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Beer packs surprise
Brewer Shaun O’Sullivan thought his business partner was nuts.
He and Nico Freccia had just opened the 21st Amendment Brewery in San Francisco and Freccia wanted to make a watermelon beer.
Name a fruit and it’s been turned into a beer. But watermelon?
”I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ ” O’Sullivan said. ”You had never heard about it before. It’s kooky. It’s wacky. It’s strange. I didn’t think anybody was going to dig it.”
That was 2001.
Today, Hell or High Watermelon Wheat is one of the brewery’s top sellers and one of the more unusual fruit beers available in the United States.
Hell or High Watermelon — which comes in a can, not a bottle — entered the Ohio market this year at the request of the Winking Lizard Tavern, which has 14 locations in Northeast Ohio and Columbus.
