yes i broke down and tried a new brewery. gotta have something to write about! no, seriously, i’d been wanting to try gruvi for a while and kept hoping my total wine would start carrying it, but they haven’t. so yeah, back to mail order.
i’m not sure though what possessed me to order this particular beer. what i was really making the order for was their stout (review forthcoming) and i needed something else to make the order worth it, given shipping costs. though their golden lager gets a lot of accolades, i was worried it was just be boring to me; i don’t really drink just basic lager much. and i already have enough hoppy stuff in the fridge so i didn’t want the IPA or pale ale. and sadly the delicious-sounding peach pie ale was out of stock. the description of the sour weisse said “our take on the classic berliner weisse is tart, citrusy wheat beer,” which made it sound interesting. so sour weisse it was!
now that i’ve cracked one open and am sipping it, i don’t know if that is how i would describe this one. it is extremely light and crisp, which makes it not feel very much like a beer at all. though the ingredients listed are barley, oats, wheat, hops and yeast, i’m just really not tasting the grain at all. it is citrusy-tart, for sure, more lemony than anything else. it feels almost more seltzer-like than beer-like, in terms of mouthfeel and body. it is tasty, i will give them that. it will certainly be a lovely thing to drink on a spring or summer sunny day, perhaps with a squeeze of lime in it. but a “citrusy wheat beer” it is not, at least not to me.
i would put this 26 calorie, 5 carb “beer” in the same category as some of those from partake brewing – though honestly, the partake brews i’ve tried have more flavor. but for those who are really into cutting the calories and/or the carbs, this would be a great selection. i had mine with a greek salad and it was a great pairing. but i think i will have to be in a particular mood to want to drink this.
i did want to point out the excellent packaging with recyclable materials, which i greatly appreciate. i’ve had some boxes of beer show up with just a few layers of bubble wrap, which is both highly ineffective as a means of protecting the beer and also not readily recyclable. these paper options are much better and each 4pack was tightly wrapped and cushioned. so thanks for that, gruvi!
i’ve been doing this NA beer thing since november so have drunk a LOT of it by now – 33 different kinds, to be exact! (good thing NAs tend to have a lot fewer calories/carbs than regular beer!)
i thought maybe a top 10 list was in order. i am finding that my opinion of some of these brews changes over time and upon repeated consumption, perhaps differing greatly from my first impression. i’m making this list for my own purposes, to refer to when restocking once i drink through all that i already have. and of course, there’s still so much i have NOT sampled – this is just a “faves so far” list.
i’m offering these in no particular order. i like different beers for different reasons at different times and though i might really LOVE a particular beer, it might not be the style that i want to drink a lot of or often. or conversely, the beer i grab most often might not be the one i think is the absolute best beer, it’s just the easiest to drink or the one that fits more moods/situations. for right now, from all i have tasted, this would be my top 10:
we’ll see how these hold up over time. i mean, the trailblazer and irish red are not always available, so that might limit my ability to keep drinking them. and i might break down and order some samples from some of the breweries i’ve yet to try, so next list might be totally different.
here’s my top current wants that i haven’t tried yet:
there are a few others on the want list as new NAs keep appearing in the wild, but i’m pretty happy with what i’ve been able to sample so far. i sure hope when things return to more “normal” times that i can find some of this deliciousness on local bar/restaurant menus so i can stop stockpiling them at home – i only feel compelled to do so since they are all so hard to find. or maybe one (or more) of my local craft breweries will jump into the NA game. a girl can dream!
i really am obsessed, y’all. i don’t even drink IPAs and yet, due to all the reviews i’ve read about this one and all the PR hype from sam adams, i’ve been keeping an eye out for this one in my local grocery stores. and i just happened to stop in this morning after my first dog walk to buy some water cuz i was out. (it was sweaty today!) so i took a look – though i walked past it the first time cuz they just threw it in with all the regular beer, not with the other NAs – and it was there! $8.99 for a six pack at rouses downtown. (and no, i don’t usually shop at rouses anymore but due to my tight schedule and location this was the best option to stop to get water.)
so yeah. sam adams – you’re probably familiar with them. boston beer company. one of the biggest “craft” breweries in the US, or the craft-iest corporate brewery in the US? your pick. there’s been a lotof controversy in the craft beer world over sam adams and i don’t want to get into all that. i don’t usually drink their beer, not on any kind of principle – i just never found it all that compelling. but they were pretty much the beginning of the craft beer movement.
