Episode 121: The NA Beer Boom With Joshua M. Bernstein

Alcohol-free beer still occupies a small part of the overall market, but as we cover in our March/April 2025 issue, brewers big and small are increasingly focusing their expertise and modern techniques on making NA beers that can compete with traditional beers in flavor, style, and overall appeal. For this episode, Imbibe contributing editor Joshua M. Bernstein talks about this rapidly evolving NA beer landscape, and how brewers are stepping up their alcohol-free game.

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Read the Transcript

Paul Clarke 

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Radio Imbibe from Imbibe magazine. I’m Paul Clarke, Imbibe’s editor in chief. And for almost 20 years now, beer and goings on in the beer world have been core parts of our regular coverage at Imbibe. Over the years, we’ve covered many of the twists and turns in the beer world, as brewers have zigzagged from hazy IPAs to European style Pilsners and a pastry stouts with many, many stops along the way. And when Imbibe first started in 2006, if we’d aimed to run any kind of coverage on that slice of the beer world that was alcohol free, it would probably have meant a very short story.

Yes, alcohol free beer has been around for decades, but for the longest time it was a very small subset of the beer world. And most of it, frankly, just wasn’t very exciting. Due to a convergence of several factors, though, that’s changed substantially in recent years and the growth in sales and the significant escalation in quality of alcohol free beer is the subject of a feature in our March/April issue from contributing editor Josh Bernstein. For this episode, Josh is joining us to explore and explain the NA beer sector a little bit more and help you get started on your own exploration of this growing segment of the beer world. 

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Paul Clarke

Josh, welcome back to Radio Imbibe. 

Josh Bernstein

Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. 

Paul Clarke

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we want to have you back on the podcast for a couple of reasons. First, we don’t do a ton of beer coverage in this format while we do in the magazine, and beer is delicious, so we want to try and address that a little bit. And second, in the current issue of Imbibe for our March/April issue, you have a feature that’s about beer, but it’s also not about beer, which sounds kind of cryptic, but it’s also kind of true and focuses on something that we in the drinking public are increasingly encountering, and that is alcohol-free beer. So to get us started, how far has NA beer come from those early days of O’Doul’s back in the 1990s? 

Josh Bernstein 

I mean, it might as well be night and day. The category’s completely different. If you look at something, what happened in the craft beer revolution where they brought flavor into beer in a massive way, the same thing happened in the NA category right now. Back in the, you know, late eighties, early nineties when we first started seeing this like modern boom of NA beer, the beers back then were really, I think, variations on the predominant beers of the time, so it was like lager, lager, lager. And you know, you had sort of variations on that and you know, that’s people were drinking back then that was delightful. Gave people the option to drink what everybody else was having.

But, you know, fast forward to today. You see the rise of craft beer. You see flavorful double IPA is you’ve got strawberry sour ales, you’ve got anything and everything. And so by not having something that’s similar, it’s almost like an othering, I will say you don’t get a chance to explore more what’s happening within this big explosion of flavor and creativity. If you’re just sitting there stuck with like, you know, a perfectly acceptable but not perfectly exciting O’Doul’s.

Paul Clarke 

Right. Right. And, you know, NA beer used to be such a tiny little slice of the market. And while it’s still quite small relative to the overall beer category, how much bigger has it grown just over the past 10 to 15 years? 

Josh Bernstein

You know, it’s exactly in there. I mean, we’re talking like a lot of the data on sort of NA versus like beer sales. And there’s a lot of NA beer is sold in untraditional channels. So such as you can order NA beer online to get delivered to your doorstep because the liquor laws will allow you to ship some alcohol across state lines. And so a lot of the data is not being tracked on there, I will say, about these sales in particular. But what I am seeing this happening right now is like we’re seeing sort of like the old guard of NA beer being shuffled away. So we’re seeing this big switch in the category right now.

If we talk about sort of all O’Doul’s, Sharps, Course Cutter, et cetera, all that stuff that’s being elbowed aside right now by this like big rush of new contenders such as, you know, Athletic, of course, the giant dominant factor within that. We see the Deschutes coming in strong with their big, huge NA portfolio rationale and all these other players are all kind of jockeying for it.

