Nonalcoholic Beer Is Becoming Essential to the Success of Breweries

Enter Two Frays Brewery’s cozy Pittsburgh taproom on the first Monday of any month, and it might take some minutes to figure out what’s missing. The neighborhood brewery will hum with chatty customers, cheerful bartenders filling pints with dark porters and aromatic IPAs—a lively scene found at taprooms far and wide. The buzz obscures the fact that customers aren’t visiting Two Frays to get one.

All alcohol-containing beers are taken off the taplist for this monthly event, and bartenders instead serve the brewery’s Two Frays Near Beer. The staff also removes wine, cider, and liquor from the taproom, and instead serves alcohol-free wine, cocktails, and other beverages from Open Road, TLC Libations, and Jackworth Ginger Beer. Mod Mondays, as the event is known, is a purely sober taproom space, a rarity in an industry known for big ABVs.

Two Frays introduced Mod Mondays in fall 2023, and “we’ve had more gratitude from customers than I ever thought I would get owning a brewery,” says Jen Onofray, the co-owner and CEO, who opened the brewery with her husband, Mike, in 2021. Most Mod Mondays customers aren’t regulars, and NA drinks have reached up to 10 percent of overall sales. Two Frays is now hosting additional sober nights during hard-drinking holidays, such as Dry Pride, Thanksgiving Eve, and New Year’s Eve. “We’re reaching a portion of the community that hasn’t been served by bars or breweries for a long time, or ever.”

Modern brewing boomed in the 2010s by extending beer to extremes. Excess equaled excellence in IPAs and imperial stouts, and customers craved more, more, more. The pandemic broke that boozy spell. Lockdown alcohol consumption, where Zoom happy hours might occur any hour, couldn’t last forever. Drinkers emerged to an altered alcohol landscape, one where moderation and wellness aligned with a recovering society, and newly tasty NA beers ably scratched that IPA itch.

The embrace of NA beer nods to a more nuanced approach to alcohol consumption that’s moving beyond the all-or-nothing binary.

As consumption patterns evolve and emerge, breweries are rushing to turn nothing into something big. As of October 26, sales of beer declined 1 percent and volumes fell 3.2 percent from a year earlier, according to Nielsen IQ (NIQ), a marketing research firm. During that same period, NA beer grew dollar sales and volumes 26.6 percent and 21.6 percent respectively, totaling nearly $676 million. The embrace of NA beer nods to a more nuanced approach to alcohol consumption that’s moving beyond the all-or-nothing binary. Most buyers of NA beer still consume alcohol, says Kaleigh Theriault, the director of beverage alcohol leadership at NIQ. “It’s more about this idea of moderation in consumption than cutting out alcohol completely.”

At Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon, 94 percent of its consumers for its NA beers, including NA versions of Black Butte Porter and Fresh Squeezed IPA, still drink alcohol. An NA beer is still a beer, and “choosing to moderate is actually a way to expand the beer category,” says Peter Skrbek, the CEO.

This isn’t NA beer’s first rodeo enticing drinkers and lassoing sales. “Facing chronically flat sales, the nation’s two largest beer companies are brewing up an unlikely antidote: nonalcoholic beers,” reads a 1989 article in The New York Times, touting the debut of O’Doul’s, from Anheuser-Busch, and Miller Brewing’s Sharp’s. The article notes “the nationwide trend toward moderate drinking and away from alcohol consumption.” Sound familiar?

Back then, brewing giants developed NA lagers that mimicked mainstream beers with middling flavor. Insurgent craft breweries, so good at creating characterful stouts and pale ales, didn’t dabble in NA beer due to cost. Traditionally, producing NA beer required multi-million-dollar equipment that removed alcohol through vacuum distillation or filtration, or breweries arrested fermentation by cooling beer near freezing, keeping beer below NA beer’s legal threshold of 0.5 percent ABV. The techniques could negatively impact aroma, body, or taste, resulting in watery beer with an unwelcome grainy sweetness. With a humdrum lager, innocuous flavor is an expectation. A typical craft brewery’s customer craves flavor, and a quintessential component is alcohol itself.

