Industry seeing growing demand for non-alcoholic beers and mocktails
The Jasper Beer and Spirts Festival filled the cups of hundreds of thirsty guests at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge on the February 9-11 Superbowl weekend.
During the day, festival-goers took in cooking demonstrations, beer-pairings, keynote presentations from industry VIPs and whiskey tastings. Some worked up a thirst on one of several outdoor hockey rinks buffed up by JPL’s zamboni crews. Others simply wheeled around and sampled the various fruit and cheese spreads.
The main events included the Friday and Saturday evening Grand Tastings, in which more than 30 exhibiters set up their booths adjacent to a bonanza of pub food, prime rib and oversized parlour games.
Festival founder and ABF president, Bill Robinson, said in the last five years the Jasper festival has grown in terms of exhibitors and attendees—but what stands out in 2024 is the variety of product, and even the different processes used to create that product. From hard teas to hop waters to hemp-infused Saskatoon berry wine, this year’s festival was about much more than just beer, Robinson said.
“People in this room are watching the trends very closely,” he said.
What’s buzzing in the beer world today is brew without the buzz. Non-alcoholic craft breweries are springing up all over North America and several, including Tuesday Brewing, have opened up in barley-rich Alberta. Tuesday Brewing bills its product as “non-alcoholic beer crafted for adventure, fun, and getting s#*t done” and as such, on the second day of the festival, reps were showcasing their Knollypop Lager and Freebomb Pale Ale next to a half-dozen other vendors’ stalls in the front foyer at JPL’s opulent Orso Trattoria.
That wouldn’t have been possible two or three years ago, Robinson said—there simply wouldn’t be enough non-alcoholic beer and cocktail creators to justify setting up an exclusive room. For those who did have the vision to hop on the zero-alcohol train, however, the market has been booming.
“We’ve seeing almost 100 percent growth in the last three years,” said Matt Livingstone, who was pouring Village Brewing’s CRFT line for the sober-curious. Helped by its increasing presence in Alberta grocery stores, CRFT now makes up 30 percent of Village’s entire volume, Livingstone said.
“People’s habits are changing. They might drink one alcoholic beer, then one non-alcoholic. It’s not just for people who don’t drink,” he said.
Over at the booth manned by Wild Life Distillery‘s Adam Burrows, the Canmore-based spirit makers are noticing similar market swings. They branched out last year to create their first alcoholic canned cocktail, a deliciously effervescent Raspberry Mohito. The product, which uses Alberta grain and B.C. fruit, meshes with the company founders’ locally-sourced, active lifestyle brand, Burrows said.
Not everyone was slingin’ wobble-free pops, of course. Jeremy D’Lafont from Whitetooth Brewing, out of Golden B.C. (technically not Alberta, we know), was pouring their take on a Belgian-style strong ale, the “cranium-liberating” Trepanation Tripel.
Whitetooth calls their Trepanation “deceptively potent but approachable, with a deep golden straw colour and a dry finish.” Come to think of it, that’s not a bad way to describe some of the locals who crashed the Friday night festivities.
And “approachable” is how Robinson hopes guests of the JBSF will describe the festival to their friends, in anticipation of next year’s Jasper event, or the upcoming Edmonton Beer Festival, March 8/9. When Robinson started Alberta Beer Festivals in 2002, the concept was simply about enjoying great beer with a growing, enthusiastic community.
“You can see how much fun it is for people to go around and meet people and just talk about what they’re tasting,” he said. “The chances of that happening at your neighbourhood pub is almost zero.”
We’ll drink to that.
Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com
