losing about 90% of their product in the explosive run, they purchased a never-used, cleaned, and sanitized canning line from Enix Brewing in Homestead. They haven’t run into the pressure problem again.
But, even with some bumps along the way, Eliza and Brendan have managed to smoothly can and produce a fresh, local line of seltzers and sodas — one that they hope keeps growing at a manageable, steady pace.
Harvie’s impact on this growth has been noticeable: “Once we joined on with Harvie, the traffic was on social, people were excited. It opened an avenue for us,” Eliza says. “We’ve got a great product, and we know it, but we don’t go out there and push it too much. We’re thankful that Harvie somehow found us.”
Barmy Soda can be used for cocktails and mocktails or enjoyed by themselves — either way, they make a great sunny-day sipper. Add a four-pack of grapefruit soda, ginger beer, root beer, or lime seltzer to your next Harvie box!