Good News for the Sober Curious

This article is published in partnership with The Food Section.

When self-described “retired party girl” Amanda Jones moved to Asheville in 2015, the first hike she took concluded with a brewery visit. “That kind of created my experience with Asheville,” Jones reflected while sipping an iced chai, a beverage more in keeping with her current sober lifestyle. “We just go to breweries for everything.” 

The Asheville metropolitan area is home to less than 4 percent of North Carolina’s population, yet is responsible for one-third of the gross state product attributed to breweries. Beer has seeped into almost every aspect of the mountain city’s identity and economy, with a nearly $1 billion impact on the region in 2021. 

But “Beer City, USA,” according to a title won in a 2010 online poll and immediately embraced, faces a sobering reality.

For about a decade, craft beer—defined by the Brewers Association trade group as the product of an independently-owned brewery that makes fewer than six million barrels annually—recorded double-digit growth year over year. Then, in 2019, growth went flat—and the N.C. Beer and Wine Wholesalers Association reports the sector hasn’t regained its fizz since. Accordingly, five of North Carolina’s 15 largest craft brewers scaled back production in 2023.

The shift aligns with research showing Gen Z is consuming less alcohol than previous generations: According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 62 percent of adults under age 35 say they drink, compared to 72 percent of the same age cohort two decades ago, with abstainers citing health concerns, fear of consequences, and—above all else—”just don’t want to” as factors in their teetotaling. But that doesn’t mean they’re decoupling liquid and pleasure. Nonalcoholic beer, wine, and spirits are now the fastest-growing segment of the beverage industry, up 31 percent in 2023, with cannabidol-infused soda and hop water also winning fans.

Long before Highland Brewing opened in 1994, pushing Asheville toward the cutting edge of the craft beer movement, the city was known for its anti-establishment bent. Now that craft beer is old news, Asheville could find itself at the forefront of a new generation of drinking counterculture—so long as its resident brewers are able to make the nonalcoholic (NA) math work.

Besotted by Possibilities

In Asheville’s River Arts District, NoLo bottle shop boasts the largest selection of nonalcoholic products in North Carolina. Owner Jason Pedrick, who quit drinking in 2011 at age 25, wants to make room in the mainstream for “nonalcoholic adult beverages in Asheville, [and] to create more diversity and choice and inclusion for all in how we socialize.” 

Pedrick is all in on NA—I’ve never seen anyone so enthusiastic about spirit-free tequila—yet he cautions that owners of sober-based businesses must remember the sector is still ultra-niche, and purchases are largely driven by curiosity and novelty.

“This is a very quickly growing world,” he said. “But, if you’re involved in it, it might seem bigger than it really is because you’re in it.”

Citing the closure of Raleigh’s Umbrella Dry Bar and the bankruptcy of the country’s largest nonalcoholic retailer (New York-based Boisson, which was valuated at $47 million in 2022), he added, “I think more of the brands in this space are going to struggle this year, just because of the saturation.”

Nonetheless, Pedrick thinks more local breweries should invest in nonalcoholic production.

“We are Beer City, USA. We have something like 30 local breweries in Asheville and only one of them makes a nonalcoholic beer, and that’s Burial,” he said. “Yes, it’s somewhat expensive, but there is demand for it. There is a market for it.” 

Big Problems for Small Brewers

For smaller craft breweries, entering the NA market is more than a question of supply and demand. “Nonalcoholic beers are much easier to do at scale,” explained Josh Brewer, an aptly named, Asheville-based brewer who has been in the industry for over two decades. 

Nonalcoholic beer is produced in three primary ways, although the success of the category is spurring additional innovation in methodology. First, brewers can skip the fermentation step altogether, which amounts to making “beer” without yeast. But they end up with a sweet beverage that’s difficult to stabilize, so many brewers instead take the second route, termed “limited or arrested fermentation.” To achieve that state, brewers use yeast strains or wort chosen for their inability to ferment fully. Still, they have to control temperatures closely throughout the production process to discourage fermentation from occurring.

Another option is dealcoholization, which is just what it sounds like. Beer is brewed normally, and then the alcohol is extracted. That can be accomplished by taking advantage of the different boiling points of water and ethanol, so the booze burns off without the liquid disappearing. The drawback of boiling is it can create nasty flavors by expelling aromatic compounds along with ethanol. As a result, some brewers conduct the process under a vacuum, which lowers the temperature required to bring ethanol to a boil.

