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August 13, 2025 14 mins
Sipping Sunshine: The CoAqua Coconut Water Experience... Is it a Love Affair? Peter LaFrance Reviews Goose Island’s Hazy Beer Hug.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome everyone to this week's episode of Beverage Chronicles, the
show where every sip tells a story. I'm your host,
Gary Montroso, and together we'll explore the world of drinks
in all its forms, from craft beer to fine wine,
from cocktails to creative non alcoholic pores. Each week, we'll

(00:30):
meet the people behind the beverages, uncover the history and
your glass, and share the trends shaping what we drink next.
So pour yourself something special, settle in and let's begin
another chapter of Beverage Chronicles. My co host Michelle Lamb
is here with an interview and we're going to get

(00:51):
right to it.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Welcome everyone to Beverage Chronicles, and today I am the
co host, Michelle Lamb, and we are very fortunate to
have the co Aqua founders, and we have Tony and Justin.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Hi.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Everyone has everyone doing?

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Hey guys, really great, Michelle, how are you doing well?

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Thank you so much for being on the show. And
the listeners are very excited to learn more about the
co Aqua brand. So why don't you, guys tell us
a little bit about the inspiration behind the launch of
the brand and also the background and the relationship you
guys with each other.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
This is a really cool product. We like to start
off every meeting.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
My name is Justin, my name's Tony, and we we're
the co Aqua co Co Bros.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
That is amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
I love the personality too. What about the background that
gave you the vision to even create such a beverage
in this competitive industry?

Speaker 4 (01:51):
I can take that. Yeah, So I'll tell you the
origin story and how how we got here today. Basically,
I took a trip to New Zealand and Australia with
a girlfriend of mine at the time who I ended
up marrying, and we have a baby boy on the way.
She's doing less than a month, so that's exciting. But

(02:13):
we went over to Australia for her friend's engagement party.
We spent three days in Melbourne and then we jumped
over to New Zealand and that's where we discovered Coaqua.
I remember being in the cafe right outside of Auckland
in Piha, and Caroline is my wife's name, and she

(02:35):
grabs coaqua off the off the shelf in a small
cafe and cracks it open and she goes, oh my goodness,
justin this is the best tasting coconut water I've ever had,
and I really didn't believe her, because, you know, Tony
and I grew up together. We were focused on hockey
in our lives, and we always talked about hydration and

(02:56):
working out. So we would drink other brands, right, we
would try them. They weren't so great, and we just
did it for the hydration purposes. And I tried the
co Oqua in New Zealand and Caroline was right. It
was literally the best tasting liquid that we put put
in our mouse. And the trip ended. We flew back

(03:16):
to New York. I was living in upstate New York. Well,
actually you can't call it that because people think Westchester County.
So I'm from Western New York, which is a Rochester
Buffalo area, and we at that point, I reached out
to Coaqua, New Zealand. I said, Hey, on an email,
I love your product, I love your brand. Can you

(03:39):
please ship me a case over here? And you know,
I plaid an arm and a leg to do it
to get it over here, and all this was in
preparation a surprise Caroline, my girlfriend at the time, with
the product, So she was living in Manhattan at the time.
She flew up to Rochester about a month after the trip,
and she comes into my house. I just finished building

(04:01):
house and said, hey, Caroline, grabbed me a drink out
of the fridge. So she opens up the refrigerator full
case of Cooqua sitting in front of her, and she
essentially cried, and she goes, that is the nicest thing
anyone's ever done for me.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
So this is the point.

Speaker 5 (04:20):
What like a week after that, and you know, sometimes
we're like, man, what happens if I didn't visit right away?
Because when I got there, Justin was like, hey, Tony,
you got to try this coconut water.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
So I didn't believe him, and I stopped drinking.

Speaker 5 (04:35):
Coconut water after I was done playing hockey, and he's like, no,
you gotta try this. So he slid across the counter
and he was right like in that moment, just got
these visions of co oquall be in this big thing.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
And I said, Brooks, let's let's do this. Man. He's like,
let's do what I was like, Let's.

