GENEVA – Ginger beer is nonalcoholic and tastes more like soda, but has a unique flavor that is starting to draw attention, said Edward Meliunas, co-owner of Windmill Ginger Brew in Geneva.

“It’s not a ginger ale,” Meliunas said. “It’s not like a root beer. It does not taste like root beer at all. It’s a ginger beer based on a recipe from Great Britain.”

Originally from Lithuania and now living in Geneva, Meliunas was 18 and a hockey player who discovered ginger beer by sheer accident in London.

“I loved it,” Meliunas said. “Ginger was not very readily available in Lithuania, so it was a unique spice to me.”

An injury ended Meliunas’ hockey career. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1999, he said. With his wife, Joanna, the couple own and manage two assisted-living residential homes for the elderly, he said.

Nearly four years ago, he bought a bottle of ginger beer in a grocery store and was sorely disappointed in the taste, Meliunas said.

“It was not even remotely close to what I drank in Great Britain,” Meliunas said.

He began to play around with the recipe, even going back to Great Britain, where many of the restaurants and pubs have their own little brands.

“There is a very old way of making ginger beer – by creating a ginger bug – it’s fermenting ginger root ... that makes ginger yeast,” Meliunas said. “It’s very, very potent. There is no way to kill it or filter it. It explodes your bottles.”

After a few explosions in his kitchen, Meliunas went back to the drawing board and managed to create a process to make ginger brew without explosions.

He took his first nonexploded batch to sell at the Batavia Farmers Market in June.

“In 90 minutes, we sold everything,” Meliunas said. “I was just standing there, [asking] ‘What just happened?’ We had to increase gradually every week and by the end of August, we were selling about 60 gallons for the market.”

It takes a full three weeks to make a single batch, Meliunas said, so he starts a new batch and fills 2,000 bottles with a finished batch every week.

“The main color of it is a little bit green with a brown tint in it,” Meliunas said. “Then the color is according to the fruit. If we add guava, it’s pink. Blood orange, it’s reddish orange. If we use mango, it’s yellow. … Our beverage is all natural, no chemicals, no preservatives.”

Other flavors he rotates through include raspberry, key lime and hibiscus.

While the ingredients are listed on the brew’s label, the exact recipe and process is a secret, Meliunas said.

Meliunas recently teamed with Geneva native Brian McMeans, who was his son’s swim coach.

“I was coaching his son and he brought me a bottle,” McMeans said. “He asked me if I had an interest in helping out.”

McMeans and his wife, Aly, originally from St. Charles, both work for Meliunas, distributing the brew to local restaurants and bars. The McMeans live in Naperville.

Windmill Ginger Brew is sold at Wildwood, Bien Trucha and Nobel House in Geneva; McNally’s Irish Pub and the Blue Goose Market in St. Charles; Heritage Prairie Farm Store in Elburn; Hardware Sustainable Gastropub in North Aurora; and River’s Edge Bar and Grill in Batavia.

“What I love about it is that people recognize the quality,” Meliunas said.

Brian McMeans also is involved in helping Meliunas go beyond renting commercial space on Stevens Street to make their brews. They eventually want to have a location on Third Street.

“That’s what we are dreaming right now,” McMeans said.

The first plan is to expand to an industrial space for making the brew, located on Keslinger Road across from Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital, Meliunas said.

“We are moving as fast as we can,” Meliunas said. “It’s exciting and we are very humbled. We have a demand we cannot meet. We never intended to be this way.”

Information about Windmill Ginger Brew is available on its Facebook page, or via email at windmillgingerbrew@gmail.com