So we’re seeing right now is NA is growing by leaps and bounds right now from a pure dollars perspective, it’s one of the few parts of the beer category that’s going up. I always have to remind ourselves we’re starting from a pretty small base on there that I think you know, of the 110, $220 billion beer market, maybe something like $1,000,000,000 would be a good number to say, give or take on there. There are two, so it’s all a small part of it on the overall aspect, but it’s growing in a way that can’t be ignored any longer. 

Paul Clarke 

You brought up a couple of good points there, and I want to come back to those individually in just a moment. But you also mentioned one thing about NA beer, which is it is exempt from these alcohol shipping laws because it’s alcohol free so that you can’t do this kind of mail order thing without the same kind of issues would run into with ordering standard beer or spirits or wine.

That said, there’s also this kind of like gray area where we’re seeing, you know, for example, in my local grocery store, you can buy, you know, NA beer, but you have to show an I.D., showing you’re still over 21. So it still kind of occupies. Yeah. And I’m not really entirely sure why that is, but I think it’s, you know, kind of moving to this area that is kind of ill defined in some way. And states and different regulatory bodies are still kind of figuring it out.

Josh Bernstein

Yeah. You know let me clarify one point on there. So we talk about any beer in America. The legal threshold for NA beer is 0.5%. So, you know, a lot of these beers still have trace amounts of alcohol, but no more alcohol than, let’s say, the kombucha by the grocery store or an overripe banana. Right. I mean. Nature wants to turn sugars into booze. I mean, that’s just like what what what happens on there. But, you know, if we see something alcohol labeled alcohol free, that’s going to be a pure 0% on there. And so I’m always kind of like I try to talk to people about it.

You know, there are there are trace amounts of alcohol within a number of NA beers, but it’s legally permissible that that’s 0.5%, which is, you know, I know some people may be worried about that, but you would have to drink a tremendous amount of NA beer in a tremendously short amount of time with limited stomach space to get anything approaching a buzz. 

Paul Clarke 

Right. Right. And, you know, you mentioned Deschutes earlier, and I want to expand on that because for breweries that make our familiar pale ales and IPAs and lagers and so on, NA beer is increasingly a part of their business plan. Looking forward, you delve into this in your future a little bit, but could you expand on that a little bit for our audience? For these bigger breweries, how is NA factoring into the decisions that they’re making? 

Josh Bernstein

I mean, you have to be all in on NA beer. I mean, cost to make any beer is not insignificant on there, you need equipment that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, to have the right processes to strip alcohol out or minimize alcohol production. And all these factors. You can’t go into the NA category kind of lightly and think to yourself, Wow, I’m going to make a ton of money off the bat. You need a lot more protocols in place and a lot more equipment on there.

So if you’re going to do it, you’re going to have to jump in and really believe in this category. And so what we’re seeing with Deschutes, you know, Deschutes have been around for, you know, 35-plus years right now. And so they’re a very well-known, respected brand in the context of craft beer.

You know, like a lot of breweries been around for a while, you’re always looking for new growth in your own right, the new kid on the block. What can you do? So Deschutes over the last handful of years has really I mean, taking this core competency and making great tasting craft beer and really start applying it to the NA sector. And they’ve been having a ton of success with this. I mean, you look at sort of the peaks and valleys of beer sales, you know, summertime, everyone’s drinking and holidays are great. January, oh, no, we’re having a tough time right now. But I just got done talking to them and Deschutes just had like one of the best January’s ever. Right? And it’s like they’re no small part of the NA beer that’s helping push them and sustain them during this time.

I mean, I always caution people that, you know, you’re going to have a really hard time jumping into the store shelves and finding a home for your beer if you don’t believe it. And I think what we’re going to see overall, the challenge for the NA categories is like, how many NAs can we have on store shelves? Right. If you look at something like craft beer made during its heyday, that there was no limit to the amount of shelf space your grocery store would devote to that.

