Where to find Texas craft sodas in DFW

While there’s a variety of craft-soda brands on store shelves and at fountains these days from all over the country, Texas is home to several popular brands. Here’s a look at some of them.

Maine Root

Portland, Maine-born/Austin-based Maine Root got its start when hydrogeologist Matt Seiler took it upon himself to come up with a better brand of root beer for a friend’s pizza place.

“Matt was fulfilling an unmet need in the market,” says Maine Root president and Matt’s brother, Mark, in an e-mail. “Being a hydrogeologist, Matt knew all about water quality and how using the required Round Up to kill weeds when growing GMO corn to produce high fructose corn syrup affects water quality …

“What was wrong with mainstream root beers is that they use GMO high fructose corn syrup, and smart, high-food IQ consumers know the difference and wanted a solution,” he says.

Six-year-old Maine Root is available throughout Texas in a variety of flavors in both bottles and for fountains. The company also makes ginger lemongrass lemonade, maple lemonade, Mexicane cola, blueberry, sarsaparilla, lemon lime, mandarin orange and the new pumpkin pie.

He says the fact that more retailers are willing to carry his products, as well as those of his craft competitors, proves the market for craft soda has nowhere to go but up.

“Grocery has changed in the last few years where you [used to] only find craft soda in specialty grocery stores,” he writes. “Then the mainstream grocers started carrying craft in a special section … Now, grocery had chopped the shelf space of Big Corn soda, and you can usually find craft brands in the soda aisle right next to Big Corn.”

Where to find it: Whole Foods, Central Market, Torchy’s Tacos, Hopboddy Burger Bar, Tacodeli

Oak Cliff Beverage Works

Though Bryan Wilder had worked in the beverage industry for 30 years, he was not satisfied with many of the drinks he had to work with.

“I started this company because I liked the taste of sugar better,” he says. “I noticed that when I bought a Mexican Coke [made with sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup], I just enjoyed it so much more.”

So, in 2009, he launched his Oak Cliff Beverage Works with its Real Sugar Soda brand. It serves fountains only and is not yet available in bottles (though it can be ordered for at-home Soda Stream machines).

He started off with a cola and a Dr Pepper-style flavor, now called Doc Sugar. (Dr Pepper objected to the original name, Dr Doctor).

“This is Dallas, Texas. Coke and Dr Pepper are king here,” he says. “If you don’t have a cola that takes like Coca-Cola and a version of Dr Pepper that’s pretty close, you’re not going to sell a lot because that’s what people like.”

Today, he offers a wider variety, ranging from orange mandarina to pina (pineapple).

“We did the State Fair (last year) and gave away probably 6,000 or 7,000 samples and I didn’t see one person who took a sip and didn’t finish their sample,” he says. “There’s room for a little craft guy like us who supplies people who want all-cane sugar products.”

Where to find it: Mariposa Latin Kitchen, Fort Worth; Velvet Taco, Wild About Harry’s, Babe’s Chicken, Buzzbrews, multiple DFW locations; Uncle Mo’s Burgers, Mansfield; Sweetie Pie’s Ribeyes, Decatur

Dublin Bottling Works

Three years ago, Dublin Bottling Works looked to be in trouble. The company, with roots that go back to 1891, had lost its legal fight with Dr Pepper over the right to sell its sugar-sweetened Dublin Dr Pepper, and everyone assumed they would go out of business.

“The four major news stations in Dallas-Fort Worth came out and did stories. The footage they showed really created an image of us closing our doors,” says Kenny Horton, Dublin’s self-described head soda jerk.

“They showed footage of lights being turned out, merchandise being pulled from shelves, which really put in the mind of the consumer that we had closed down,” he says.

There’s even a documentary about the whole affair, Bottled Up: The Battle Over Dublin Dr Pepper.

But Dublin Bottling Works survived and is riding a craft-soda wave that it foreshadowed with its adherence to cane-sugar-based drinks.

Whereas, prior to 2012, DBW was proscribed by Dr Pepper from selling its version of Dr Pepper outside of a small area in Central Texas, it now can concentrate on selling its non-Dr Pepper drinks — ranging from sweet peach and cherry limeade to retro grape — anywhere in the U.S.

So, in a sense, losing against Dr Pepper was a cloud that had a sweet silver lining.

“It has been kind of like starting over,” Horton says. “Now that we’re independent, that has opened us up. Any store that wants can have us and we can go all over Texas and the country.”

