Hey, This Is Tasty!
Popular Mechanics|November 2018

No-alcohol beer gets the craft-brew treatment, and its shockingly good.

Francine Maroukian
Hey, This Is Tasty!
PEOPLE HEAR ‘nonalcoholic beer’ and think the worst,” says Bill Shufelt, cofounder of Athletic Brewing Company and Taproom in Stratford, Connecticut. “The standard commercial production gives you a bland or metallic taste.

There hasn't been a satisfying option with no compromise.” That may explain why nonalcoholic beer makes up only about 2 percent of the beer market. Shufelt took this as a challenge—and an opportunity: to create beer with no alcohol but so much flavor that anyone would enjoy drinking it.

That’s what the craft beer renaissance that many of us are enjoying in the United States right now is built on: flavor flavor flavor. Lighter brews like session ales (the name reportedly comes from mid-20th-century England, when factory workers drank low alcohol beer during their allotted “drinking sessions”) and the newly resurgent shandy (beer + lemonade) are less about getting a buzz than they are about enjoying a delicious beverage. For a brewery to give the same kind of love and attention to brewing flavorful nonalcoholic beer seems a logical next step.

This story is from the November 2018 edition of Popular Mechanics.

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This story is from the November 2018 edition of Popular Mechanics.

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