Speaker 5 (04:50):
Start a company and figure out how to sell this
stuff in the United States. So that's what we did.
We started a company and right during COVID. We actually
incorporated in July t twenty twenty. Started out as a
side hustle and then about two years into it, Justin
and I left our jobs to do co op with
full time.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
You know.

Speaker 5 (05:10):
That was after getting into my shop, right, you know, Sprouts,
Farmers Market, Wagman's, you know, building up some good food
service distribution that you know, we said, hey, we really
got something here, let's do it full time. And now
where we're at is we're you know, expanding nationally. We've
got major distribution in New York, coming online in Nevada

(05:36):
and Texas as well as Florida, and nationally through the
natural Channel. We've had successful launches in places like Circle
k where we're going into Kroger now through the Mariano's banner.
And uh yeah, we're just figuring out every day and
having a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
That is really really nice and really cool of a
story too. Can you guys talk more about the actual product,
the flavors and even the packaging. I think the consumers
who are interested to learn more about Coaqua's so the
flavor component too, I think that will be very interesting.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Absolutely.

Speaker 5 (06:12):
So, you know, we we purchased the brand and the
guy who founded Coaqua, New Zealand, he's a genius.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
His name's Grig Vorko. You can look him up.

Speaker 5 (06:21):
He was the production designer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
So very talented guy.

Speaker 5 (06:27):
And when he created the brand thirteen years ago, it
was really edgy for the time, and you know, it
was a good brand and part of why we were
drawn to it initially. But when you get into it,
you find that, you know, a lot of coconut waters
have you know, something to do with palm trees, the
color blue, you know, maybe something to do with the beach.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
Our whole mantra is no beach is required.

Speaker 5 (06:49):
And we wanted to put a brand out there that
expands the consumption occasions for Coaqua, and that's really why
we want what the flavors we did, right, Like every
brand of coconut water.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
Has a pineapple, they have a mango.

Speaker 5 (07:04):
You know, we went with flavors that you can't find
anywhere else, like lemony, passion, right, coconut water, lemon juice,
passion fruit juice and a dash of cane sugar. That's it,
and it tastes unbelievable. We also have sour Stopping, which
is sour soop juice, coconut water, dash of cane sugar,

(07:24):
and that is some people call it guanabanas, some people
call it graviola. But you know, that's something that is
really hot right now because sour sap juice has a
lot of like anti cancer benefits and neurogenerative benefits. And
then rounding it out, we have espressod, which is coconut water,
some coffee extract, little cane sugar. What we love about

(07:47):
that is that you get all the hydration of the
coconut water, but with the amount of coffee we put
in there, it's about fifty three milligrams of caffeine, so
it's kind of the perfect thing to drink it to
a click. You know, you get the hydration of the
coconut water and that little jolt the.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Caffeine that doesn't keep you up till midnight, right.

Speaker 5 (08:08):
So that's that, And then you know, kind of rounding
it out the last two or three, you know, we
have a sparkling which is unbelievable that's turning out to
be a lot.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
Of people's favorite flavor, you know, that lemony passion.

Speaker 5 (08:22):
Then we have a citrus circus which is usual lime juice,
coconut water, some cane sugar, and then we have a
chocolate which is that's coconut water, some coconut milk and
chocolate that that's gonna be really unbelievable. That's like a
chocolate milk with extra hydration.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
It's really cool.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Wow, that is amazing. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Where can we all find co Oqua and also how
can we all follow your journey and also the stores
that you guys sell these products so we can send
out our listeners out there and buy them.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
Well, that's a great question.

Speaker 5 (09:01):
Please find us at Shopwright, you know in the New
York area, New Jersey area, in New York City. You know,
we're in some food towns, Cristiities, Die Gastinos, places like that,
Key Foods, and you know, kind of expanding out from that.
You can also find us at Wegmans, and you can
find us at Sprouts Farmers Market, Central Market in Texas,

(09:23):
and we're at a lot of hotels in the southeast
as well that you can find us at Hilton's, Riz, Carlton's,
you know, really anywhere.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
Where there's a resort type of community.

