Beer without Alcohol? It's Trending!
Yes, you read that title right: beer without alcohol is continually rising in popularity. With the simultaneous rise of hard seltzer as a premium "health" conscience beverage, we're seeing drinkers flocking to low-calorie beverages overall perhaps to maintain a healthier lifestyle. To meet this consumer trend, many breweries are putting out low-calorie beverage options to try and wrangle marketshare from the bigger brands. We've seen this with the very popular SeaQuench Ale and Slightly Mighty from Dogfish Head for example.
BrewDog has even taken it one step further by opening alcohol free bars in January 2020. Athletic Brewing Company, based out of Stratford, CT, is taking a shot at the non-alcoholic craze with their beer offerings aimed at the athletic lifestyle community. Tonight (September 1st at 7pm ET), we are talking with John Walker, Co-Founder and Head Brewer for Athletic Brewing Company, to talk more about the non-alcoholic space and it's growth on Untappd TV. Tune in for a deeper dive on this topic.
With more and more breweries around the world focusing on this growing market, what are the top countries that are adapting to this change? Our check-in data shows that the Netherlands has the highest percentage of check-ins to non-alcoholic beers since Jan 1, 2020 with around 37% of all check-ins (of the top 5 countries, 30% of all countries) to non-alcoholic beers happening in their country. In the U.S., we see only 7% - however, we're seeing a rise in check-ins in the U.S. of 6% comparing 2019 to 2020 (and we're only in September!).
What about raw check-in stats globally - has there been a spike there? Since March 2020, check-ins to beer with the style of Non-Alcoholic, have risen an average of 23% percent per month. As you can see from the graph below there's also a spike of check-ins to this style early in the new year which I'd like to attribute to some New Years Resolutions!
Comparing August 2020 to August 2019, we've seen 32% more non-alcoholic beers added to the Untappd database from over 1,700 different breweries around the world (up from 1,154 in 2019). It's not longer just Odules that rule this market, and new breweries are getting the hint that this may be the next big thing.
Here are the top trending non-alcoholic beers since Jan 1, 2020:
5. Nanny State by BrewDog
0.5% ABV
45 IBU
71,836 Ratings
4. Erdinger Alkoholfrei by Erdinger Weissbräu
0.4% ABV
17 IBU
68,019 Ratings
3. Special Effects by Brooklyn Brewery
0.4% ABV
N/A IBU
42,473 Ratings
2. Punk AF by BrewDog
0.5% ABV
35 IBU
48,325 Ratings
1. Heineken 0.0 by Heineken
N/A ABV
N/A IBU
86,475 Ratings
Have you checked-in a non-alcoholic beer recently? Share your perspective to your socials and tag me @gregavola and @untappd, and follow me on Untappd at @gregavola.
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