, a low-sugar, cold-pressed ginger soda. However, the two former craft brewers turned modern soda makers have found that once people try out their alternative ginger drink, they begin to ask why it took so long for someone to make it in the first place.
Setzer and Chaif had different reasons for leaving the brewing industry, but it ultimately led the two friends of more than a decade to go into business together. Setzer was advised to gain weight so that he could return his body to a normal level. The health shift came at a time when he was forced out of the craft beer business and looking do something different. To make ends meet, he did consulting work for breweries, such as Chaif’s in Sackets Harbor, New York. Chaif’s brewery wasn’t in its prime as a business at the time. After one month of working there, Setzer suggested that Chaif needed to make a major career shift as well.
“When you hit 35, it starts being like ‘I have to lie to my doctor when I go see them,’” Setzer said. “I need to figure out what my life looks like post-craft beer.” Pointless ginger ale is made by Clevelander Carl Setzer and New Yorker Ryan Chaif, two former craft brewers. Pointless comes in four flavors — original, lime, cranberry, and blueberry. The sodas feature fresh fruit juices or purees to get the fresh flavors, which is why a finished can of the blueberry flavor will be glittered with fruit bits at the bottom once it’s finished. The makers recommend customers store Pointless upside-down so that the heavy solids of ginger solution are evenly distributed throughout the can before you crack it open.
“If the point of your beverage is not to create a sugary environment, it’s creating an environment that’s by its definition adult; it’s grown up,” Setzer said. “Then you don’t really have to use a lot of the other things that people don’t want in their drinks.”