Speaker 5 (09:33):
We have a good distributor at Florida who makes that
happen for us.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
We are looking forward to your expansion and congratulations again
for this amazing product launch in the United States.

Speaker 4 (09:44):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
Find us any stores.

Speaker 4 (09:48):
Yeah, Circle K is a big one. We're in in
the Yeah channel.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yeah, so weird.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
We love those guys, of course, So thank you so
much for the Beverage Chronicles listeners we have here. Aqua
co founders Tony and Justin. We will keep up with
their Jolson.

Speaker 5 (10:05):
Should we give her a co Aqua Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
The personality is definitely there and the beverages are amazing.
Please go out and find them and let us know
your feedback. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
Show, Thanks Michelle, Thanks everyone.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
That was Michelle lamb Our, co host on Beverage Chronicles,
reporting on co Aqua coconut water. And I picked some
of that up recently at my local supermarket. It is delicious,
so you may want to check that out co Aqua.
And now we're going to introduce a new regular to

(10:44):
our show. And this is a fellow guy I've known
for quite a few years from New York Brooklyn. The
name is Peter la France. Peter is a freelance writer
and Peter is the author of of Beer Basics and
Cooking and Eating with Beer. He covers the beer industry, brewing,

(11:09):
alcoholic beverages, spirits, food service industry, and the hospitality industry.
So we're welcoming Peter on board this week and he
has a review of a beer from Goose Island. It's
their Hazy Beer Hug As Peter will tell you, it's
a new England style I Pa India Pallel. Okay, So

(11:31):
let's introduce and welcome Peter la France.

Speaker 6 (11:39):
There's an interesting combination of pops there, that's for sure.
It's a full body of beer. It's got a real
grain undertone there. But there's a not so much as
a lemon citric, but it's more of a lemon tangerine

(12:00):
of citric flavor to it. That is, it lasts quite
a while. It's not one of those things that just
comes and goes. It's it's a real uh. I would
call it a five or ten second beer. It takes
a couple of ten seconds to for you to catch on,
and boy, when you start to catch on, those hop
flavors certainly are impressive. All right, Well, does hazy beer

(12:22):
hug meat expectations. Well, it certainly it delivered, certainly on
the fact that it was a hazy on ipa and
it had that bright, sunshiny flavor to it, so it
certainly did. Now, how would you rate it. It's not
an outstanding beer. I've had some of them before, so

(12:45):
it's it's right up there to the medium is maybe
maybe a two.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
It's not quite a three.

Speaker 6 (12:52):
Is it's a two.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
It's a little bit better than normal.

Speaker 6 (12:55):
So we give hazy beer hug from Goose Island beer
two rigging. I'm Peter le France of the Old Growler,
hoping all of your beers meat expectations.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Thanks Peter for that report. Now Black Friday is still
quite a ways off, but for people who enjoy beer,
that November Day means Goose Island, which Peter Lefrance was
just discussing releases its Bourbon County lineup, which is a

(13:36):
series of stouts that are uniquely flavored in eased in
Kentucky bourbon barrels, and I want to mention that among
the releases this year is going to be a beer
called Cherries Jubilee Stout, which was inspired by the namesake
dessert and This beer was aised in bourbon barrels and

(13:59):
then finished and cognac casks before being blended with Jerry's
citrus and panela to give it a dark cherry flavor
and vanilla notes on the palette and a caramelized citrus finish,
so you may want to look for that. And of
course as the time gets closer, we'll be giving you

(14:20):
all the information about the other releases in Goose Island's lineup. Well,
that's it for this week's episode of Beverage Chronicles. Before
Michelle Lamb, I'm Gary Montroso saying we'll see you next week.
I'm Vince Douglas saying thanks for listening.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
For more information about this show.

Speaker 4 (14:44):
Or to send us a message, go to www. Beverage
Chronicles dot com
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