Revolution Brewing Company’s Freedom Lemonade is a refreshing, low ABV beer that is perfect for the summertime months. To achieve the perfect balance of sweetness and tartness, the innovation team at Revolution carefully crafted a recipe that transports you right to the county far.
“We're always riffing and experimenting with our innovation team and experimenting with new ideas. One time we wanted to make a beer and infuse it with some nice fresh lemon character,” Jim Cibak, Revolution Brewmaster said. “We figured out we needed to create a simple syrup to balance out similar to any nice fresh-made lemonade that you would get at a county fair.”
Revolution has a collection of Freedom beers that are made by kettle souring the beers with lactobacillus or lactic acid. This process makes the beer more acidic during the brewing process which creates a sour and tart flavor.
“Kettle souring the beer with lactobacillus allows us to get a little natural tartness,” Cibak said. “When we couple that with some of the sweetness from the simple syrup we create and the fresh lemon products that we use, it gives the beer a nice tart and sweet balance and lets the super fresh lemon profile come through in this beer.”
Unlike other adult lemonade beverages, the herb blend of lemon products that flavor the beer are added after the fermentation process. This allows the sweetness, tartness, and aromatics of the beverage to work together to create the perfect flavor profile.
“It's a really good lemonade with a balance of some sweetness and tartness and that fresh lemon character. That's what we were trying to achieve,” Cibak said. “It's a very refreshing beer. It has a very low hop bitterness and low alcohol by volume or ABV percentage. It's only 4.5% so it's a very easy drinking beer.”
The low ABV percentage, along with the refreshing aspect, is comparable to that of the most popular drink style on the market currently: seltzers. It seems as if every alcohol brand has created its spin on the drink, but Revolution wanted to stick to its roots and create a beer that was fruity and refreshing.
“Seltzers have become a very popular thing in the world these days. We're brewers, we want to make beer. We can make any kind of style of beer and riff on different styles, and create cool unique flavors. This allowed us to get creative and play in that market,” Cibak said. “What the kettle sours are for us allows us to still be making beer but it allows us to still dip our toe into that market of a similar beverage to some of these fruited seltzers. We are in the realm of those with this line of products, but it is still 100% beer.”
Along with Freedom Lemonade, several other Freedom drinks can be found in most local liquor and grocery stores. Keep an eye out for new drinks, because the innovation never stops at Revolution.
“With our innovation team, we are always experimenting with new varieties and new fruits and different things like that. So you can we'll be continuing to riff on our kettle sour program in the future,” Cibak said.
For more information on Revolution, visit revbrew.com. For more information regarding Indiana Beverage, visit indianabev.com.
