The North Fork’s first non-alcoholic beer brand, Devolve, releases its flagship IPA this weekend. Brewed by Übergeek Brewing Company (400 Hallett Ave. Riverhead), the 12-ounce cans will be available in Übergeek’s tasting room and other select breweries in the area.
“When we first set up our menu wall, we had a section labeled N/A and that was supposed to be for our future non-alcoholic offerings,” says Rob Raffa, owner and head brewer for Übergeek. “It’s been four years, and non-alc has not made it on there. Finally now, we have enough bandwidth and staff that this project should get its time.”
N/A beer is having something of a moment, with craft brewed, flavorful styles popping up all over the country. Some of this momentum can be attributed to the rise of “Dry January,” where people commit to sobriety for the month to be healthier and counteract the excesses of the holiday season. But generally, low and no-alcohol beverages have been on the rise, with companies like Drizly reporting a 62% increase in non-alcoholic sales across the national online order and delivery platform.
For people who don’t drink but still want the flavor and experience of beer, N/A is a good option, and through a higher-quality brew process, Raffa is looking to make Devolve the go-to local option.
“When we first started this [Übergeek Brewing Company], we wanted to have something for all types of people and make this space more about the community. We wanted it to be a nice community space where people didn’t feel alienated, and sometimes that’s hard to do when there is a centralized focus with respect to alcohol,” says Rafa.
According to the Non-Alcoholic Beer Club, Anheuser Busch and Pabst were two of the first to create what was called ‘near beer‘, or beer with an alcohol by volume of less than 0.5 percent. Created to keep breweries afloat during prohibition, brewers would brew their regular beer and then boil off the alcohol before selling it to consumers. Many of the N/A beers available today are still made this way. Devolve, however, is brewed differently, in a proprietary process that, according to Raffa, better preserves the beer’s flavor and characteristics.
“It’s a very complicated process to make a non-alcoholic beer, because you’re balancing so many different factors. There’s a lot of risk when it comes to spoilage, since you don’t have the alcohol as a preservative,” Raffa explains.
Raffa sees Devolve as a crucial step for the future of craft brewing. “Now you’re having to depend on other factors that you wouldn’t normally be leaning on when you’re making regular beer,” he says. “But I think that this is a route that we need to go down, that a lot of breweries should be going down and experimenting with.”
From 1990 to the 2010s, the non-alc field was long dominated by Anheuser Busch’s O’Doul’s. The lager-style beer paved the way for all of today’s smaller brands. The diversity of styles available makes today’s N/A beers much more appealing to a wider group of consumers.
“The non-alc that we’re working on right now is actually based off a West Coast IPA, and it’ll be legally considered non-alcoholic. It’s still a fermented product, so it’ll have a lot of characteristics that’ll be reminiscent of beer,” says Raffa. “As brewers, we live and breathe these styles, and with that experience, I think it allows us to feel comfortable looking from, like, maybe a completely bizarre angle, but still getting results that are familiar.”
The India pale ale, or IPA, is the most popular style of craft beer, making it the logical choice for Devolve to launch their brand.
“IPAs are definitely, the biggest seller for smaller breweries. So I feel like it made the most sense to try that first,” says Lenny Van Vliet, lead brewer at Übergeek. “The IPA is already well liked, and if maybe you’re trying to slow down a little after having a couple, but you still want the IPA flavors.”
This is only the second N/A beer produced on Long Island; Montauk Brewing Company produces the other. Raffa has plans to brew a lager with the same process, which will also release this summer.
“As of right now, we’re probably going to sit with just these two beers, but after several times that we brew this and we’re getting repeated results, then I would feel confident with us branching out to other styles of beer,” Raffa says.
Much like the mocktail movement, enthusiasts are seeking options when it comes to non-alcoholic, but still adult, beverages, and N/A beers seem to have made their mark on the beer scene.
Even for beer enthusiasts like Raffa, there are times when it makes sense to reach for a non-alc. “I don’t always want to have beer,” he says. “There are times when I’ve had a long day, and I’ve been sweating, and I get home and I would like to have something that is technically hydrating me and not dehydrating me, and that I could wake up in the morning and feel more refreshed.”
