Blue Blaze Recipe of the Week: Holiday Party Spritzer

Do you have an upcoming holiday party you're throwing? Blue Blaze Soda Syrups will give you a perfect signature drink!

Red and Green Vodka Spritzer (makes eight 5-oz drinks)

Ingredients:

• 4 oz Blue Blaze Red Grenadine Syrup
• 32 oz Seltzer water
• Fresh mint
• 1 Lime
• 6 oz Vodka

Directions:

• In a large pitcher, combine Blue Blaze Red Grenadine Syrup, seltzer water, and vodka
• Muddle fresh mint at the bottom of the pitcher and put a leaf in each glass
• Cut the lime into 8 pieces and put a lime wedge on each glass
• Stir and pour your Red and Green Vodka Spritzer for your guests!

Enjoy!

Check out more syrup recipes on our website: http://blueblazesodaco.com/uses-recipes/

The Latest from Blue Blaze

It's been a busy few weeks for our little soda company! The Black Mountain Tailgate Market on Saturdays from 9am - noon has picked up steam as it gets warmer out and we just made our debut at the French Broad Food Coop Tailgate Market on Wednesdays from 2pm - 6pm. It's nice to be in Asheville as well as Black Mountain.

We rolled out Nalgene growlers for customers to take their Blue Blaze Soda to go in mid-May:

People can purchase them for $9 for the bottle (non-refundable) and $5 for the soda for a total $14 for the 32 oz container. Then you can just refill it for $5! We have a 64 oz version, too, and it costs $16 for the container and $9 for the soda. We totally sold out of our first round of 32oz bottles! More are being shipped this week!

Then, we started bottling the soda syrups in mason jars:

We used these for the first time at this past weekend's Black Mountain market and totally sold out of soda:

This past weekend we also got to go for a backpacking trip and reminded ourselves why we named our soda Blue Blaze: (the blue strip of paint on that tree leads down to the creek where we camped out!)

With 2 markets per week and restaurants expressing interest in our bottled syrups, we're feeling pretty good about our 3-month-old business! Stay tuned for more updates.

Find us on Saturdays at the Black Mountain Tailgate Market from 9am - noon and Wednesdays at the French Broad Food Coop Market in Asheville from 2pm - 6pm for the coming weeks. Thanks!

New logo

Hey Blue Blaze Soda Fans!

Hopefully you're already our friend on Facebook: www.facebook.com/BlueBlazeSodaCompany and have seen our new logo (above). What do you think?

Last week, May 4, we started selling sodas at the Black Mountain Tailgate Market. It was 40 degrees and rainy, so it was a tough day to start selling cold, refreshing soda. But this week, May 11, it was sunnier and warmer and we sold more than 5 times what we did last week! Wohoo!

We're excited to be in Black Mountain at the Tailgate Market. Hopefully we'll see you there sometime soon! (And hopefully it stays warm and sunny out :)

We'll be back at Black Mountain's Tailgate Market this Saturday, May 18th from 9am - 12noon.

Sellin' Sodas

On Saturday, March 16 and Saturday, April 6, Jackson and I set up shop at the Black Mountain Grow Down Home Winter Farmer's Market! In our first couple weeks we sold more than 50 sodas. It's been a good start for us since we're still working to figure out our best recipes, set up, and service. As the weather gets warmer, more people will come out and we hope to start selling floats over the summer!

The Winter Market is a lot of fun. There's a great community of vendors! Before we knew it this past Saturday, I had bartered some soda for some greens, bought some fresh, local eggs, and Jackson bought some pine soap that was supposed to help his poison ivy! We also bartered some soda for an amazing sausage sandwich.

We made some friends who helped us add our newest soda, Creamsicle, to our sign:

Creamsicle, orange steeped with vanilla bean, turned out to be quite popular among the kids (we gave these girls a soda to share for their help!). Elderberry Hibiscus Lemon is made with local honey and no sugar and is packed with anti-oxidants, so the health-conscious seem to like it. And the ESG has a following of ginger lovers since we make it with fresh ginger. Parents buy the soda for their kids as an alternative to the high-fructose corn syrup version. In general, there's something for everyone!

Here are some happy customers:

These guys bucked the trend and got the ginger ale, they have a sophisticated palate!

And Mary's enjoying an Elderberry Hibiscus Lemon here.

We're taking the week off this weekend (April 13) but will be back in Black Mountain on Saturday, April 20th! It's at 105 Richardson Ave. Black Mountain, NC: http://fromhere.org/venue/grow-down-home-farmers-market/

The Black Mountain Tailgate market starts up in May! Hopefully Jackson will have his new soda cart up and running by then.

What's a Blue Blaze?

Welcome to our soda blog! Thanks for reading.

The Blue Blaze Soda Company was my husband Jackson's idea, and he's the one behind creating the syrup recipes and making the soda. But, since I'm the social one in the relationship, I'll be the one doing most of the talking about the business! My name is Zanne and I'm writing here with our dog, Duke.

Blue Blaze: Your Path to Refreshment

Blue Blaze trails, on the Appalachian Trail, lead to water. If it's hot and you need to find a spring or if you're at a shelter and don't know where the closest stream is, you check around and keep your eye out for a "blue blaze" or a blue strip of paint on a tree. The blue blazes will continue down a trail until you hit water in one form or another!

That's why we chose Blue Blaze Soda Company as our company name. If you see a strip of blue paint at a farmer's market this summer, you'll know you can follow it to find a refreshing soda!

(As an aside, Blue Blazes also played a big role in the story of our marriage: in addition to marking trails to water, Blue Blazes also mark routes that used to be a part of the Appalachian Trail, but are no longer part of the trail. Some of these side trails are better maintained than others. I hiked about a third of the AT, trail name Danger Zone, in 2006 and met Action Jackson on a Blue Blaze trail while hiking with his friends Brett (Fire Hazard) and Ben (Canteloupe). We chose to take that Blue Blaze trail because Ben remembered having seen beautiful waterfalls along that particular side-route. The waterfalls WERE incredible, but on this Blue Blaze trip, beavers had dammed up many of the creek crossings and we had to traverse deep rivers, lakes, and rushing water. And as they say, the rest is history! Jackson moved to Seattle with me, yada yada yada, we got married in Black Mountain in 2010, and moved to Asheville in 2011 after traveling around the world together.)

Why Soda?

Or Fizz? Or Pop? Or Seltzer? Or whatever you call it?

Who doesn't like a good fizzy water instead of flat water when you have the option? And if you could drink a soda that's made with fresh ingredients, organic sugar and local honey, wouldn't you prefer that to something made from "natural flavors" and high fructose corn syrup? We would!

Also, we love that Asheville has such a vibrant, cool small business community. It's the perfect place to start a business: in a town that values fresh, local, quality products.

Where to find us

Last week, we debuted our "ESG" Extra Special Ginger, a ginger, orange, lemon, honey soda at a Dark and Stormy party at our house. When we kicked the 5-gallon keg, we knew it was ready for market!

We'll be at the Grow Down Home Farmer's Market from 10am - 1pm Saturday, March 16 to sell our ESG and our new Elderberry, Hibiscus, Lemon Soda! See you there.