Drop Bear Beers and the rise of the non alcoholic craft industry

We catch up with Joelle Drummond, Co Founder of Drop Bear Beer Company, Wales’ very first non-alcoholic brewery. It is an exciting time to be following the non-alcoholic beer sector in the UK, with a movement created by specialist brewers of which Drop Bear Beers are standing right at the front. Through our conversation with Joelle from their brewery headquarters in Swansea, we get an insider’s perspective of the rise in low and non-alcoholic craft beer in the UK.

The ONS reports a steady increase in the number of adults who are choosing not to drink alcohol. There is a tendency in the media towards levelling the increase at the feet of the younger generations, though I’m not sure I fully believe the weight given specifically to this demographic. Joelle Drummond has similar thoughts. My own personal opinion is that as a society we are becoming more health conscious and seeking to break up our alcoholic consumption with something healthier. Not wanting to make do with any old substitute we desire something that will satisfy us just as much as a cold beer. As our mindset changes we look out towards the offerings that are available to us, and where these offerings are not satisfying our modern expectations of the tastes available in the alcoholic sector, people like Sarah McNena and Joelle Drummond at Drop Bear Beers are seeing a need for change.

An opportunity

Drop Bear Beers is one of those companies that comes along once in a few decades. True innovators operating in a sphere that is already inherently innovative, the craft beer movement pushes boundaries, and by creating Wales’ very first alcohol free brewery, the second in the whole of the UK, Drop Bear Beers’ founders, Joelle Drummond and Sarah McNena, push those boundaries even further. Drop Bear Beers makes delicious alcohol free beers, among which is a double gold winning lager, and gold winning stout, both awards recently picked up at the 2021 European Beer Championships.

Setting up a company in the days in which we find ourselves is hard enough. Setting up a company which is the first of its kind in Wales must have been particularly daunting. Joelle and Sarah’s story of Drop Bear’s inception is a fascinating one, and one which Joelle tells with a mixture of joviality and confidence with absolutely zero hint of any fear of the future, because - at least from my outsider's perspective - their future is clearly full of great things.

Both Sarah and Joelle were living in Mumbles, having returned from Sarah’s homeland of Australia and where Joelle was living for a year where they both met. “We’re both really big foodies, I absolutely love analysing flavour, I’m a proper food and drink nerd, love doing taster menus, beer flights, wine pairing menus, everything,” Joelle says with a passion. “We’re really into craft beer and in October 2018, for personal reasons, Sarah decided to take a break from drinking.” For anyone trying to embrace not drinking alcohol around a group of friends who are all enjoying a beer, the struggle is real. Joelle and Sarah saw an opportunity. 

“We went out around Swansea with our friends and everyone sat there with a pint or IPA and we were offered a coffee or an orange juice, that typical story. But it was real.” I find myself nodding along with Joelle, empathising with a situation that is very familiar: the non alcoholic options at bars tend to be lagers that vaguely resemble the macro brewer’s core product they are meant to imitate. They do taste like beer, and, as Joelle says, “That would be fine, but not for someone who actually genuinely enjoyed beer, [who] thought brewing was really interesting, and wanted something interesting in terms of like a brand and a product.” 

Drop Bear Beer’s founders continued their search online and found the same disappointment with the low and no alcohol offerings, Joelle says “There were a couple of people brewing alcohol free beers so we decided to give them a go. But in terms of a brand there wasn’t really anything that we could - we felt as people in our twenties - we could really engage with.” Craft beer is synonymous with strong and vibrant branding, it distinguishes the independent brewers from the larger, more prominent megaliths of the wider industry, and in that branding you can almost see the heart of the company. It’s something, Joelle tells me, they both realised was missing, “When you go to somewhere like, I don’t know, Beer Riff, they’ve got really quirky branding, they’ve got a story, you can see everything, it’s not just the beer.” The best breweries, or at least my favourite breweries, are those that mix their story - and the stories of the lands around them - into their products as much as the more traditional ingredients. Couple that with striking illustration, a proud company branding, much like the inimitable branding of Beer Riff that Joelle talks about, and the brewer almost transcends into something more than just a brewery. They become part of the community, an important part of the landscape. 