“That’s the missing link you can’t compensate for in NA beer,” says Phil Markowski, the master brewer at Two Roads Brewing in Stratford, Connecticut. He spent more than a year fine-tuning recipes and processes for producing NA versions of its Road 2 Ruin double IPA and Two Juicy IPA, “learning the hard way through trial and error and mostly failure.” Two Roads settled on a more cost-effective method of arrested fermentation, using lactose, or milk sugar, to lend silkiness to Road 2 Ruin Zero. “In our trials, arrested fermentation preserved the hop character better than dealcoholization, so we went with it,” Markowski says.

Alcohol is a byproduct of beer fermentation, the process of transforming sugary grain broth into beer. Scientists are discovering and developing yeast strains that can’t consume maltose, a sugar found in malt, keeping alcohol production low. International yeast supplier Lallemand created the hybridized LalBrew LoNa strain that works like ale yeast and creates neutral aromas. Berkeley Yeast in San Leandro, California, used gene-editing technology to engineer maltose-negative strains such as NA Cabana Bayfair, which also produces tropical aromatics suited for IPAs. (Disclosure: I’ve previously worked with Berkeley Yeast.) “We wanted brewers to use this yeast the same as they would a normal beer yeast,” says Tom Smith, a Berkeley Yeast scientist.

Alcohol is a preservative that inhibits growth of unwanted pathogens. From the perspective of food safety, it’s crucial to pasteurize NA beer, a step beyond local breweries’ capabilities. ABV Technology began manufacturing dealcoholization equipment in 2018, and the Saint Paul, Minnesota, company has evolved into a one-stop solution for breweries to remove a beer’s alcohol, can it, and pasteurize. “We offer a small brewery an entry into the NA market,” says Patrick Frimat, a co-founder and vice president. ABV works with more than half of the 200-odd breweries and wineries within three hours of its facility. This year, ABV plans to expand its NA services to Two Brothers Brewing in Warrenville, Illinois. The goal is an “end-to-end solution,” Frimat says, from brewing to packaging.

Deschutes Brewery began exploring NA beer in 2018 with Irish Dark, an NA stout produced with Sustainable Beverage Technologies (SBT) in Golden, Colorado, before introducing an NA version of its long-running Black Butte Porter in 2022. Upon release, “Black Butte NA immediately became our highest-velocity brand, alcoholic or nonalcoholic,” says Skrbek, the CEO. Success led Deschutes to make a multi-million-dollar bet on NA last year, installing a tunnel pasteurizer and SBT’s BrewVo alcohol-removal technology. The brewery targeted sales of around 10,000 barrels of its four NA beers, also including Patagonia Provisions Non-Alcoholic Kernza Golden Brew, but ended 2024 by shipping around 14,000 barrels. “We’re in a rush to keep up with demand,” Skrbek says.

NA beer accelerated in America as category leaders like Athletic Brewing marketed to active-lifestyle consumers that liked breaking a sweat. Athletes could ditch the hangover pain and prioritize gains, cracking consequence-free cans at the finish line. But not every NA consumer is training for a marathon.

Mikey McFerran owns the Spaniard, a New York City bar and restaurant, and has worked in hospitality half of his life. “Alcohol is what makes bars great, and it’s also what make bars a nightmare,” McFerran says. He founded the NA-focused Good Time Brewing with a goal of serving the hospitality industry, meeting the nightlife needs of customers and staff alike. The brewery introduced its first IPA in fall 2023, now complemented by a pilsner, and is stocked at lauded NYC bars including the Dead Rabbit and Long Island Bar. “The people who are most responsive to our beer are bartenders,” McFerran says.

