The print version of a Wall Street Journal article published earlier this year was titled, “How a (Non-Alcoholic) Beer Came from Nowhere and Is Now Everywhere.”
Nowhere, apparently, is right here in Connecticut, where former hedge funder Bill Shufelt and career brewer John Walker, the founders of Athletic Brewing, began “tinker[ing] in a garage” in 2017—and later set up a brewery in Stratford, which has since been upgraded to a larger facility on Milford’s Cascade Boulevard. Near the end of 2022, when Keurig Dr. Pepper bought a minority stake for $50 million—matched, albeit against a higher valuation, by another round of funding that closed last week—Athletic had reportedly amassed a 55% market share among “craft” brewers of non-alcoholic beer, and in 2023, Athletic was the top N/A beer seller, craft or not, in grocery stores nationwide. As for bar sales, I can speak anecdotally: I’ve seen (and ordered) it in bars in New Haven, New York, Dallas and Los Angeles over the past couple of years. Near or far, it’s often been the only non-alcoholic beer offered, suggesting it was the only brand bars felt was fit to offer.
Athletic has made such inroads while skipping a usually important step in the craft brewery playbook: establishing a taproom. But they’ve dabbled this summer, with a monthly popup series picking up last Saturday on their patio. When I arrived, about a dozen people had spread themselves across a handful of tables. Funk, jam and ’80s deep cuts set an upbeat but never cloying tone. Except a couple of teens glued to their phones, people were easily chatting—even me, who’d arrived alone, with a couple of table mates—despite the effective absence of America’s favorite social lubricant.
A stand in one corner had the beer, with five options pouring from mobile taps and, I think, a greater variety stacked behind in canned six-packs, available to take home. To both his and my lament, the bartender said he wasn’t allowed to serve flights, so I tried three things, one full serving at a time. First up was what the public invitation to the event described as “a brand new pilot brew”: the Grapefruit Hefe, a Hefeweizen-style beer brewed with grapefruit puree, which hasn’t yet hit the market. Like all the day’s options, it was $6 a glass and about 0.5% ABV (“non-alcoholic” allows for a bit of wiggle room). It was funky, juicy and a little fizzy with just enough hoppy edge to feel like a beer, even a sunset pink one, was in my hand.
The Rainbow Wall, a Pride Month tie-in named for the geological formation in Las Vegas, Nevada—which also ties into Athletic’s active lifestyle branding—was in the same general zone as the Hefe, only sweeter and rounder, with less funk and, short of really swishing it around and searching for it, less bite. “Basic” felt like the right word for this, and that was okay. Citrus-forward and refreshing, it wasn’t as sweet or tart as a glass of OJ, but it definitely had me thinking about one.
The third was a mainstay of Athletic’s stable: the Free Wave, a hazy IPA that delivers more haze and bite than you would expect from a N/A beer. The official tasting notes promise “bodacious aromatics of tangerine and grapefruit” and “notes of pine and florals emerg[ing] in the secondary palate,” but the strongest note for me was pineapple, not too sweet. Of the varieties of Athletic I’ve been able to try at bars, this one has generally been my favorite.
Saturday, however, it was the still-testing, popup-only Hefe. It might’ve been the novelty of it, or the fact that I’m a sucker for grapefruit, but here’s hoping that pilot brew leaves the runway.
Written and photographed by Dan Mims.