We just gave it a go

How did they take the company from an idea to the industry disruptor it is now? By buying a saucepan from Wilkinsons and a thermometer from The Range, of course. “It was not an ideal thermometer,” Joelle says, laughing, “It wasn’t digital, but we didn’t want to wait, we wanted to do it then, but that’s just us to a tee, and we just gave it a go.” Joelle and Sarah researched their craft heavily before jumping in with both feet. They devoured any information they could find, in as many mediums, along with YouTube; Joelle smiles and says, “I’ll always remember this one Canadian guy doing it in his kitchen, he taught us a lot.” I’m amazed that they taught themselves, but their desire and fervour to heavily research their craft differentiates them from someone just having a go, Joelle and Sarah truly taught themselves what it is to make great non-alcoholic beer, and continue to perfect it: a theme that is evident throughout my conversation with Joelle. From teaching themselves they became what they are now, a truly pioneering company at the forefront of non alcoholic craft brewing. “I didn’t really think we could produce anything of any decency,” Joelle says, “But it turns out that it was really quite good. And we were amazed, we were like woah, ok, if we can do this, just us, with this little knowledge, no investment, no equipment, what can we do with all those things?” Which is exactly what they did next: they hired the ex Heineken brewer along with a contract brewer and spent considerable time taking the recipe ideas they had been working on to make them commercially viable. Drop Bear Beers Company launched in June 2019. Joelle nods her head and says, “And it all just kind of kicked off from there.”

It’s a pretty exciting time to be living around Swansea. The city is undergoing one colossal facelift, with the controversially named Copr Bay area seeing the majority of that change with a new arena, public spaces, and a brand new golden bridge whose colour reminds me of a Caramac, and which my four year old nephew has nicknamed The Crunchie. Swansea too has a thriving craft brewery scene, with modern, artfully decorated tap rooms, and a wide selection of beers that don’t stop at your fashionable IPA’s; there are brewers specialising in cask ales as well as those creating exciting porters, sours, stouts. Leaving the city east, towards the stunning Gower, Drop Bear Beer have made their home. “We definitely need to see more awareness of Craft beer in Swansea,” Joelle says. Swansea’s Craft Beer scene is fast growing, thanks in no small part to Joelle and Sarah. “Cardiff is definitely ahead of us, they’ve got more small and micro craft breweries, a lot more taprooms, a lot more indy bars, but I do hope that Swansea will get there as well, because we have some really great breweries, it’s just getting customers to try them.” I don’t doubt Swansea’s future as a Craft Beer destination, the fact that it can attract innovators like Drop Bear, and other fantastic brewers that live both within the city center and further out towards its limits, is a testament to the city’s new direction.

Maintaining flavour

There is almost a direct comparison to be made between the shift in taste, quality, and attitude towards beer that was heralded by the craft beer movement, as can now be witnessed within the non-alcoholic sector, and that is thanks to pioneers like Drop Bear. Like the craft beer movement of which it is a part, perhaps even a sub movement within it, modern attitudes towards better ingredients and advancements in technology are giving consumers a far superior product and a higher degree of choice. Normally a macro brewer will only offer a lager as its non-alcoholic option, which is poor in comparison to the many, many beer styles available, and which continue to be invented - Black IPA, anyone? Among their growing range, Drop Bear Beers - as with other purely non or low alcohol breweries - are already creating stouts, IPA’s, pale ales, and yes, lagers too. 