As the category evolves, breweries are aligning NA beer with different subcultures. Last year, music producer, songwriter, and musician Esjay Jones co-founded KittiePig, an NA brand marketed as “all headbang, no hangover” toward the heavy music scene. She envisioned KittiePig, a collaboration between metal band Kittie and the Jones’s alt-metal group, We Are Pigs, as an “all-day festival beer,” Jones says. Kittie’s North American tour last summer doubled as a traveling tasting to introduce fans to the berry-flavored NA beer. Jones is also tapping connections to stock KittiePig in bands’ green rooms, while musicians will drink cans on stage. “People are excited to have a can that screams ‘us,’” says Jones, who lives in Yucca Valley, California, and contract-brews the brand.

Celebrities are increasingly the founders and faces of NA drinks brands, such as Katy Perry’s De Soi apéritifs. Spider-Man actor Tom Holland recently swung into NA with Bero, a beer brand inspired by his sobriety journey. “This couldn’t be a sponsored-product relationship,” says John Herman, the CEO and a co-founder. “Tom’s story is inherent to the brand’s DNA.” A celebrity’s name and narrative might intrigue people, but quality is key. Bero enlisted Grant Wood, formerly of Boston Beer Company, to develop a trio of beers, including a pilsner and hazy IPA, for the lifestyle brand that aims for social inclusivity. “Whether they drink or don’t drink, we want to empower people to be part of the party,” Herman says.

Taprooms arose as destinations to drink alcohol, in time evolving into community centers for customers of every age and thirst. Offering drinks for everyone’s needs is a business essential. Fieldwork Brewing began producing beer in Berkeley, California, in 2015, and now encompasses eight taprooms in Northern California, with two more slated for 2025. Fieldwork pairs its hazy IPAs and snappy lagers with house-made root beer; adaptogen-infused Supertonics flavored with fruits; and NA beers like grapefruit peel–infused Day Money. “We want to make beverages that taste great, and they don’t have to be alcohol,” says Barry Braden, the CEO. “People can have an elevated experience alongside their friend who’s drinking an IPA.”

Expanding into NA has diversified Fieldwork and delivered new sales opportunities, including stocking its NA beers in chain supermarkets. At its taprooms, serving NA beers is extending customers’ visits and expanding tabs via zebra striping, or alternating an alcohol drink with an NA beverage. “Somebody told me, ‘I had an IPA, then I had an NA IPA at your taproom, and then I had another IPA, and then I finished with an NA IPA. That let me stay there for another hour and a half with my friends,’” Braden recalls.

Drinks can serve as handheld signifiers of identity, culture, and fluency in trends. One Espresso Martini and natural wine, please. On that track, someone’s choice to abstain from alcohol, be it with a club soda or Coke, might beg a question: Are you pregnant? Do you have a drinking problem? Alcohol-free cocktails, served in the same glassware as their spirited brethren, hide the tell. A can of NA beer is still a differentiator in a drinking environment, perhaps sparking an unwanted conversation. Having a pint of beer in front of you, whether it has alcohol or not, helps people feel included. Serving draft NA beer, though, requires heightened hygiene. A regular draft line should be cleaned biweekly to prevent contagion and off flavors; cleanliness is even more critical for NA draft beer that lacks alcohol’s preservative shield.

Athletic Brewing sells the majority of its beer in cans, but in 2023, the NA powerhouse began packaging its top-selling Run Wild IPA in kegs that are pasteurized and shipped and stored cold. The brewery works closely with distributors and accounts, including restaurants, bars, and breweries like Ebbs Brewing in Brooklyn, to instill best practices. Kegs of Run Wild should not be disconnected and reconnected to different taps, which could be a “potential contamination point,” says co-founder and chief product officer John Walker, and pouring Run Wild through a long-draw draft system—kegs a restored in a walk-in cooler far from the bar—can also be problematic. “Because nonalcoholic beer doesn’t have alcohol, it can freeze.”

Guinness is trialing the NA version of its flagship stout on draft in the U.K., where bartenders perform the pageantry of a properly poured pint. “That brand theater has had a massive impact,” says Ryan Wagner, the head of marketing and national brand ambassador for Guinness. Draft NA Guinness is not yet on deck in America. Instead, the company is making on-premise inroads with its canned Guinness 0. “Guinness is very much a pub brand,” Wagner says.

