Make room mocktails, Devolve brews local non-alc craft beer
The North Fork’s first non-alcoholic beer brand, Devolve, releases its flagship IPA this weekend. Brewed by übergeek Brewing Company, the 12-ounce cans will be available in its Riverhead tasting room at 400 Hallett Ave., and other select breweries in the area.
“When we first set up our menu wall, we had a section labeled NA and that was supposed to be for our future non-alcoholic offerings,” said Rob Raffa, owner and head brewer for Devolve and übergeek. “It’s been four years, and non-alc has not made it on there,” he continued, “Finally now, we have enough bandwidth and staff that this project should get its time.”
Photos by Cory Olsen
NA 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 of January to be healthier and counteract the excesses of the holiday season. For people who don’t drink, but still want the flavor and experience of beer, NA beer is a solid option, and Devolve is looking to be that 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,” Mr. Raffa said.
According to the Non-Alcoholic Beer Club, Anheuser Busch and Pabst were two of the first to create what was called ‘near beer‘, beer with an ABV 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 NA beers available today are still made this way. Devolve, however, is brewed differently, in a proprietary process that better preserves, according to Mr. Raffa, 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,” Mr. Raffa explained. “With this, you have to make sure that you don’t run the beer astringent, which you can pick up in a lot of non-alc, unfortunately.”
Mr. 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 said. “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 NA beers much more appealing to a wider group of consumers.
“So the non-alc that we’re working on right now is actually based off a West Coast IPA, and it’ll be legally considered nonalcoholic. It’s still a fermented product, so it’ll have a lot of characteristics that’ll be reminiscent of beer,” said Mr. 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. I feel like it’d either be that or a lager. But IPA is definitely the best seller for pretty much everybody. I feel like everyone has their flagships,” said Lenny Van Vliet, lead brewer. “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 NA beer produced on Long Island; Montauk Brewing Company produces the other. Mr. 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,” Mr. Raffa said. “It also requires a lot of R&D, because even though we have had versions of these styles for hundreds of years, thousands of years, they’re difficult [because] you have to brew them differently. So you have to look at these recipes from a completely different angle.”
Regardless of the reason, NA beers seem to have made their mark on the beer scene. Much like the mocktail movement, enthusiasts are seeking options when it comes to non-alcoholic, but still adult, beverages.
Even for beer enthusiasts like Mr. Raffa, there are times when it makes sense to reach for a non-alc. “I don’t always want to have beer,” he said. “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.”