You know, you had dozens, if not hundreds of varieties of beer that were available to try. I don’t know if we’re going to ever see that same sort of variety and scope of NA beer is just I mean, it’s a smaller piece of the overall pie. And do consumers really want 150 different NA beers to choose from? It’s that same sort of overwhelming choice that kind of got craft beer in trouble in the first place on there. So I really see that, you know, there is going to be, you know, a bunch of dominant winners in the market and a bunch of really great regional breweries doing it. And maybe people are going to make NA beer for their taproom or their local market.

You just have to really right size your expectations for what this is going to be. And I’ve talked to people that have made it and it didn’t really move in their taproom. And I think what happens oftentimes is that, you know, you have one beer and you’re like, man, that beer tastes great. Like another one. You get a little bit of a buzz, right? And you’re like, you’re like, oh, a third one. Why not?

It’s like a night with my friends. You know, you don’t always really see that same velocity of consumption when it comes to NA beer, right? You have one. You’re like, Oh, that’s great. That scratched the itch, you know, and like itching deeper. I’ll have a second one. Are you going to get through a six pack in a night? And like, maybe you’re going to get to a point where people are going to do that. But overall, still, the name of the game is velocity in beer.

Paul Clarke

Right. And I think touched upon some of the challenges there where historically NA beer would be targeted or would be assumed to be the thing that you would get if you were the designated driver or it was dry January and you weren’t drinking alcohol at all. So NA beer kind of needs to break out of just that mode. You need to get into regular beer drinking consumers lives into the regular rotation of people’s lives. And I’ve seen some of this going on. And how are they encountering this? You know, there’s zebra striping, you know, where you have one alcohol beer followed by an NA beer to kind of like lower the alcohol consumption that you’re having over the night while you’re still hanging out the bar, having a couple of drinks.

I just encountered the Boilerfaker last week. I wasn’t aware of this name. You know, it’s a boilermaker, but it’s an NA beer with a alcohol whiskey. So it’s one two punch, but maybe only one punch as part of the boilermaker. How are we seeing consumers kind of embracing in a beer as part of their overall drinking style without going completely alcohol free? 

Josh Bernstein

You don’t see NA beers fitting into occasions that you may not think to have a beer. You know, maybe you’re going out for lunch right now and it’s like, Oh, I would love to have a beer. I’ve got to get back to work. And so it’s kind of like I can have an NA beer. So I see a lot of opportunities for that. We’re seeing it, you know, Athletic is really centered around a beer as a reward for athletic achievement.

No matter if you’re completing your eight-mile run at 10 a.m. or getting done with a race on there. So occasions that may people may have tried to have a beer before. But, you know, I think in this case, like any beer makes everybody there that celebrating that like it gives a chance for everybody to engage in a celebratory activity together. And they’re sitting and their beer is you know, I think within the bar context, we’re seeing a lot more on restaurant menus.

I mean, I’ve been there previously that more compelling options within bars like you have to have you need to have like an NA beer at a bar, right. Do you need to have 5 to 10 of them? I don’t think so. You need to have at least, like, you know, several options on there. And what I’m seeing, too, for these companies as well, it’s like not every brewery taproom wants to go through the trouble of producing NA beer. You know, it doesn’t have alcohol in it, so it doesn’t have preservatives.

You need to take extra care when you’re serving it and all these other aspects on it. So I think like you need to really like think to yourself, like, do I have the staff, the time and the wherewithal to really pull this off and make this happen? Or is it better off to rely upon another breweries and a beer sourcing? That’s interesting.

Looking at beer, producers are finding other breweries as sort of like there are clients for something like this, which makes a ton of sense. I mean, if the name of the game again is velocity and you’re not sure how many NA beers you’re going to sell, why not bring in, like, you know, a case of beer from somebody else and sell it, provide that option on there? So I think all of these things are really important. And we should just say thinking beyond sort of like these key drinking occasions where NA beer can be.

But I think one big it’s is always crazy to talk about. But I think one big holdup for mass adoption is going to be our drinking laws in the country. And like, you know, if you have two or three beers legally, you know, get behind the wheel and drive. But in other countries, I mean, the punishments are far more punitive for drinking and driving on there.