March is massive for Guinness consumption, and Guinness 0 can play a vital role in celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day. “It’s not a season just for people who drink alcoholic beer,” Wagner says. Serving customers identical-looking pints of Guinness—one boozy, one not—can sow confusion, so Guinness designed pint glasses bearing a discreet blue 0 that echoes the NA can. Providing a seamless simulacrum of Guinness is essential to adoption. “It’s like the Pepsi Challenge where we’re asking people, ‘Can you tell the difference?’ And the answer overwhelmingly is no.”

For drinkers cutting back on alcohol, the brand familiarity of Guinness can encourage trial. There are scores of NA beers on the market, though, and spending $15 on unknown six-packs is a big ask. The Proof No More e-commerce platform offers more than 100 NA beers, plus NA wines and alcohol-free spirits and ready-to-drink cocktails. Customers can buy single cans or bottles for nationwide shipping (NA beer can legally be mailed across state lines), which lets people quickly fill a fridge and their knowledge base. “You couldn’t have done that in the height of the craft beer movement,” says Lars Dahlhaus, a co-founder, noting that people will buy upward of 50 different NA beers, including his Momentum line.

In 2023, Sierra Nevada Brewing introduced two Trail Pass NA beers, an IPA and golden ale, and added a hazy IPA and the lime-infused Brewveza late last year. In December, the brewery introduced the quartet in the first nationally distributed NA variety pack. “It’s a really important move to showcase the breadth of nonalcoholic beer,” says Ellie Preslar, the chief commercial officer.

The beer industry tends to roll out innovations faster than education. Meagen Coester is aiming to amplify knowledge with AFicioNAdo, which she founded in 2022 as a training and certification platform for alcohol-free and NA beverages. When Coester, who previously led beer education for Boston Beer Company, went alcohol-free about five years ago, she assumed she would need to leave the beer industry. But as NA beer expanded, so did a new career path in education. “I became a beer expert within a beer expert,” says Coester, who is also the on-premise and sales training lead at Go Brewing, a fast-growing NA brewery in Naperville, Illinois. “It’s wild to say as somebody that already drank too much back in the day, but I drink more beer now,” Coester says.

NA beer is not a zero-sum game, stealing marketshare from all those Martinis and triple IPAs, ushering in a wellness-minded Prohibition.

Humans have consumed alcohol for thousands of years, sometimes moderately and sometimes overindulging. Others have long opted to abstain. Historically, around 63 percent of American adults drink alcohol, according to Gallup polls dating back to 1939, from highs of 71 percent in 1978 to 58 percent in 2024. NA beer is not a zero-sum game, stealing marketshare from all those Martinis and triple IPAs, ushering in a wellness-minded Prohibition. The rise of NA beer can be an additive force in the brewing industry, keeping customers drinking fermented grains flavored with hops instead of a seltzer, soda, or THC drink.

Theriault of NIQ predicts that NA beer sales will reach around $1 billion in two years, or about 1 percent of the total market, though that figure doesn’t include direct-to-consumer shipping. At Deschutes, NA beer now accounts for around 6 percent of its volume, and the brewery is targeting 25,000 barrels in 2025, a potential increase of more than 78 percent (versus the close of 2024). Skrbek is also optimistic of new sales opportunities for NA beer, be it competing brewery taprooms, breakfast, or beside a desk-lunch burrito. “As a category, we’re still in the primordial soup of understanding what occasions could be for NA beer,” Skrbek says.

Onofray is seeing a nightly shift at Two Frays. Typically, staff might unwind with a pint of beer, catching buzzes after clocking out. Now employees are sometimes opting for NA beer. “That shifty is an ingrained habit in this industry,” Onofray says. “Seeing our staff embracing and enjoying the nonalcoholic options as their shift beer, I thought, ‘Wow, this feels like a big moment.’”