When buying non alcoholic beer I no longer feel like a vegetarian in a steakhouse - a situation I have most certainly found myself in - I have a growing variety of options to choose from. These new options don’t sacrifice taste for low alcohol levels because the methods in making them have matured and new technological innovations have been made. And, well, companies like Drop Bear are being created by people like Joelle and Sarah who genuinely care about non alcoholic beer, when previously it was treated more like the forgotten child of the family. “There are actually quite a few ways you can make alcohol free beer,” her face beams, emanating her love of food and drink and flavour that she used to describe herself earlier in the call. “Some of them in my opinion shouldn't really be called beer, and I feel, and a lot of people do feel, can be quite damaging to the industry.” It’s no secret that non alcoholic beer has a bit of an identity crisis, and I agree that there are versions of beer masquerading as non alcoholic beer which really aren’t helping. Joelle explains that these “Product[s] [are] essentially made by mixing syrups, carbonated water, chucking it in a beer bottle and calling it alcohol free beer, it’s got beer like flavours ...I’m not saying it’s a terrible product, but it definitely doesn’t champion the art of brewing.” It’s easy to see how these imitators can be hurtful to the industry, Joelle sighs and says, “It’s not brewed and technically that means it’s not beer, so I think that’s what some people kind of think all alcohol free beer is and it’s a big misconception.”

More appropriate methods to remove the alcohol include vacuum distillation, similar to making spirits. Alcohol has a lower boiling point than water and so the beer is brewed to full strength, then you put it through a vacuum distiller, which lowers the boiling point of alcohol further, to heat the liquid to a point at which only the alcohol evaporates. Then there’s techniques like reverse osmosis where you put the beer through a fine membrane and extract the alcohol. “Those processes,” Joelle explains, “They’re widely used by some of the macros, but the issue that can arise with that is when you’re stripping out the ethanol - you’re also stripping out the flavonoids which carry the flavour in the beer. So they do try to compensate by adding flavour back in, that does tend to give a very different flavour, it’s not very natural.” It’s safe to say this has been my experience of low and no alcohol beers until recently. Overly sweet, overly malty, sometimes a metallic taste at the end. And that experience is largely to blame for my having cocked my nose at non alcoholic beers in the past. It’s why my friends and family members still do. It’s why Drop Bear Beers focus on the flavour and spend significant time on research and development. Drop Bear Beers use a different process, a more cost effective process used by other small breweries, called ‘low fermentability wort’. “So essentially it’s pretty much the same process,” Joelle explains, “Same ingredients, you know you’ve got your multigrains, your hops, your water, your yeast, pretty much the same process, but you use less grain so there’s less sugar and there’s less fermentation.” The result is a product that is brewed more closely to alcoholic beer, which gives it the authentic taste you can find in Drop Bear’s range of beers.

Drop Bear makes an incredible Bonfire Stout, I do love a stout and I have never had an alcohol free version. Theirs is heavy and rich, as a stout should be, with a darkness that is present in both its taste and colour. I asked Joelle whether the stout was harder to make than the Yuzu Pale Ale, “[The easiest] is probably hop led beers,” Joelle tells me, “Because you’re kind of relying on the hops for the flavours more than than the malts, of which we’re using less, so I would say, with this process, getting a stout right can be difficult.” It turns out that Joelle is a lover of stouts and insisted that they do a lot of test brews, not willing to release a stout in their range until it was ready. “Like no way,” Joelle says and laughs, “It took a lot of recipe development, some people add in lactose but we don’t believe in adding lactose for our alcohol free beers to have any level of body.” Instead Drop Bear Beers experimented with ingredients and temperatures, but Joelle admits “I would like to make our stouts a bit heavier, that’s something we’re currently working on, but yeah it’s actually just won gold at the European Championship so I’m super proud of that.”

