Tag: nabeer

NA Pumpkin Spice Beers

Intro – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

An interlude, as I still have Untitled Art (and some Athletic Brewery Sours AND new Wellbeing Brews) to discuss, but tis the season. I am happy to report I’ve found THREE pumpkin spiced NA Beers, and want to tell you about them.

Fall doesn’t feel the same without a pumpkin spiced, well, SOMETHING, and glad to find that NA Breweries are stepping up. Bravus Brewery won this round, but really is there a way to lose with pumpkin spice?

Dark & Gourdy (> 0.5%) – Athletic Brewing

A limited release from Athletic Brewing. Well spiced and balanced, it is a light, but pleasant taste. It is a dark beer for Athletic Brewing, but as with their others, thinner than their counterparts. Order here while you can.

Pumpkin Ale (> 0.5%) – Wellbeing Brewing

This one is a slight disappointment. I had commented before finding this that what I wanted was Wellbeing’s Hellraiser Dark Amber but with pumpkin spice. Well… that is ALMOST what this is. It is clearly the same style as Hellraiser, but the beer and the spice are seemingly two independent flavors that didn’t mix in the brewing. It isn’t bad, but no where near what it could have been. They don’t seem to be selling it this year, but hopefully a tweaked recipe comes back next year.

Pumpkin Dark (> 0.5%) – Bravus Brewery

This one is good. It is a dark beer, so more akin to a porter or light stout than the usual pumpkin spiced lagers you’ll find. Still the darkness does it well, and the spice is well balanced. This is my favorite of the three. Again, limited release, get it here.

Craft NA Beers, Part Two

Intro – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

Despite the previous post, Athletic Brewery has not been the only place I’ve been trying. Luckily for me, in the past few months some of the local shops have been getting more and more variety of NA Beer, making it easy to try. Even one of our local pubs has started to carry a good selection of NA Beer, adding to their already impressive list.

I’ve noticed that the beers that tend to do well are doing one of two things:

  1. They are going out on their own and not trying to be a direct replacement for a specific alcoholic brand
  2. The fruity/sour/wheat beer types, where another, non-beer flavor was usually a strong component of the taste.

The strong IPAs tend to work as well, but as I’m not as into hoppy beers as I used to be, they weren’t usually my favorites.

Bravus

Bravus Brewing was started in 2015 and says it is the first non-alcoholic craft brewery. There were four staples when I found Bravus, and I tried three of them.

West Coast IPA (>%0.5)

This is hoppy. Well made, and mostly good. There is a little gap in flavor (hollow in the middle, my wife said), but overall I appreciated it for tasting like a hoppy beer—but it wasn’t for me.

Blood Orange IPA (>%0.5)

This is mostly the West Coast IPA with some citrus. Again, if IPAs are your thing, this has a good strong hoppy flavor and the orange helps fill in some of the gap in the original.

Peanut Butter Dark (>%0.5)

This one was good. Very much like the Sweet Baby Jesus from DuClaw Brewing. Sweet and chocolate, it is a desert beer for sure.

Wellbeing

Wellbeing has my favorite labels of all of these. I know we aren’t supposed to judge a book by its label, but still. As ambers and wheat beers are some of my favorites, this brewery hits home with some great drinks.

I noticed some new ones I hadn’t tried yet on their site when I was writing this, so more beers are in the mail and will post how they are in the future.

Hellraiser Dark Amber (>%0.5)

Great name. Great label. Great beer. Slightly bitter amber, but still on the lighter side.

Victory Citrus Wheat (>%0.5)

This is the stuff. A solid wheat beer with a citrus addition, it even has electrolytes. Magic in a can, highly enjoyed this one.

Wandering Islands (>%0.5)

This is a collaboration between Wellbeing and 4 Hands Brewery. It is a good summer ale. Think somewhere between a Longboard and a Magic Hat # 9. A pale ale with some notes of mango, and peach, I highly recommend. I don’t think this one is for sale anymore, but hopefully they bring it again this summer.

Southern Grist Brewing

Southern Grist is out of Nashville and a hybrid brewery, meaning it makes both regular and unleaded beers. I’ve only had one of theirs, but am keeping an eye out for more.

Parallel (>%0.5)

This is a fruited sour, passion fruit and raspberry and is crisp and sweet with that sour finish the name implies. A great fruited sour beer! I’ve introduced a few people to NA beers using this one!

Next Time

Untitled Art, more sours! This one random German beer I found!

