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This N/A brew from Brooklyn Brewery pours a dark orange color. It has a big wort smell. Real big. Like what I would smell walking by the old Weinhard brewery in Portland. Called a non-alcoholic hoppy brew. More the former than the latter. Great name but the beer tastes green andunfinished to me. Not getting any hops at all. My non-drinking wife tasted and it brought back memories of Lucky grocery branded generic “beer”. That is not a compliment. I poured half of this out.
I have written about Non-Alcoholic and low alcoholic beers on my blog as well as Beer Paper LA because I think it is the next style category due for a breakout. Beers like Dogfish Head’s SeaQuench have made a mark that will lead to more and more may be coming from another brewing old-timer, Deschutes.
The Bend, Oregon brewery has joined up with Sustainable Beverage Technologies, the creators of what they call “BrewVo”, their method of making alcohol free beer. Deschutes will be tapping a hop-forward beer and an Irish stout in Bend and at their Portland pub and if the response is good, may get packaged as well.
Deschutes also has a low-alcohol sessionable IPA with the name of that will barely tip the ABV scales at under 3%.
I am starting to believe my own hype. I had a feeling that the N/A market was going to be a major one in 2019 and maybe beyond and now we might be able to taste how the Oldest Brewery does it when Weihenstaphan brings out their super low in alcohol offering.
Almost at the same time as I Untappd my first Athletic N/A beer, I received an e-mail from Surreal Brewing.
Closer to us customers in Los Angeles is another new N/A brewer. Up in the Bay Area, Surreal Brewing Company founded by Donna Hockey and her husband,Tammer Zein-El-Abedein. Hockey, due to a cancer scare has a post-treatment diet which does not include alcohol. So they started their company to remedy this situation.
Out of the gate was their first offering Chandelier Red IPA which has now been followed by their 17 Mile Porter. The beers are in at Total Wine so I will be looking for them soon to see if the positive trend in taste filled N/A beers is going up.
I have been long fascinated by the Non-Alcoholic sector of craft beer. It seems so wide open. Then I taste an N/A beer and realize that it must be harder than thought ’cause they always taste off in one small way or another.
In one of my bursts of podcast binging, I heard about Athletic Brewing and for Christmas, I bought the IPA and Stout. Will my bad run continue?
Starting with the IPA, Run Wild, there is a pronounced orange and grapefruit aroma as you pop the can. This is quite hoppy with a bracing bitter finish. It has a watery quenching mouthfeel like a session IPA. As the beer warms up I get pine and grapefruit pith tastes.
All Out Stout starts off with a big pillowy espresso hued head. A bit like a cold brew coffee taste. It is a little thin with a mixture of tastes like licorice and cocoa beans. It is more a porter to me and a touch too sweet.
Overall though, these taste like beer. None of my quibbles are do to the usual N/A complaints of tasting like wort or having a weird secondary flavor. I would drink the hell out of the IPA, especially on a hot day. I guess the best recommendation is that I want to try more. Their Saison really intrigues me.
Considering the R&D that Sierra Nevada has put into hops, I am cautiously optimistic that they can pull off a N/A beer. Much like gluten-free beers, it is a hard category to pull off matches with the “real” thing that people are expecting.
Maybe it will show up in cans or bottles and not just on tap.