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My understanding is that hard seltzers are mostly made in a fashion similar to beer. They use cane sugar rather than barley in the fermentation process.

KingMachiavelli 5y ago
Sure but they filter out (almost?) everything besides the water & alcohol. I'm quite confident legal, tax, & cost factors are the reason why they don't use a food-grade distilled ethanol as the alcohol base.
- jdminhbg 5y ago
  This is correct. What people want is a canned vodka soda, but vodka is taxed at a much higher rate than malt beverages (and depending on the state, harder to sell/purchase). The innovation of using sugar as a fermented base to get closer to that flavorless alcohol is what drove the hard seltzer craze: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/how-tax-policy-gave-us-white-claw.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/how-tax-policy-gave-...
  - gimmeThaBeet 5y ago
    I remember reading about the fermentation thing before, it just seemed so bizarre. Just strikes me as so odd, that the real innovation, is a tax workaround. And that innovation basically created an entire market category. At that point if I were the government, I would look at the current policies and determine if they still made sense. Meanwhile, the actual US customs didn't like that dodge, and apparently wanted imports of it re-classified for tariff purposes. That apparently happened last month.
    - jdminhbg 5y ago
      I actually think if it were just the taxes, the innovation probably wouldn't have happened. The bigger problem is that you can't really sell a national canned hard liquor drink, even if the liquor in it has been diluted by mixers down to beer or wine levels of alcohol. Too many states don't allow liquor to be sold anywhere but licensed liquor stores, and shelf space there is too precious for low-priced high-volume beer substitutes. You can sell malt-based hard seltzer in gas stations nearly everywhere.
      - gimmeThaBeet 5y ago
        That's a very good point. I guess then I would lump those together as 'policy' but you are right, that is a very distinct problem vs taxes. And probably not a surprise, I'm really not a fan of most US alcohol policy.

KingMachiavelli 5y ago

Sure but they filter out (almost?) everything besides the water & alcohol. I'm quite confident legal, tax, & cost factors are the reason why they don't use a food-grade distilled ethanol as the alcohol base.

jdminhbg 5y ago
This is correct. What people want is a canned vodka soda, but vodka is taxed at a much higher rate than malt beverages (and depending on the state, harder to sell/purchase). The innovation of using sugar as a fermented base to get closer to that flavorless alcohol is what drove the hard seltzer craze: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/how-tax-policy-gave-us-white-claw.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/how-tax-policy-gave-...
- gimmeThaBeet 5y ago
  I remember reading about the fermentation thing before, it just seemed so bizarre. Just strikes me as so odd, that the real innovation, is a tax workaround. And that innovation basically created an entire market category. At that point if I were the government, I would look at the current policies and determine if they still made sense. Meanwhile, the actual US customs didn't like that dodge, and apparently wanted imports of it re-classified for tariff purposes. That apparently happened last month.
  - jdminhbg 5y ago
    I actually think if it were just the taxes, the innovation probably wouldn't have happened. The bigger problem is that you can't really sell a national canned hard liquor drink, even if the liquor in it has been diluted by mixers down to beer or wine levels of alcohol. Too many states don't allow liquor to be sold anywhere but licensed liquor stores, and shelf space there is too precious for low-priced high-volume beer substitutes. You can sell malt-based hard seltzer in gas stations nearly everywhere.
    - gimmeThaBeet 5y ago
      That's a very good point. I guess then I would lump those together as 'policy' but you are right, that is a very distinct problem vs taxes. And probably not a surprise, I'm really not a fan of most US alcohol policy.