How Breweries Are Betting Big on Nonalcoholic Beer | Imbibe

Modern brewing boomed in the 2010s by extending beer to extremes. Excess equaled excellence in IPAs and imperial stouts, and customers craved more, more, more. The pandemic broke that boozy spell. Lockdown alcohol consumption, where Zoom happy hours might occur any hour, couldn’t last forever. Drinkers emerged to an altered alcohol landscape, one where moderation and wellness aligned with a recovering society, and newly tasty NA beers ably scratched that IPA itch.

As consumption patterns evolve and emerge, breweries are rushing to turn nothing into something big. As of October 26, sales of beer declined 1 percent and volumes fell 3.2 percent from a year earlier, according to Nielsen IQ (NIQ), a marketing research firm. During that same period, NA beer grew dollar sales and volumes 26.6 percent and 21.6 percent respectively, totaling nearly $676 million. The embrace of NA beer nods to a more nuanced approach to alcohol consumption that’s moving beyond the all-or-nothing binary. Most buyers of NA beer still consume alcohol, says Kaleigh Theriault, the director of beverage alcohol leadership at NIQ. “It’s more about this idea of moderation in consumption than cutting out alcohol completely.”

At Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon, 94 percent of its consumers for its NA beers, including NA versions of Black Butte Porter and Fresh Squeezed IPA, still drink alcohol. An NA beer is still a beer, and “choosing to moderate is actually a way to expand the beer category,” says Peter Skrbek, the CEO.

For Imbibe’s March/April 2025 issue, I took a deep into the present and future of nonalcoholic beer.