63Just before noon at the O’Fallon Brewery O’Bar in Maryland
Heights, Mo., the pub begins to fill with workers from nearby
office parks. Scattered among the usual burgers and build-
your-own flatbreads are more than a few pints of beer. This
is a brewery, after all, in a suburb of St. Louis, the ancestral
home of Anheuser-Busch.
A closer look at these midday libations, however, yields
surprises. Among the standard lagers and India pale ales,
the bar serves a Hellraiser dark amber to patrons who want
to stay clear for the drive and alert for the afternoon—or just
save a few calories. Although it looks and tastes like a craft ale,
it contains barely any alcohol. The beer is one of four brews
created in this building by the upstart WellBeing Brewing Co.
Opened in 2016, WellBeing says it’s the first North
American brewery dedicated solely to the making of
nonalcoholic, or NA, beer, a minuscule but fast-growing sec-
tor of the American craft beer industry. Younger consumers
know of the bodily damage drinking causes; aging drinkers
find that alcohol doesn’t mix with medications.Beverage
Daily, a trade publication, has found that 84% of people who
drink are looking to drink less.
ILLUSTRATION BY CARI VANDER YACHTEven though NA (0.5% alcohol by volume and below)
CRITIC Bloomberg Pursuits August 19, 2019and low-alcohol beers (2.8% ABV) constitute 5% of U.S. beer
consumption, the “low-and-no” category overall grew at 5.2%
from 2010 to 2016, says GlobalData Plc, an analytics firm—while
the craft beer boom has slowed. Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV,
the world’s largest brewer, predicts that low-and-no beer will
grow from the current 8% of its sales to 20% by 2025.
Traditionally there have been two ways to make no-alcohol
beer: either halt the brewing process before the sugars fer-
ment, cutting short the period when beer develops its taste
profile; or boil the alcohol off a finished batch, essentially
scorching the flavor. Either way, what’s left is just plain
skunky, too sweet, or too watery—have you actually ever tried
an O’Doul’s? Enter Jeff Stevens, a marketing rep and recover-
ing alcoholic who founded WellBeing after he grew tired of
being the buzzkill at bars by ordering Diet Cokes.
Stevens brews his NA beer differently. In 2015 he found
researchers at the University of Munich who’d developed a
method of vacuum-distilling beer that lowers its boiling point,
preserving the flavor. The result was an almost booze-free
drink that had the texture and, most important, something
approaching the taste of beer. He consulted with the brew-
ers at O’Fallon, a regional craft mainstay known for a wide
range of styles and experimental flavors, to formulate recipes
and rented out a corner of its 39,000-square-foot factory. He
ordered a vacuum distillation machine (they retail for about
$800,000) and set to work.
Since then, Stevens has been joined by breweries such
as Bravus Brewing Co. in Newport Beach, Calif., which does
a nonalcoholic oatmeal stout akin to Guinness; Athletic
Brewing Co. in Stratford, Conn., which markets its Upside
Dawn golden ale to the marathon-running, Michelob Ultra
crowd; and Partake Brewing in Toronto, whose blond is one
of the few lagers in this space. Nirvana Brewery, in London,
opened in 2017 as the U.K.’s lone craft supplier of low-alcohol
pub draughts.
Some, like WellBeing, use vacuum distilling to remove the
booze, whereas others, such as Bravus, manipulate the yeast
to produce less ethanol. As with magicians, most brewers
refuse to divulge their proprietary secrets.
Stevens’s flight is among the tastiest. At 68 calories per
12-ounce can, his flagship Heavenly Body golden wheat (0.2%
ABV) is crisp, with the frothy texture of a Blue Moon. The
Hellraiser (0.3%) could stand in for a Fat Tire based on how
it maintains the malt and nuttiness of a dark ale. His Intrepid
Traveler Coffee Cream stout (0.4%) won’t make anyone forget
what a Samuel Smith’s tastes like, but it’s a robust treat with
only 7 grams of sugar. Victory has enriched its citrus wheat
(0.19%) with electrolytes.
WellBeing’s beers are already available in stores, and
because the company isn’t bound by the interstate shipping
restrictions placed on alcohol, it can mail its beers practically
anywhere. The goal is to get retailers to move WellBeing off
the NA shelves—what Stevens calls the “sad space.” Having
conquered the basics of brewing, he now faces an arguably
harder job: changing perception. <BW>Taste-testing the best of the
healthy “low-and-no” category
By Tony RehagenCraft Beer for
Nondrinkers