For fans of The Game of Thrones winter is coming, for breweries, summer is coming. While you might have other things on mind right this second, you need to focus and start thinking about this summer.

Like the North Sea surrounding Holland, held back by a dyke, hard seltzer is beginning to surround the British Isles. The only question is: Will people be buying yours or some North American import?

TBJ has said repeatedly that hard seltzer is going to be big here; if you can brew beer, you can make hard seltzer.

If you have any questions, a new article by the US-based The Beer Connoisseur answers your 10 key questions about hard seltzer.

A couple of the questions and answers are:

5. What’s the appeal for makers, including craft brewers?
Seltzer is an alcohol drink producer’s dream when it comes to efficiency and low cost of ingredients, hence margin. The raw cane sugar goes straight to the boil kettle and then straight to the fermentation tanks (where the yeast interaction can be a bit tricky). It’s usually brewed at 10 percent ABV before boiling water can be used as a pasteurization process in addition to reducing the brew to a chosen alcohol mark. Flavoring usually comes from extracts. Though hops are found in Boston Beer’s Truly Hard Seltzer, after fermentation, the vast majority of seltzers are pure water and alcohol without the added expense of hops. After filtering, citric acid is added as a stabilizer. 

8. Is hard seltzer really a fermented malt beverage?
No, but that’s the category designated for regulation and tax purposes by the US Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. Hard seltzers are made from unrefined, or raw, sugar cane, which consists of the first crushing of cane sugar that is boiled into a syrup, then introduced to water that is evaporated, which creates granules. Traditional table sugar has an added step of refining, in part to eliminate off coloring from naturally occurring molasses.

Read the entire article here.