The Hop Nation Brewing Co. brewery taproom in Footscray, Melbourne, serves its entire range of non-alcoholic beers. Phil Townsley/ @screenshapedeye. I love beer. I’m a career bartender, a drinks writer and the co-owner of a bar. Alcohol is my life. But now that I’m in my 40s, I’ve started taking months-long breaks from drinking alcohol every year to reset my head and give my liver a break. When I first embarked on my bouts of self-imposed sobriety, the options for enjoying the experience of drinking without the alcohol were seriously limited. But in recent years, non-alcoholic beer in particular has come so far that, apart from my total lack of hangover, I hardly notice the difference. So good are these new brews, I can sit at the bar sinking craft tinnies of XPA, IPA, sour beer and stout to my heart’s content without ever approaching the legal limit.
So what’s changed? Why, in just a few short years, have the quality and diversity of non-alcoholic beers made such huge gains? “The industrial way to make non-alcoholic beer is to make a full-strength version and then de-alcoholise it,” says Hop Nation Brewing Co. founder Sam Hambour. “It’s a big, expensive machine, so small breweries like us don’t have access to that equipment.” That large-scale process is how we get the traditional non-alcoholic options from big brands that have been on the market for years. But recently, craft breweries such as Hop Nation have discovered a new way of making craft beer alcohol free, leading to an explosion of delicious options with all the character and complexity of Australia’s best brews.
We import a special yeast strain from Europe that doesn’t convert sugar to alcohol in the same way brewer’s yeast does, producing much lower alcohol content,” Hambour says. Hop Nation’s non-alcoholic beers taste so good, he says, because they’re made using exactly the same process as their intoxicating siblings. “We start with malted barley, do a full weeklong fermentation, we dry-hop the IPAs and kettle-sour the sours.”
But while these non-alcoholic beers are made with the same techniques as their boozy counterparts (the only difference is the non-alcs are pasteurised after canning), there’s still a particular finesse that speaks to the skill of the brewer. “Our main challenge is trying to achieve texture and body,” Hambour says. “Getting that without the alcohol, getting the sugar and acid balance right, using other flavours within the beer to replicate the texture, that’s the hard part. To get a balanced beer, things have to be tweaked in different directions.”
But despite the challenges, Hop Nation resists the urge to use additives — which would be perfectly legal in Australia — to replicate the flavours and textures of alcoholic beers, preferring to stick with the basics of malt, hops, water and yeast (plus a bit of fruit for the sours), doing the hard work in the lab and the brewery to make them shine. And shine they do. Hop Nation’s biggest contribution to the non-alcoholic beer offering has been in brilliant non-boozy versions of its more seasonal beers, especially darker ales like stout that usually rely on alcohol for bold flavours and rich texture. Its No Buzz American red ale and Stars Align stout are among the most interesting alcohol-free beers on the market, and well worth a try on a chilly evening alongside a pie and gravy.
Coming into the warmer weather, Hop Nation will release an alcohol-free version of its excellent mango sour beer called Proud as Punch — and with the brand having two to three new brews on the go each month, it’s worth checking back regularly for limited-edition and seasonal non-alcoholic beers to keep you going all year round.
Another brewery producing notable non-alcoholic sour beer is Molly Rose, which pioneered booze-free sours in Australia. “We weren’t the first craft brewery in Australia to make non-alcoholic beer,” says Molly Rose brewer Nic Sandery, “but I believe we were the first to do a sour.” Sandery says that, like many Australians, he didn’t have much interest in non-alcoholic beers until a chance encounter coincided with life circumstances. “I didn’t believe in them, didn’t want to drink them,” he says. But then, during lockdown, he happened to crack a sample given to him by a mate. “I got a burger delivered and had this non-alc beer in the fridge, and it went beautifully with the burger and chips,” he recalls. “I was a young father at the time and you really don’t want to be hungover with a one-year-old kid, plus sleep is so important. Alcohol affects your sleep, so I was trying to cut down anyway, and I started drinking more non-alc beers to fill the gap. Then I thought, ‘Hang on, I own a brewery — why am I not making these myself?’ ”
Molly Rose specialises in sours, IPAs and farmhouse-style beers, so it made sense for the team to focus on those styles for its non-alcoholic range. If you’re partial to sours, its Citra Citra citrus IPA and Strawberry Sublime strawberry lime gose (a wheat beer traditionally flavoured with coriander and salt) are revelatory. Bright, fresh, fruity and smashable, these beers have carried me through many an after-work session or day in the sun without me ever missing the booze. Asked what’s coming down the production line, Sandery says the brewery is looking to bring back a past collaboration with the outdoor clothing company Arc’teryx in the form of a non-alcoholic saison-style beer made with citrus-forward hops, yuzu and baking spices. Sign me up.
From a cultural point of view, no non-alcoholic beer brand has been more influential than Heaps Normal. Available at nearly every bottle shop in the country as well as countless bars and restaurants, the brand’s full-flavoured non-alcoholic lagers and ales represent a major shift in the way Aussies perceive non-alcoholic drinks. “The idea started with ourselves,” says Heaps Normal’s CEO, Andy Miller. “We were wanting to cut back on alcohol but still really enjoying beer and the beer industry, but also noticing that there just weren’t many options.” As well as wanting great-tasting non-alcoholic beer, Miller also saw the need for a cultural shift. “For us, the focus was really around cultural innovation, which in our view is often overlooked — changing the way people perceive non-alc drinks and how they fit into their lifestyles,” Miller says.
Heaps Normal achieved that by dedicating production to non-alcoholic products and presenting them in a way that beer drinkers can get excited about. “Our customers not only enjoy the taste of our beers, but are also comfortable with the message they’re sending to their peers when they’re holding that can at a party,” Miller says.
Heaps Normal’s head brewer, Ben Holdstock, says they’re preparing to release a West Coast-style IPA, called The Third IPA, this summer to join the existing core range of lager, XPA and hazy pale. “It’s a big, old-school IPA,” Holdstock says. “A lot more bitter and resinous and less fruity than the rest of the range.”
With brands such as Heaps Normal leading the charge and the growth in non-alcoholic beverages continuing to outpace the rest of the Australian drinks industry, we can expect the flavour of sobriety to get even better in coming years — no Berocca required.