As you see NA beer becoming a much bigger part of other countries, like drinking habits, in part because, you know, we all know intrinsically bad to drink and drive. People still do it all the time. But I think like when you have these moments when there’s like the punitive stick is greater than the reward, which is a slight buzz from a beer. I mean, like you’re going to choose this other option on there. So I think we’re seeing bigger adoption in other countries on there. And like, you know, I think I don’t know if that’s our laws are going to change overnight in America have that sort of reason to push it.

So I think a lot of the push toward NA beer is coming from inward, right? Your inward desire to maybe drink less, you’ve stopped drinking, but still love the taste of an IPA. You know, it’s because beer is as much of like about the alcohol as it is about the aromas, the flavors, and the experiences you get from cracking a cold can next to people. And I think those rhythms, those routines are really important for people, no matter if you’re drinking alcohol or not drinking alcohol. 

Paul Clarke

You mentioned earlier the level of investment that goes into setting up an operation to make good quality—emphasis on the good quality—flavorful in a beer. When we look at kind of the the old style of any beers from the nineties, from the late, late 20th century, a lot of them were just kind of they were just kind of boring. What kinds of changes have happened in the production process and in the knowledge base among brewers to make these kinds of NA beers that still can stand, you know, in some cases head to head with the traditional styles of beer in terms of flavor and style. 

Josh Bernstein

Yeah, a lot of the way that people would make NA beer previous, it was like you’d brew a beer that you’d basically boil off the alcohol, right? And you’re not just boiling off the alcohol, you’re boiling off the delicate aromatics. You’re eliminating all the flavors that make beer, what beer truly is. So that process achieved the end goal, which was no booze, but took away the other stated goal of beer is like creating a delicious, flavorful beer.

So we see another way that we saw too, like arrested fermentation where you basically stop the yeast from fermenting by maybe dropping the temperature down. And then in that way, shape and form, but then you’re left with like maybe like a sort of like flabby thing that tastes almost a bit like, you know, a grain soup in a sense, like bubbly grain soup, which is not exactly an ideal flavor where looking for refreshment.

So we’re seeing nowadays, too, is really, I think in multiple ways we’re seeing membrane filtration technology that can really, you brew a full strength beer and you can delicately remove the alcohol on there were keeping the aromatics, keeping the flavor, but just stripping out the booze and they’re being able to really amplify that. We’re seeing genetically modified yeast strains that are being developed to stop consuming sugars at a certain point in time. And they’re just like, yep, had enough. But concurrently these same strains will also provide these like delicate hop like aromatics. And they’re so you you can add a beer and it also smells great. So they oftentimes too, alcohol provides flavor and balance.

And so when you’re talking about sort of like if you’re trying to make a hoppy IPA and you’ve got no booze in there to balance it out, you know, you can really tilt things over the top pretty easily. So we’re seeing the rise of hop extracts and concentrated products that allow you to precisely dose the without the unwanted bitterness, because the category needs to have everybody hitting on all cylinders, I think. And so every tool out there is really important right now.

What’s really funny to me with this category is people spend so long trying to figure out the right ways to brew NA beer that nobody wants to talk about it. Really, you know, as far as like their processes or it’s just so kind of obtuse for the layman and makes it really tough to really understand how you’re putting through a 14-step process by delayed fermentation and step mashing and then the temperature changes and you’ve just watched everybody’s eyes glaze over like donuts on there. But I do think that’s one thing I wish we had a bit more sort of transparency on for the consumer, like how these beers are being produced, what it means.

You know, you go to any brewery today and it’s like, here’s our shiny equipment. Would you like the shiny equipment tour? And, you know, it’s pretty upfront, whereas NA beer is almost at the point of hard seltzer was by that I mean hard seltzer came on the market and everyone’s like 100 calories, 5%, no sugar. Amazing. And then people right away what is hard seltzer, is it vodka. It’s like it’s not vodka and it’s like, what is it? And it’s like it’s a flavored malt beverage. Like, what are you talking about?