Where to find it: Kroger, Central Market, Tom Thumb, Albertson’s, Walgreens, HEB, United Supermarkets

Saint Arnold

Houston’s Saint Arnold bills itself as “Texas’ oldest craft brewery” but it also has gained a reputation for its root beer.

“We’ve been doing it for about 15 years,” says Saint Arnold founder Brock Wagner says. “Initially, we did it because we would do tours and we would get a lot of kids and a lot of people bringing the whole family out.

“You get somebody who doesn’t drink or somebody with a pregnant wife … I wanted to have something that was nonalcoholic.”

It turned out to be so popular that Wagner decided to sell it at retail.

“We certainly never intended to package it,” he says. “After a couple of years … we decided ‘let’s start packaging it and see what happens.’ ”

He says sales are totally word of mouth.

“Our marketing dollars allotted to root beer are zero,” he says.

And he has no plans to introduce any other soda flavors.

“I’ve never woken up in the morning and thought to myself, ‘Gosh, I get to make root beer today,’ ” he says. “I’ve really enjoyed designing the root beer … coming up with all the extracts and combining them in different ways … That was great fun, but once I did that, I was ready to go back to brewing some beer.”

Where to find it: Central Market, Kroger, Total Wine, Spec’s, Tom Thumb, Whole Foods, Sprouts, Goody Goody, Fresh Market, Trader Joe’s

Aqua Pop

Rob Peters plays guitar in the Denton band Wirewings but sometimes he has to skip practice sessions.

“Sometimes I bail because I’m bottling,” he says.

That’s because Peters’ other job is as the founder of Aqua Pop, a company that makes fruit-infused, carbonated drinks that have just hit the market in the last five months.

“My wife was bringing home [sparkling water brands] like LaCroix home and I don’t know what it was about but I just started dabbling,” he says of when his first inspiration struck about two years ago. “She’s kind of a Coke drinker, and she was using [carbonated water] to wean her Coke cravings.”

He says what makes Aqua Pop different from other flavored waters is that he uses fresh fruit. So far, it comes in three flavors: lemon, lime and grapefruit.

“That’s what makes it different from LaCroix or Topo Chico. Those are all coming from extracts or essences,” he says.

An art director and creative director by trade, Peters came up with a concept though many told him “the beverage landscape is incredibly competitive so I was warned several times about that.”

He began self-distributing about five months ago and Aqua Pop is available in more than 40 locations in North Texas, mostly independent, non-chain stores. He thinks that the fact that he’s local gives him an advantage over his water competitors.

“I put ‘local’ on there. I think people like the idea of supporting a local,” he says. “I want to be identified with this area and I want to be identified with Texas.”

Where to find it: Kent & Co. Wines, Fort Worth; Natural Grocers in Dallas and Denton; Tiger Mart, Grapevine; Rubber Gloves, Denton; Dan’s Silverleaf, Denton; Atomic Candy, Denton; Hypnotic Donuts, Denton; Paradise Spirits and Fine Wines, Argyle; Flower Mound Pharmacy, Flower Mound

Armadillo Ale Co.

When Denton’s Armadillo Ale Co. opens in the spring in a remodeled auto repair shop, the brewery and tap room will feature an assortment of craft beers but sodas will be a big part of the attraction as well.

In fact, co-founder Bobby Mullins — a former brewer at Houston’s Saint Arnold Brewery — started off with sodas before launching his first incarnation of Armadillo Ale Works through Deep Ellum Brewing a few years ago.

“Long before I was drinking beer, I was drinking sodas,” says Mullins. “I was raised on Dr Pepper.”

While waiting on the appropriate licenses to brew alcohol, Mullins and business partner Yianni Arestis began selling sodas.

“We had two sodas at the time, and we called them Prohibition Era because we weren’t able to make beer yet,” he says. “One was called Bees Knees, a lemonade honey soda with a little bit of vanilla and then we had a ginger creme ale.”

With their agreement with Deep Ellum Brewing lapsed and Armadillo’s new facility not ready yet (it still looks very much like a place for car repair), Armadillo products are unavailable at present. But when they re-open, Mullins plans to bring back his original two flavors and some others.

“We’re going to bring back a hybrid root beer-cola mix,” he says, “and we’re toying around with the idea of doing seasonal soda releases, sort of following the beer model.”

This story was originally published October 7, 2015 at 12:50 PM with the headline "Where to find Texas craft sodas in DFW."