Creating something new in the packed-to-the-brim world of craft drinks is a rare thing nowadays, in Pittsburgh or anywhere else. Jackworth Ginger Beer, a new brewery in Larimer, is trying to thread the needle, taking the familiar and making it fresh, honoring history while charting a way forward.
Jackworth, a business specializing exclusively in alcoholic and non-alcoholic ginger beer, uses a formula that’s oh-so-similar to your standard beer recipe. “Think of it as using ginger instead of hops, and cane sugar instead of barley,” Jackworth Smith, Jackworth’s CEO and brewer, tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “And then, we use two types of sugar, a dark and a light, but other than that, it's the same process people have been using to make ginger beer since who knows how long.”
The “who knows how long” is at least since before Prohibition, as Jackworth’s co-founder, Tyler Lewis found examples of alcoholic ginger beer prior to that era. The simple recipe has been adopted across regions and cultures; there are fun ways to tweak the basic ingredients, but those basic ingredients don’t change (Jackworth just debuted a new release in collaboration with DJ pvkvsv for Barrel and Flow that uses one of those tweaks, a cayenne pepper variant that’s an homage to pvkvsv’s Congolese family’s roots).
Jackworth was born out of the idea that ginger beer had something unique to offer the Pittsburgh craft scene - and could be a delicious option for a whole generation of people that only think of one thing when they hear ginger beer: “Moscow Mule,” laughs Lewis, who also serves as Jackworth’s chief growth officer. “That’s how it stands in most people’s minds. So we’re creating and bringing back an old product, but introducing a new one with our alcoholic ginger beer.”
The concept of alcoholic ginger beer has been on Smith’s mind for a long time. His dad owned the beloved Dunning’s Grill in Regent Square (“I started bartending way too early,” Smith jokes), and he always gravitated towards the spirits industry. After college, he bartended in Philadelphia and kept getting drawn to ginger beer. He had kept in touch with his college friend Lewis, and in 2016, the idea really started to take shape, with Pittsburgh always being the natural fit for them.
“I’m from here,” Smith puts it succinctly. “The cool thing about ginger beer, it’s kind of a revival. [Jackworth] is actually my great-grandfather’s last name, and he was a streetcar driver in Pittsburgh forever. So it’s kind of continuing the tradition of my family, and bringing that history into the modern age.”
Adds Lewis, “Because there’s other breweries, people are already conditioned to see craft beverages popping up around the corner. So something like this, something niche, it just made the most sense from a growth perspective and from a comfort perspective.”
At the core of Jackworth are two really good ginger beers. Both of their standard offerings, the alcoholic and non-alcoholic versions, taste real from the first sip. If you’ve never had ginger beer on its own, it’s a surprising voyage, a spice and sharpness taking hold of you right away. It’s balanced out with sweet and refreshing notes that you don’t expect, turning it into a real balanced drink that feels like it can be consumed any time of year, in any setting. And if you don’t want the alcohol, don’t worry; Jackworth has been deliberate about maintaining the quality and taste in both its alcoholic and non-alcoholic products.
That comes in part from seeing, if not a sea change, a shifting of tides in the craft community. Pittsburgh’s craft beer scene is still thriving despite some rockiness after COVID, but people aren’t clamoring for the same types of beer that exploded the scene in the 2010s. They’re looking for diverse tap lists, they’re looking for ciders, they’re looking for seltzers — and Jackworth hopes they’ll be looking for ginger beer.
“It’s kind of the perfect product and the perfect beverage for the modern market, because we have the non-alcoholic and the alcoholic form,” says Smith. “So we’re a meeting place, we’re an intersection for people that do drink, people who don’t drink, people who can’t drink that day. You can come here and find something on equal footing. It’s not an afterthought.”
Smith and Lewis hope they can weave themselves into the fabric of the local scene and have been deliberate about stocking their bar with local taps and developing relationships. They’re also working to make Jackworth a staple at other places around the city. “We’re not competition for beer; we sit really nicely next to beer,” Lewis says.
Smith adds, “[The support is] kind of magical. People have been so collaborative and helpful. This is so beyond one person, there’s so many people and ideas that have come up in support. There’s no road map, it’s just creating something that people have responded to that we love to make.”
Touted as Pennsylvania’s only alcoholic ginger beer, Smith and Lewis want to add at least one new bar in the next year and a half. And with the need for the non-alcoholic product in so many places, there are other ways for Jackworth to grow. “We’d like to go statewide with this,” said Lewis. “Every bar needs ginger beer, every bar makes Moscow Mules, [and] we want to be that supplier in Pennsylvania.”
Beyond those ambitious goals, though, is a simple one: making each individual happy with trying something new. Towards the end of the interview, Smith says something that put into words what I couldn’t, both trying the ginger beer and experiencing the space: “There’s something that I’ve termed the ‘ginger beer smile.’ Because a lot of people haven’t had alcoholic ginger beer. So they’re curious, and they taste it, and they just get this big smile. And then they go back for the second sip, which is always the most important one.”