But it’s lager, Joelle says, which is the hardest to perfect, and Joelle, Sarah, and their team must be doing something right because their New World Lager just picked up Double Gold at the European Championship. It must be tough releasing a lager into the world of non alcoholic beers where lager is the most prevalent product, a factor which Joelle and Sarah were clearly prepared for. “You know what, there are so many lagers out there that are alcohol free, you’ve got Becks, Heineken, Peroni, everything, you’re not going to compete really on price or with kind of your bog standard lagers from these macros,” Joelle tells me. Again they focused on research, not willing to produce something that didn’t meet their own high taste standards and level of quality. “Something we like to do is to see what is going on in the alcoholic craft beer world. At the time we were doing the research IPL[India Pale Lager]’s were like, the thing. I was like ‘Oh My God,’ this is a lager for a craft beer drinker, but also a craft beer for a lager drinker, it's like the perfect storm.” Not content with being the first ever non-alcoholic Welsh brewery, Joelle and Sarah launched the UK’s first ever core range IPL. But why are lagers so hard? Joelle says it’s because there are less hops and malts and so there’s much less to hide behind, “With an ale with more malts, more hops, if something is slightly off balance you can get away with it most of the time, but with a lager it’s like very up in your face, if there’s something off balance you’re going to know about it, it’s more delicate.” Drop Bear pack their New World Lager full of New Zealand hops, “We use a lot of US hops and UK hops but we didn’t have anything from NZ,” Joelle says, “And again I’ve seen all these juice bombs packed full of NZ hops and I was like ‘we need an AF[Alcohol Free] version of that.’”

Rising popularity

It’s clear that low and no alcohol drinks are experiencing a rise in popularity. It’s easy to suggest it might be due to the newer, health conscious younger drinkers. But is that true? It is definitely a factor but Joelle isn’t convinced it’s the major contributor, and listening to her talk, I can only agree with her. “I think the media really likes to focus on Millennials or Generation Z, and says a quarter of them, you know, or a third, don’t drink. And while that might be true, there’s actually a lot more to it.” At this point Joelle switches from self confessed food nerd to business expert, and it’s clear to see why both Sarah and Joelle are succeeding: you can’t start a business with passion alone, It’s evident in the paragraphs above that neither one is prepared to do anything without first researching it, paying close attention to the details, then moving on only once they are happy, and their understanding of the market is no different. “There’s a lot more purchase occasions,” Joelle explains, “And like I said, it’s not just people who don’t drink, it’s people, for example, trying to have a child, it’s maybe people who have children and are on call, they have teenagers and need to pick them up, they want to be ready. They might have dietary needs or be diabetic, or on medication, they might just not want to be drunk that night.” Their biggest demographic, Joelle tells me, is customers between the ages of 25 and 55, but she also says that they cover a lot generally between 18 and 65+. It isn’t surprising to me that their main audience isn’t the younger generations, having enjoyed and sought non alcoholic beer on many occasions myself; what does surprise me, perhaps naively, is that older generations are also a big market. “Which is nice,” Joelle continues, “Because you can have say a university student drinking a [AF]lager, and their grandad in the house drinking a [AF]Stout, and enjoying it in the same way but for a different reason, and buying it for a different reason, but enjoying it all the same.”

A quiet moment

I will go a long way to find a nice spot for a drink, and this is one of the most perfect. Through a clearing - which is a little overgrown - next to a cyclepath along the Tawe river. You wouldn’t spot it unless you knew it was there. The brush looked pretty undisturbed so I hoped nobody else had ventured through it today. I push through, avoiding the odd nettle, and find myself alone on the banks of the river. Empty and quiet except for the trickle of water and slightly distant road. I raise the bottle I brought with me - Drop Bear’s Yuze Pale Ale - and take a sip. The alcohol free Yuzu Pale Ale is fruity and juicy. There is a bitterness, a citrus burst in the after taste that leaves me wanting more. This is very much a Pale Ale. Light and thirst quenching and entirely guilt free, less than thirty calories per bottle. It has a subtle aroma of caramel and orange. Drop Bear’s motto is “removing the alcohol, perfecting the craft” and they certainly are. Their Yuze Pale Ale is unlike any non-alcoholic beer I’ve ever tasted.

Drop Bear Beer Co has revealed to me a world of possibility in a sector of the beer industry I didn’t anticipate to find such progressive wonder. It seems so obvious now that non-alcoholic beers should have their own revolution, but it takes pioneers like Joelle and Sarah, along with the other craftspeople and artisans across the UK championing low and no alcohol brewing, to bring us these possibilities and options. Indeed, Beer is one of the oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic drinks in the world, and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. 

We don’t have to make do because we choose not to drink alcohol.

Garin @LoveOurCraft

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