“just the haze” is the newest, most hyped NA brew this year so when i saw it i figured, why not? i don’t usually like IPAs (at least with alcoholic beers) but i’ve been finding i have more of a tolerance for the bitterness of hops in the NA brews i’ve tried so i thought, well maybe? it’s a “hazy, juicy” IPA – i actually never really knew what that meant since i don’t drink IPAs – but i’m learning it’s exactly what it sounds like. hazy, referring to the visual appearance of the beer, unfiltered, not crystal clear, like a lot of farmhouse ales i’ve enjoyed in the past. and juicy, meaning, duh, like it’s got juicy flavors and aromas.
what i didn’t realize about “just the haze” cuz i guess i blocked it out or just wasn’t paying attention when reading all those reviews is that one of the juices of the “juicy” is grapefruit. i really don’t like grapefruit! i have strong anti-grapefruit feelings and reactions. i don’t like the bitterness/tartness pucker factor. i prefer a sweeter citrus – orange, mandarine, satsuma. i can handle lemon and lime but grapefruit just puts me over the edge. so yeah. the predominant juiciness – though not the only – is grapefruit. (there’s also a lot of pineapple and kind of a lime and other tropical fruity thing going on – it’s quite complex – but the grapefruit kinda lingers on the back end after the initial sweeter pineapple and just screams at me. maybe it’s just me; maybe i’m just sensitive.)
i put a few in the fridge as soon as i got home from work but was worried they weren’t cold enough so i iced one down in the freezer for about 30-40 minutes while i cooked some dinner. that was almost too long, as when i poured it there was a little icy sludge starting to happen. so maybe that affected the taste some. i’ll revisit this review when i try the second one which didn’t go in the freezer.
my first taste surprised me… that there was so much going on and that the bitterness and sweetness both competed and harmonized at the same time. this brew is confusing to my palette! it’s quite light in body and taste, and smooth, still feels like a real beer in your mouth. i could see this being very thirst quenching on a hot day. it’s interesting to me.
what i don’t really notice much is an extreme hops bitterness i was expecting from something called an IPA. but it’s really much more subtle here, which upon more research i’m finding is a quality of juicy, hazy (or New England style) IPAs. which means “just the haze” is true to style. so maybe that’s why all the NA IPA heads are gushing over this beer, because it very well replicates an alcoholic juicy, hazy IPA.
for me the more subtle bitterness from multiple hops means i can tolerate it better, even with the grapefruit. i drank it with my dinner and it didn’t overwhelm it. i liked it enough to finish the whole thing and i will try another one before passing final judgement. but i might give away the rest of the six pack unless i have a very different experience, as i’m not sure given all my other options that i will want to reach for this beer over so many others. (i already have a few other citrustype beers that i like a lot more.) but i would probably be thrilled to find it as an option in a bar or restaurant that had limited NA options. so i’m glad i tried it to know what it’s like. and i learned something by trying it and doing the research – i learned what a hazy juicy IPA is!
(just for the record, according to sam adams’ site, this beer has an IBU of 35, which puts it in a moderate range though kinda low for an IPA. it has 98 calories per can, and it uses citra, mosaic, sabro, and cascade hops. the malts are listed as sam adams two-row pale malt blend, white wheat, golden naked oats.)
it’s still getting rolled out around the country (we JUST got it this week here in new orleans) but it will likely be THE most widely available craft NA IPA on the market since sam adams already has really wide distribution. i wouldn’t be surprised to eventually see this one on tap in the really devoted craft beer spaces as THE NA option. so maybe this beer will help sam adams get its groove back in the craft beer arena? we shall see.
i’ve been wanting to try this beer pretty much since i started this NA adventure. i kept wanting/expecting to find it at either whole foods or total wine because both chains carry the beer in other parts of the country. but so far i’ve been unsuccessful in getting either to order it here. or maybe it’s just that it’s not distributed in these parts yet, not sure.
so i finally broke down and ordered online via amazon, which is how they sell direct to consumers. $15 for a six pack seems pricey until you think about the shipping being included and then it doesn’t seem so bad. (no it’s not a prime item – i ordered it on saturday and it arrived on thursday via UPS.) the twelve-pack price of $29.99 is just a tad higher than what many NA craft breweries are doing with their two six-packs = free shipping offers, with most of them charging $12.99 per six-pack. but when you consider the higher costs of brewing non-alcoholic craft beer with quality ingredients, it’s still a decent price.