Alternately, brewers can dealcoholize through reverse osmosis, the most popular application of physical filtration. As the beer flows back and forth over a membrane, both water and ethanol compounds are removed from the liquid; the beer is replenished with fresh water when the treatment is complete.

Burial Beer’s Chaosmachine, a nonalcoholic Hazy IPA that aims to offer the same experience as an IPA without the alcohol, has limited availability in Asheville taprooms. Phil Cassella, Burial’s head of marketing, cites inclusivity as a key reason the brewery entered the nonalcoholic market. Still, good intentions don’t confer immunity from the challenges of producing NA beer—namely, quality control and safety considerations.

NA products are harder to shelf stabilize than regular beer due to the lack of ethanol, and there is no agreed-upon industry standard regarding the best way to prevent spoilage. It’s a symptom of a larger cultural issue for the burgeoning industry—while craft beer built itself on collaboration and the open sharing of trade secrets, competitive NA producers are much cagier about their methods.

Tunnel pasteurization, a common alternative to the flash pasteurization of alcoholic beers that involves gradual heating, is the most effective route to a safe and shelf-stable product. But with equipment costs of nearly $1 million, it’s a big swing for the little guys. 

Eschewing packaging altogether and only offering NA beer on draft is a more feasible option for local brewers, but even that comes with extra considerations. “Since there is no alcohol, there are pathogens in it that are very deadly if you don’t do it right,” Brewer cautioned. “There are breweries that do it, you just have to be very clean about things.” 

While Brewer plans to offer an extensive NA beer selection at Brewwell, a “hybrid brewery-wellness center” set to open in Asheville in winter 2024, he’s not quite ready to brew it himself. Instead, he will sell cans of lesser-known NA brands that he considers superior in flavor to mainstream options (“and I won’t name any names”).

The nonalcoholic market’s significant barriers to entry currently favor larger producers, with almost every major brand—Budweiser, Heineken, and Corona among them—offering NA versions of their signature products. But Karis Roberts, executive director of the Asheville Brewers Alliance, expects to see local breweries producing more and better NA products with time.

“All of our breweries are trying to diversify and not just make malt beverages but make natural wine, hop water, and all kinds of other NA options,” she said. “It’s just—do they have the capital to make it happen?”

Peak Experimentation

California-based Sierra Nevada is the largest brewery with a footprint in Asheville. It’s a Yeti-sized print at that, with a restaurant, gift shop, and amphitheater. Sierra recently entered the nonalcoholic market with its Trail Pass line, which is brewed like traditional beer but utilizes a newly developed maltose-negative yeast strain that produces less than 0.5 percent alcohol during fermentation.  

Trail Pass was inspired by experiences in Germany, where NA beers are commonplace, said Brian Grossman, Sierra Nevada’s chief brewer and second-generation owner. “It made sense from an innovation and exploration standpoint as well as a business perspective,” Grossman said. 

Sierra Nevada has the advantage of scale—the brewing company produces over 1 million barrels of beer per year to Burial’s roughly 10,000. It uses one of those vaunted tunnel pasteurizers to “maintain product quality and safety.” 

In many ways, Asheville is the perfect place for craft brewers to experiment with NA. “Nonalcoholic brews definitely have staying power, particularly in communities where both active lifestyles and an affinity for craft beverages converge,” Grossman said. “Asheville falls squarely into that category.”  

It’s cliche, but it’s true. Asheville’s blend of wellness tourism, craft beverage industry, and hippie counterculture have spawned a uniquely mellow and inclusive drinking scene. Perhaps more than in other places, it’s really not about the alcohol. 

On a recent Monday evening, I sat at a picnic table on the patio of Burial Beer in Asheville’s brewery-rich South Slope. Around me, people took advantage of $10 burger night, typed on laptops, and chatted with friends while sipping from pint glasses.

I can’t say my Chaosmachine tasted quite the same as my dining companion’s alcoholic Prophetmaker Dry-Hopped Pale Ale. But sitting there, enjoying beer in the setting sun with friends, present and part of it all, I was drinking in the full Asheville experience. 

Moriah House is a freelance writer based in Asheville.