We’re not quite there yet with NA beer. No one’s like trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. But I just wish there were a bit more transparency from the industry at large about how these things are being produced. And even something as simple, like we talked about earlier on, the difference between alcohol free and NA and that altogether, I mean, it’s just classic American beverage, alcohol fashion where we get really excited about something. Everything gets dumped out there and the education lags really far behind. 

Paul Clarke

So I can walk into my local grocery store now. And granted, I live in Seattle, which is a very beer-rich environment, but also a very NA beer rich environment. And I can look in the beer cooler and I see, you know, probably at least a half dozen brands, half dozen breweries who have NA products on the market. For somebody listening to this who wants to start experimenting. Are there favorites that you’ve come across or breweries that are doing exceptional work, whether they’re a in a NA only brewery or a brewery that has an NA style.

Josh Bernstein

Yeah, I think Deschutes in Oregon is doing great stuff. I mean, they’re taking some of their most popular beers like Black Butte Porter, Fresh Squeezed IPA. Then creating NA versions of it, I think dark beers in particular really excel oftentimes in NA, you know, it’s really hard to get that balance right with IPAs oftentimes. But Deschutes really nails it across the board with the dark beers.

I mean, I think Guinness as well as like Guinness Zero is just like such a great spitting image, one to one, at the very you get the pour the pageantry all together. And I think what I like about that, too, is that, you know, you pour it into a glass and you’re not gonna tell it’s any different. And I think that’s something as well that we don’t talk about. It’s like, you know, I think I touched on in the article NA beer, but whatever you’re holding in your hand is a badge, right? Be it a soda, be it a beer. It says something about drinking only Olly-pop versus a Coca-Cola or drinking a Rainier versus Boddhisattva. All right, something like that.

It’s like it says something about us, like what we choose. And if you have an NA beer, you’re having a better tasting NA beer. That same thing is a badge. And one sort of setting can be kind of like, you know, a scarlet letter and another. It’s kind of so it’s like, so what I’m seeing now is like I’m pouring these beers in the glasses. They look the same, smell the same. So you’re getting these one to one kind of experiences, which is really key. You’re asking about other brands I liked out there. I think, you know, from pure ubiquity at I you can’t go wrong with like giving any of those a shot.

Honestly, I never drink Heineken, but NA Heineken or that is like really good. And it’s like one of those things where it’s like, I would never walk into a bar and order a Heineken. It’s like not something that I gravitate toward. But I’ve had the NA version and it’s like super close and that super skunkiness that you tend to associate with, Heineken. It’s got the flavor and it’s far better than I would have ever expected. And I find myself drinking more NA Heineken than regular Heineken. 

Paul Clarke 

And let’s not overlook the Germans, because the Germans take their beer seriously and the Germans take their NA beer seriously as well. 

Josh Bernstein

Oh, yeah. The amount of like German imports can be a little bit harder to find on there. I would say on a national scale, like, you know, but I mean Clasthaler has been doing it forever on their own. Becker has a great one. I think Bitburger as well. It’s honestly, if you see any German NA beer on the shelves, I mean, you’re curious, give it a go. The quality is going to be unimpeachable. It’s the same thing with like German import lagers and Pilsners in general they’ve been doing this for a very long time and they know what they’re doing at a very high level. And the same thing with NA beer too. 

Paul Clarke

Josh, this has been fantastic. Thanks for taking us back through the world of NA beer and for being back on the podcast. 

Josh Bernstein 

Yeah. It’s been a pleasure. 

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Paul Clarke

You can find Josh Bernstein’s full feature on alcohol-free beer in our March/April issue, and it’s also posted online at imbibemagazine.com. And you can find Josh on Instagram @JoshMBernstein. We’ve got those links for you in this episode’s notes. And that’s it for this episode. Be sure to subscribe to Radio Imbibe on your favorite podcast app to keep up with all our future episodes. We’ve got plenty of articles and recipes for you online at our website Imbibemagazine.com. Keep up with us day to day on Instagram, Pinterest, Threads, and Facebook. And if you’re not already a subscriber to the print and or digital issues of Imbibe, then here is your opportunity to come on board. Just follow the link in this episode’s notes and we’ll be happy to help you out. I’m Paul Clarke. This is Radio Imbibe. Catch you next time.