ceria (rhymes with area) was co-founded in 2018 by keith villa – best known as the creator and brewmaster behind the popular craft brew blue moon – and his wife jodi villa, who is the CEO of ceria. after retiring from a highly respected 32-year career at coors, villa decided to take on the challenge of making an equally compelling high quality non-alcoholic craft beer to serve as the basis of their new THC and CBD-infused brews. (the company is based in colorado where all things cannabis are legal.) so ceria sells their grainwave (the belgian-style white ale) and their indiewave IPA in both infused and non-infused, non-alcoholic versions. i obviously only have access to the non-alcoholic, non-infused varieties since i live in louisiana.
so how is it? i only ordered the grainwave because of my usual aversion to IPAs, though now that i’ve had one i’m kinda curious about what the IPA tastes like. but the grainwave is good! i’m a sucker for a blood orange beer. (one of my all-time alcoholic faves is my neighborhood brewery, second line brewing’s blood orange saison that is usually a staple of my summers.) grainwave’s nose and flavor heavily favor the blood orange peel and coriander combination, over an oaty belgian-style malted wheat and hops base. i’ve read a few other reviews that note it is under-carbonated and i kinda agree – it poured great with a large foamy head but felt flat by the time i got to the bottom of the glass. but it has a good medium body to it and i love the golden-orange color. it was quite refreshing.
i think i’ll have more to say as i make my way through this six pack. but it went well with my lunch of scrambled eggs and veggies and as a citrus wheat beer it definitely gives off summer vibes! (even though we are having an unseasonably chilly overcast day here in the low 50s.) i like it but not sure i like it enough to want to keep buying it to keep in regular rotation at home. i would definitely be happy to order this at a restaurant or bar, though. and we’ll see how i feel after a few more on different days.
also, i really appreciated the recyclable packaging and handwritten note that were included! very nice touch!
i’d put it in the same general category as athletic’s upside dawn, but trailblazer is a much lighter lager which made it go down so easy that i was done with it before i knew it! it pours a yellow-golden color and had quite a nice head to it, giving off a faint fruity floral aroma. they say peach but i didn’t really get a clear peach from it. maybe my nose is just not that sophisticated. i would have been happier with a stronger fruity aroma, frankly. but it was still nice.
it’s definitely a hop-forward brew, has a bit of that bitterness to it, though not overwhelming. kind of a thin body, but a nice crisp, clean finish. i really found it to be delicious. i had to resist the urge to go crack a second one open; since i only got one six pack and it was a limited run that is already sold out, i want to make it last! i think athletic should offer this one on the regular. i would definitely buy more!
ok, first a quick update on the bravus oatmeal stoutsaga. though i sampled and already wrote about the bravus blonde and peanut butter stouts that their customer service sent me recently, i hadn’t felt in the mood for an oatmeal stout until now so hadn’t tried the replacements yet. i think maybe i was afraid of being disappointed again.
but i finally just did and i’m here to report that i really do think it was a freshness issue with the stock at total wine. because one of the new fresh ones they sent (see date stamp pic above) tastes fine, delicious even. i get a good slightly sweet aroma that is the hallmark bravus smell (what is that?!!!), but it’s not bad here. it’s balanced. i get a whiff of caramel, a little coffee, a little chocolate, a little nutty. it’s smooth and creamy, subtle well-distributed carbonation. had a nice head on it when poured though didn’t stick around long. it’s a rich dark brown almost black color you’d expect for an oatmeal stout. i’m not really getting the oatmeal very much, but it’s a good complex flavor that reads stout. they compare it to a guinness on their website but it’s a little sweeter than a guinness; but it’s yummy and shares a lightness and easy drinkability with it.
so check those date stamps and don’t buy it if it’s not fresh! (this is the hazard of being in a market where NAs are not turning over quickly at retail. also the offending cans did not have a date stamp so i had no idea how old it was.) again, thanks to bravus customer service for sending me replacement beers so i could clear their good name.
when i ordered from rightside brewery recently i got one six of their citrus wheat, which i’ve already exclaimed my delight about, but i also got a six of their IPA to share with a friend. i kept two of them even though i was not expecting to like them, but i’m trying to expand my palette and for the sake of having more things to write about i figured i’d give it a go. i have now drunk both of them and neglected to take a picture of the pour both times because they were both at night while i was socializing and i forgot. so here’s an artsy pic of the can. (my living room is my “studio” so excuse the mess.)