Craft NA Beers, Part One

Intro – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

Athletic Brewing

It was winter of 2020, and I was sipping on an Lagunitas IPNA (NAY) and visiting with friends on Zoom for a virtual happy hour when it occurred to me to check if there were craft non-alcoholic beers.

Craft beer has exploded over the US in the last decade bring delicious experimentation with it. Why not, I thought, experiment with NA?

A name came up a few times in my search, and because they were easy to order, were my first fore into craft NA beers: Athletic Brewing Company.

Most of the different NA beers I’ve had over the last two years have been from them, and there are two important reasons for this:

  1. They are easy to order from. Direct from their site, free shipping on two six packs, boom, beer at my house.
  2. They are tasty, which causes me to drink them and then go back to step one.

The ordering thing is such an important aspect, I want to mention it again. Despite being NA, most of the commercial stuff from the first post has to be bought from a store (and yes sometimes, Amazon), and despite being NA, most stores won’t ship beer to my state.

Athletic Brewing, Bravus, Partake, Wellbeing all let you order and ship direct. Easily. And while I’ve been lucky to find them in stores around the area (and even a local pub), that ease of ordering is why I keep going back.

We’ll get to the others next go. This post is going to be all about Athletic Brewing.

When I started, they had four staples, and would add on with lower run batches, either seasonal or experimental. There are six staples now, and the experimentation has continued. While that means most of the beer on this list is not currently available, it should show the variety that they brewery produced throughout the year.

I’ll start with the staples, you’ll be able to get them anytime. From there, onto seasonals and pilot programs. I’ll also start by saying that all of these beers are best described as light. I hesitate to say “thin” as that seems to have a specific connotation, but it also works. These are lower calorie beers designed with an active lifestyle in mind. That doesn’t mean they are lacking in taste.

That lightness works well for most of these, but not all.

All of these are <0.5% beer.

Staples

These brews should be available all the time. There are two new ones as well, but I have not tried them: the Athletic Light; and Free Wave, a hazy IPA.

Run Wild IPA

This is a light IPA, hoppy but not overtly so. My first of all of these, good to drink, but I found other flavors I liked more.

Upside Dawn Golden

This has a similar hop level as the Run Wild, but adds in the golden flavor to smooth it out some. All for 45 calories.

All Out Dark

This is their stout-like beer. Here the ‘lightness’ of the beers is a hindrance. It doesn’t taste bad… but doesn’t succeed quite either.

Cerveza Atletica Lager

This is supposed to be reminiscent of a Dos Equis type beer. But I found the copper taste a bit too much for myself. I did not mind drinking it, but did not seek out more of it.

Seasonal / Limited Edition

These beers had a full label on the can, so my assumption is they are in some rotation at the brewery, tho not always available. I will be certainly getting most of them again should they return.

Irish Red

Ah, this one wins. It is the Killian’s type red, malty and light to drink.

Soul Sour

Made for Black History Month by guest brewer, this sour was fantastic, and I ended up getting a second batch.

Trailblazer

Described as a hoppy helles, and I agree, it has a pleasant amount of hops with a slight peach flavor. This is what I was drinking when I posted this article.

Wit’s Peak

A witbier with some citrus, light and pleasant. They didn’t last long.

Stump Jump Brown

A nice English style brown ale. I quite liked this one. The malt and nut flavors were well balanced.

Lodge Life Fireside

A darker beer, this one has a slightly smokey taste that finishes with a hint of marshmallows. The goal is to have you think of smores around the fire, and it succeeded.

First Ride

A malty beer made with coffee? Yes please! It did have caffeine, so I only really had these during the afternoon. I suppose I could have had one for breakfast…

Pilot Program

The pilot program seems to be what it sounds like, as they brewery is trying out new and … interesting things. They are a risk (to both groups, brewer and drinker), but have had some interesting rewards.

I do not know if you’ll ever be able to buy any of these again, so this list may be more to interest you in future brews.

Brut IPA

This is easily my least favorite of any NA Beer I’ve had. It was an interesting idea, a brut type IPA, but the result of stripping all the sweetness out of the beer is just the bitterness of the hops. Even some fresh grapefruit slices did not help…

Lost in the Redwoods

A maltier red than the Irish Red, and quite tasty.

Athletic Hefeweissan

A light Hef with great taste.

Irish Dry Stout

While similar to the All Out Dark, this one has a much better flavor and succeeds in invoking a stout where the other doesn’t quite make it.

Next Time

More breweries, like Bravus, Wellness and Untitled Art!