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To ‘Dry January’ or to ‘not Dry January’, that is the question! You may be looking to cut back on the excesses of the past few weeks, or you may love a beer but not necessarily the alcohol. Whatever the reason Big Drop could be your answer!

We speak to Rob Fink, Founder of Big Drop Brewing Co. to find out what’s behind the ‘world’s best alcohol-free beer’.

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I haven’t always been involved in brewing. Far from it in fact. The first business I started – in 2010 – was a City law firm and one of my roles was business development. However, that meant long periods of time propping up a bar before staggering home in the evening. Then, in 2014, I had my first child and I decided to quit the booze for a few months just so I could cope in the evenings! However, I couldn’t just stop going to the pub: that was part of my job. Instead I ended up drinking large quantities of not very good, mass-produced alcohol-free (AF) lager. I realised that the craft beer “revolution” seemed to have completely ignored AF beer.

The question I asked myself (and an old school friend who co-founded Big Drop with me in 2016): what if we could do for alcohol free beer what craft beer had done for….beer?

Thanks to a chance encounter with renowned experimental brewer, Johnny Clayton, we soon came up with a way to make an AF beer (a stout as it happens) without the need for removing any alcohol at all. Lots of breweries remove the alcohol from their beer after it has fermented. However, that means that a lot of flavour, aroma and mouthfeel is also removed. We fully-ferment our beer but, by using clever brewing techniques and a special yeast, it never gets above 0.5% abv. That means that we’re able to retain the flavours inherent in all styles and produce beer which many cannot tell is actually AF.

In four years we’ve amassed over 50 international beer awards, including four times winning the ultimate accolade of ‘World’s Best’ at the World Beer Awards. We’ve also achieved the Holy Grail of any AF drink: winning awards when blind-tasted against full-strength rivals. EG Big Drop’s ‘Paradiso’ Citra IPA was overall UK Winner in the Speciality IPA category of the 2020 World Beer Awards, beating 6% abv beers.

We’re now in over 10,000 locations worldwide and, in the UK, you can find us in major pub groups and retailers (Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Morrisons and Ocado) as well as on the High Street with Holland & Barrett and on doorsteps with Milk & More.

Big Drop is for anyone who, for whatever reason, wants to enjoy a beer but without the alcohol. They could be driving, looking after kids, pregnant, cutting back on calories, going back to work after lunch, getting up early the next day, training for a triathlon etc. Our mission is simply to give those people the choice of having a decent AF version of any style of beer they fancy.

So, if any craft beer fans are attempting Dry January, have a look at www.bigdropbrew.com (use SCHOOL15 for a 15% discount) and there’s half a chance of making it through to February!

 

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