in both sampling situations i drank this IPA following one of their citrus wheats, which maybe wasn’t the best plan. i feel like it set me up to be disappointed because i love the citrus wheat so much and find it to have a delicious complex, refreshing flavor profile. this one simply did not read IPA to me at all. i didn’t smell a strong hops aroma; it was similar to the citrus wheat but maybe just a tad more of the hops and less of the tropical. flavor-wise, it was not as complex as the citrus wheat, seemed thinner and simpler, not as interesting. and the flavor weirdly evaporated as soon as it hit my throat. so i guess if you’re looking for a lighter beer, maybe this would work for you. it was fine as a second beer in both situations but it was noticeable to me how different it was than their other beer and i don’t think i’ll be buying it again. (i will however be placing another order for two sixes of the citrus wheat! that’s gonna be my summer beer!)
i am so excited to finally try this beer! shipping was pretty quick compared to a lot of the other breweries i’ve been ordering from online – probably because it came from atlanta, closer to me than most of the others. i ordered a six of each of the citrus wheat and the IPA – not because i like IPAs (though i do want to try it, just out of curiosity) but because i got it for a friend who likes IPAs and has started dipping her toes into the NA craft beer world since she just found out she’s pregnant. (emree woods, the founder of this brewery, started rightside cuz she was looking for a good NA beer to drink when she was pregnant with her first child, so it seemed appropriate!) i’ll be curious to hear what she thinks.
i really like their logo and colors and their overall bright, sunny branding. (if you haven’t checked out their blog on their website, you should cuz it’s full of empowering and inspirational posts, while also discussing their brewing process and the launch of the company. and look at that cute handwritten note! nice touch, really.
it pours a really gorgeous golden orange color with a pretty good head that gives off a slightly tropical aroma. nice body, not as thin as i expected it to be, but smooth and goes down easy with a crisp finish. i shoulda put a wedge of orange on there! (i even had oranges!) oh well, next time. i gotta say, this beer has a lot more going on than i expected from a wheat NA. i think this is gonna be a spring-summer favorite for me. definitely feels like i could drink a couple of these at a time, which i don’t always feel about many NA beers i’ve tried. (i think the beer dudes call that “crushable.” lol)
i think i only have one more new-to-me beer to test out, after the rightside IPA, that is en route to me via UPS. (athletic‘s trailblazer.) probably won’t be til next week sometime. then i need to not order any more beer for a while and just drink what i already have! it’s fun testing out all these new brews but my bank account can’t sustain this level of support for the NA craft beer industry. i really only drink one beer a night – two if i’m really adventuresome – so what i have in my kitchen should last me for a while.
but next i wanna get serious about trying to figure out how to get more local retail and maybe even some of my favorite bars to stock some of these. (yes, my organizer brain is kicking in.) cuz once things open back up more and more folks (including me) are fully vaccinated, i am really anxious to be back out at a bar for happy hour again! and while i might be tempted to have one alcoholic beer just to see how i do with it physically – i’ve really been CRAVING second line brewing‘s coffee blonde, one of my all-time favorites – i want to be able to moderate with some delicious tasting NAs too. to me, that would be the ideal situation, to have access to both at my favorite hangouts. right now, that is nonexistent – the only place i can drink these yummy NAs is at home – but hopefully with a little targeted prodding, that will change.
i don’t have a lot to say about this beer. i bought it on impulse because i was out of one of their other beers that is a mainstay for me and i happened to be looking at just the right moment that this pilot program brew was made available to folks not in the club. so figured it would be a fun experiment, what with st. patrick’s day coming up and all.
faint malty aroma, pours a dark amber-red color (it’s been a long time since i’ve drunk a red beer so can’t really remember what color they ought to look like), and the carbonation is weird – bigger bubbles almost like a soda. there was a foamy head upon pouring (as pictured), but it quickly dissipated. it tastes fine, but is hard to distinguish from several of their other beers. nothing really bold about this one. not a strong hops presence, a little caramel, but not a heavy maltiness either. the description said something about stone fruit but i don’t really taste that. (had to look up stone fruit to understand what that was!) this beer is light and smooth and goes down very easily, but if you’re looking for flavor, this isn’t it. it would probably pair well with food though because it wouldn’t overwhelm it.
this is just a middle of the road beer to me. it’s pleasant enough and i will drink this 6pack but i wouldn’t order it again even if it was available regularly.
