After a few millennia of human booze making, developing a brand-new hooch might seem pretty impossible. But Santa Barbara-raised Peter Stearns spent more than two years putting his Cal Poly food science degree to work in creating Hard Frescos, an alcoholic soda made by fermenting the ingredients typically found in Mexican aguas frescas, such as the hibiscus flowers of jamaica and tamarind pods of tamarindo.
“There is no category for this,” said Stearns, explaining that the federal government mandated including a tiny bit of malt so it could classified as a malt beverage, like other entries in the emergent “hard soda” genre. “It’s like fruit wine,” said Stearns, who uses so little malt that it’s considered gluten-free, “but made like beer.”
Stearns, who graduated Santa Barbara High in 1994 and Cal Poly in 1999, spent the first part of his career developing recipes for healthy food companies like Balance Bar, Tanka Bar, and Annie’s, where he worked on the popular Cheddar Bunnies. But he was always working on “crazy mad scientist" ideas in his free time and got an MBA from Golden Gate University in 2012.