BEER in New York: Carrie’s Beer from SWEET THURSDAY BEER CO.

My search for the best beer in New York continues….

I’ve been confused and a bit dismayed by this new drink I discovered at local shop Stinky Brooklyn. My wife is gluten free so I was excited to see a brand new alcoholic beer-like product without gluten that I can share with her.

Carrie’s Beer which seems to be the only product made by Sweet Thursday Beer Company is completely gluten free. It’s also completely not beer.

This is what I don’t understand. Carrie’s Beer is called beer right on the can and in all their social media and promotion, they talk about this drink as being beer. The definition of beer is that it contains the following ingredients: grain, hops, water, and yeast. As far as I can tell, this product contains only the latter two.

Very prominently, the can lists the ingredients; ginger, pineapple, water, turbinado sugar, and yeast. The two most famous ingredients in beer are nowhere to be found.

Now don’t get me wrong. It all sounds delicious. But I truly don’t understand why or how they are calling this drink beer.

Then I remembered ginger beer. That strangely named non-alcoholic brew that is also not really beer.

My guess is they are using that weird misnomer loophole to put themselves into the gluten free beer category. But this is really a hard soda more than anything else.

But the funny thing is it actually tastes like certain mass produced beers more than it does soda.

Yet underneath that dry adjuncty flavor, there were also refreshing notes of ginger and a hint of pineapple. It was light, certainly drinkable and easy sipping. But the side that most resembled beer was the least pleasant part of the drink.

So I really don’t know what to make of it. And neither did my gluten free wife. It’s a potential crowd pleaser for non-craft beer drinkers or for those with celiac that want to taste a locally produced light alcoholic drink that somewhat resembles beer.

This is something interesting worth trying but after tasting this, I might even be more confused than before.

Is Sweet Thursday Beer Co.’s Carrie’s Beer the best beer in NY? So I don’t want to fairly rate this as beer, but since they are insistent on being referred to as beer I’ll throw out a  6 out of 10 because the drink itself is worth trying but not because it tastes like good beer.