This is Sure to be A Real Hoot

According to Boston.com, Everett-based Night Shift Brewing is has thrown its hat into the carbonated category with Hoot, a new line of hard seltzers which debuted on Oct. 21.

Hoot launched at Night Shift’s Everett and Lovejoy Wharf breweries (as well as its wholesale partners) with three flavors — raspberry lime, black cherry lemon, and pomegranate tangerine — though it isn’t the first time the brewery’s fans have been exposed to the product. Limited-edition experimental batches were released at both taprooms earlier this year, starting with mango and evolving with lime and lemon-lime iterations.

Despite hard seltzer’s rapid rise in popularity, getting into the category wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision for Night Shift. Owners Rob Burns, Mike O’Mara, and Michael Oxton began experimenting with the beverage in early 2018. But for a year, they couldn’t land on something that they were proud of.

Batch after batch went down the drain, recalls Oxton, until in early 2019, the brewery started producing hard seltzer that they could get behind. One of the biggest breakthroughs came when Night Shift started using wine yeast in the fermentation process instead of a more traditional distillers yeast. Despite being a slower, more expensive tactic, Oxton said that using wine yeast resulted in a seltzer that was crisp instead of cloying — and, coming in at 4% ABV and 90 calories, was slightly less alcoholic and caloric than some of the other big seltzers at the market, which generally fall around 5% ABV and 100 calories. Hoot seltzers are also gluten-free, a bonus that Oxton said helps solve the problem of previously not being able to accommodate gluten-free customers.

Sold in four-packs of 16-ounce cans to start, the hard seltzers are packaged in a spray painted, two-tone design that reflects each seltzer’s fruit combinations, like deep purple and yellow for black cherry lemon. (Oxton said that they intentionally tried to stay away from packaging that skewed masculine or feminine.) In 2020, the brewery will likely start selling Hoot in other formats: 12-ounce cans, six-packs, 12-packs, etc.

Hoot is just the latest addition to Night Shift’s growing portfolio. In 2019 alone, the company opened an innovation brewery at Lovejoy Wharf, launched Night Shift Coffee, and announced the addition of a Night Shift brewery in Philadelphia, which is set to debut in late 2020.

We're looking forward to all 2020 has in store for Night Shift and can't wait to devour the details of a Hoot or two! Cheers!