Pepsi Tries To Bring Hard Soda Back With Hard Mountain Dew

Boston Beer

Get ready – Hard Mountain Dew is coming. That’s right! Pepsi and Boston Beer will collaborate on a new alcoholic soda that will debut in stores in 2022. Read on to find out more…

Pepsi Revives Hard Soda

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Do you love Mountain Dew but sometimes wish it had a bit more kick? Well, there’s good news: Hard Mountain Dew will debut in stores at the beginning of next year! “MTN DEW, a one of a kind multi-billion dollar brand, will deliver the excitement and refreshment that drinkers know and love,” said Dave Burwick, the CEO of Boston Beer, which will team up with Pepsi Co. to develop the drink.

When the finished product hits shelves next year, it will come in three “exciting, refreshing” flavors: black cherry, watermelon, and, of course, Classic Dew. Each flavored malt beverage will have 5% alcohol by volume, according to the parent company Pepsi Co.

So, will Hard Mountain Dew become the next big booze hit? Only time will tell. However, most investors are not feeling too particularly excited about Pepsi. Co’s latest move into the hard soda world…

Hard Mountain Dew – Hit Or Miss?

Mtn Dew

For those that don’t remember, alcohol producers tried to make hard soda a thing once before. In 2015, hard soda exploded onto the market when Pabst Brewing introduced Not Your Father’s Root Beer, an alcoholic root beer. That year, it quickly turned into the fastest-growing new alcoholic beverage of 2015. Of course, as you might imagine, plenty of imitators followed. Soon enough, Molson Coors, craft brewer Saranac, and Anheuser-Busch InBev all had their own brands of hard soda. It seemed that hard soda had come at the perfect time, when craft beer drinkers were searching for something new.

However, just two years after the alcoholic soda experiment started, it ended just as quickly as it had begun. In time, hard seltzer took over. Why? Well, seltzer has far less sugar than sodas. The decline in hard sodas very closely mirrors the decline in traditional soda sales. So, it’s easy to see why investors aren’t over the moon about Hard Mountain Dew. There’s little to convince them that consumers will suddenly start loving hard soda again.

Still, it’s not all bad news. Mountain Dew is, by far, Pepsi’s best-selling product. In fact, an entire culture has grown around the drink, becoming particularly popular with gamers and YouTubers. So, hopefully, they make the jump! Meanwhile, Pepsi has ensured investors and parents alike that the boozy soda will only be “marketed to adults of legal age and merchandised consistently with other alcohol beverages.”

Sources: CNN, MSN