i just got home from walking dogs all morning and it’s a beautiful spring day outside, warm but not hot with a cool breeze. my landlord was fixing my wooden gate that leads to my apartment around the back of the house. the gate fell off one of its hinges yesterday, making it hard to open/shut, so i was glad to see him working on it. we had a lovely chat. i came home to the delivery of my latest impulse purchase from athletic brewing – the irish red (no longer available, one of the pilot program brews) – so a few of those went right into the fridge. but i was dreaming of a beer on the way home, so i decided to pop something that was already cold but new to me, the bravusblonde.
hmm. i’m not quite sure what i think of this beer. i am quickly realizing that all bravus beers have a unique and common aroma/taste that i can’t quite put my finger on – is that the hops they use? the malt? something about their brewing process to achieve non-alcoholic beer? i really don’t know. i’m not skilled enough of a taster to isolate or know what it is. all i know is that sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. in the case of the peanut butter stout, it REALLY works. in the case of the oatmeal stout, it sometimes works but appears to be a delicate balancing act that can go horribly wrong. in this blonde, i’m not sure if it works.
it poured a nice light golden color (they call it straw yellow but that doesn’t seem very complimentary) and had a little sudsy head to it. i get a little sour, funky smell that isn’t really pleasant to me. upon taking a sip, it’s pretty thin and the carbonation is light, so mouthfeel is a little weak but it is smooth. i’m getting a little citrus (though that might just be that i ate an orange when i first came home and the acidity is still in my mouth), a little banana (though not much). it’s got a light malty sweetness to it. i can’t quite decide if i like this or not. it’s not so bad that i won’t drink it but i’m not sure i will feel like i want to reach for this again anytime soon. and i feel like “blonde” as a descriptor doesn’t really work because this doesn’t taste like any blonde beer i’ve ever had before… though i really don’t know what i would call it.
i’m grateful i had a chance to try it. maybe i will experiment with mixing this with their raspberry gose and see what happens! but i don’t think, on its own, that this beer is for me.
i wrote about my weird experience with bravus brewing‘s oatmeal stout in a previous post, the upshot of which is that after contacting customer service, they had me send back some of it that i thought was off and sent me a mix-pack of fresh beer to replace it: 2 oatmeal, 2 blonde and 2 peanut butter stout, so i could try some of their brews i can’t find locally in stores. well it arrived today and i promptly put it in the fridge to chill.
8 hours later and i am currently enjoying their peanut butter stout enormously! i’ve read so many great reviews of this beer, and i am totally a stout person and have yet to have a really satisfying NA stout experience, so i’m really psyched to finally try it and love it so much. (i love athletic’s all out stout but it doesn’t really compare to this one in richness and body/mouthfeel. it almost reads more like a porter to me.)
as you can see in the pic, this beer pours a nice dark brown almost black color with a good head that gives off an amazing sweet peanut butter/chocolate aroma. the carbonation and body of this beer is appropriate for a stout, though probably not quite as thick as an alcoholic one. but pretty good for an NA, especially since it does NOT have lactose in it. the flavor is really rich – creamy, chocolatey, a little hazlenut in with the peanut butter. i was worried it would be overly sweet but i don’t find it to be at all. it’s just right, though i would certainly classify this a dessert beer and probably couldn’t drink more than one in a sitting. i can hardly believe it only has 106 calories cuz it sure tastes like it has a lot more!
i’m looking forward to trying (another night) the fresh oatmeal stout that they sent me, to see if i have a different experience than the last ones i had to send back to them. i wonder if it’s just a freshness issue? (the ones I sent back were purchased at total wine, so who knows how long they’d been there – i can’t find any dates on the cans.) i did notice when i first opened the can and smelled it, i did get a very faint whiff of the smell that turned me off so hard on the brews i sent back. but that whiff did not convert to a taste when i took my first sip, and the other aromas quickly overpowered that faint smell. so not sure what that is – the hops? the malt? i dunno. but it’s like the ones i thought were “off” were really unbalanced, and that nasty smell and taste just overtook the rest of the beer. i’m really hoping they tell me what they find when they get those beers back so i can understand more what it was that went wrong. but drinking this one tonight confirmed to me that something was not quite right about those beers, so i’m glad they let me send them back and grateful they replaced it with some delicious fresh beer!
so thanks brendan, at bravus customer support! i will certainly be buying more of this peanut butter stout!
