Cheers To Hard Soda Collab Between Foxon Park, Thimble Island Brewery

EAST HAVEN/BRANFORD, CT — Soon to celebrate its 101st year, Foxon Park Beverages, regionally and nationally known for its sodas, has partnered with Thimble Island Brewing Company for a "hard soda" using some of the century-old family soda businesses' most popular flavors, Cream Soda and White Birch Soda.

“We just had our 100th, and we’re starting the transition into a new generation in the business,” Foxon Park vice president Jay Brancati told Patch.

With Foxon Park Beverages for 20 years, the business was founded by his wife’s family in 1922. Matteo Naclerio, an immigrant from Italy, named the business for the road where it was located. Ownership has been passed from generation to generation and still remains in the family today, continuing the tradition that was started so long ago.

Now, it’s Brancati and his sister-in-law Jessica Caporale, also a company vice president, and company president Anthony Naclerio, with the latter “kind of taking a back seat,” as the new Foxon Park generation looks toward the future.

And that future now includes hard soda.

A tad wary at first, Brancati said he was thinking, “We’re a soda company. Soda, a kid’s drink. A family-type drink. Do we really want to get into the alcohol type? Yes, we can do this, have a Foxon Park soda for adults.”

Brancati had been working on some other new ideas when a visit to the Thimble Island Brewery last year turned a lightbulb on. And, it turned out, the same idea was shared by brewery CEO and president Justin Gargano.

Established in 2010, Thimble Island Brewing Company was founded by friends and home-brewers Gargano and Mike Fawcett.

The brewery’s taproom and eatery in Branford has been selling Foxon Park Soda for years. The two businesses have a history, and, Gargano said, a “synergy.” So when the light bulb went off, the two decided to give it a go. Gargano said the businesses are both a “local staple, with a lot in common (including) customer loyalty.”

“This seemed like the perfect time and the perfect opportunity,” Brancati said. “We have a great name, a 100-year reputation. I asked, ‘Would you ever consider it.’ Justin said, ‘Yeah, I think we can do something.”

“It was important that they trusted us with their recipes,” Gargano said. “But we're on the same wavelength and have great synergy.”

So trusting the brewery, given the two businesses’ very close relationship, Foxon Park handed over its original recipes and ingredients for favorites White Birch Soda and Cream Soda for the brewery to do its boozy magic.

They began with a couple of mixes, Brancati said. Soon, they had winners. Gargano said, the brewery “ran trials in its tap room last summer.”

“It was a hot seller,” Gargano said.

So hot, it sold out.

“So then we knew for a fact that it’s going to blow up. We knew the market would be clamoring for this (product)," he said.

A March 2023 launch date was set and last week, they held a soft opening on their hard soda.

Brancati said that 350 cases had been made, with 50 cases at the tap room gone, and distributor Northeast Beverage CT, which had another 325 cases, well, those were gone too.

They said that some went to eateries like pizzerias and would soon be available at package stores.

“The few pizza places I spoke to are really excited,” Brancati said. “Now, the kids can have a white birch soda at the pizzeria and mom and dad can have a hard one.”

Gargano said that the Foxon Park/Thimble Island Brewing Co.'s hard sodas are going to “start showing up in package stores this week and next week. And we’ll have some available at the Thimble Island Brewery taproom Saturday.”

But don’t bank on those lasting long.

Meanwhile, Brancati and Gargano are already working on another flavor and possibly, a “light” or diet version coming soon.

Oh, and by the way. As it was, the White Birch Soda was already perfect, says Food & Wine Magazine.

The eminent culinary 'zine called it the 'Best Snack' In CT. Read about that here.