above: Athletic Brewing Company founders John Walker (left) and Bill Shufelt
Photographs by Athletic Brewing Company
BEER DRINKING IS A GREAT AMERICAN PASTIME.
Whether at the ball field, kicking back at a summer picnic, overindulging at a frat party or relaxing after a day at the office, Americans love a cold brew in their hands.
“Dry January” is an initiative that began in the U.K.—where a pint at the pub is to the 18-plus crowd what Nutella is to kids (and don’t even get us started on Guinness and Irish folks). The Dry January trend has travelled across the pond, where we Yankees have been incorporating it into our New Year’s resolutions for a decade. Some are even sticking with it year-round, as studies debunk reports of moderate alcohol consumption being good for us and awareness grows about the many ways it is toxic: from causing cancer to corroding our brains and relationships, not to mention packing on those onerous pounds in the mid-section.
Following through on Dry January (or dry forever) is now easier than ever. At last there are tasty non-alcoholic beers on the market, and the brew that is the trend trailblazer has roots right here in Fairfield County.
Athletic Brewing Company may just be the number-one reason ordering a non-alcoholic beer is becoming cool. The flavor got the entire industry to sit up and take note—the resemblance to the real deal is uncanny (even Germans love it). The branding, bridging rugged with stylish, is so impeccably executed that it’s no wonder the stigma of going alcohol-free is fading.
The cans conjure images of an evolved, healthy, down-to-earth human being, who has flair and sound judgment, and the vibrant hues somehow illicit thirst. Furthermore, Athletic Brewing Company is committed to giving back more than just those slim waistlines of youth. The company has donated over $6 million to environmental causes since 2018.
FROM HEDGE FUND TO HOPS
Bill Shufelt hails from Darien, where he was on Darien High School’s football, baseball and swim teams. He followed a well-trodden path from high school to Economics major (Middlebury College) to finance (first Knight Capital Group, then Point72), earning a CFA along the way. “I grew up in a finance town and defaulted into finance,” says Shufelt, who lives with his wife and young child not far from his hometown. “I never considered anything else. I was genuinely interested in it, and I still have a passion for investing.”
Today is another day at the office—a gar- gantuan brewery in Milford—and Shufelt wears a casual gray sweatshirt and cords. He is blond and tall, with no 40-year-old beer belly. There is nothing slick or flashy about him; no cockiness of a college football player (he played at Middlebury) or Wall Street trader. Shufelt just genuinely seems like a good guy. Yes, someone you’d want to sit down and share a beer with.
It was at Middlebury that he developed a love for the stuff. “I fell in love with craft beer,” he says. “I really loved the flavor and variety explosion. That’s where I realized, wow, beer can be as nice a food pairing and experience as a glass of wine, and as sophisticated in many ways.”
Fast forward to Shufelt’s late twenties, when work and social functions meant alcohol was on the menu five-plus days a week. He was tapped out. “I was working at Point72, my dream job, and it was go-go-go—it was such a high-performance lifestyle. I was drinking five or six nights a week, not often to excess but sometimes, and I wanted to be a little bit healthier. I still wanted to do all the social things and go to all the work dinners but very often I had to resume working when I got home or I wanted to be up at 5 a.m. working out,” he explains. “I couldn’t believe that there weren’t good non-alcoholic beverages. It was even-tually a personal lifestyle choice to stop drinking entirely. I was turning 30, I was getting married and envisioning myself as a future parent. I was thinking about my long-term health and my career performance. I was starting to run ultra-marathons.”
He was gobsmacked by the difference going dry made in every area of his life. “It was the most amazing life hack I’d ever uncovered for health and sleep and productivity and relationships and fitness,” he says. There was no going back, but something was missing.
“I still loved socializing, but I was getting a thousand questions about why I don’t drink. It was a very stigmatized choice,” he recalls, “plus an enormous drop-off in experience when you have to go from the adult menu to the kids’ menu.” There were no flagship non-alcoholic beers, nothing you’d want to be “caught holding in your hand,” he says.
During a trip to Jamaica, Shufelt was com-plaining to his wife (also from Darien, incidentally—they met in high school). “I was saying, the quality of beverages is going to totally ruin the whole meal. Someone should fix this, and my wife, who was getting her MBA at the time, stopped me in my tracks and said, ‘You should fix that.’”
Several years, a business plan and hundreds of investor meetings and brewer interviews later, Athletic Brewing Company was born with 70 angel investors from Fairfield County and Connecticut-born brewer John Walker as co-founder. The ironic name was not the only lure with Walker.
“I found John through a ton of rejection,” says Shufelt. “I did dozens of phone calls to brewers some days. Some nights I’d lie down on the kitchen floor totally disheartened. Why would a brewer bet their whole life on a segment that didn’t exist? Finally, I took ‘non-alcoholic’ off the job post. John had won many awards. I knew I had the most talented person on the phone. He came from a culinary background. His dad started a farm-to-table restaurant back when that was very pioneering.” Walker got it.
“When he told me it was non-alcoholic, I was surprised but not put off,” says Walker, who was working in Santa Fe as head brewer at Second Street Brewery and looking to move back closer to family. “Growing up in food and beverage, I was exposed to any and every consumer and any and every product. I didn’t see anything inherently wrong with non-alcoholic beer.”
Shufelt’s crystal clear vision of filling an untapped market with frothy flavor was powerful. Fifty percent of adults don’t drink. He believed—fervently—that the beverage industry wasn’t serving people’s needs. “John was living in New Mexico and moved his wife and one-year-old and five-year-old across the country to brew in an empty warehouse with a man he’d met once,” says Shufelt, still amazed.
THE SECRET SAUCE
These guys aren’t actually going to spill the beans—or barley or oats or hops—on their secret recipe. But Walker reveals, “We were five months in when we started down the right path. It took every last minute of a nine-month runway to our launch.” Walker does drink alcohol, but he says, “Once we perfected the process and recipes, we realized we are in love with the ingredients in the beer, not necessarily the alcohol.” He adds, “Athletic is my daily anytime weekly brew. I have two kids. I’m busy with all of their shenanigans.”
Shufelt reflects on how the pair hit upon the right approach. He says, “We figured there are 10,000 insanely creative craft brewers out there; why is there no great non-alcoholic beer? My thought was, it must be the processes. They are defaulting into these outdated methods rather than examining how to reinvent it. I started reading every brewing textbook out there. I thought I had somewhat of an idea, with enough conviction that I quit my job. That’s when John entered the picture and approached it with a scientific method, doing hundreds of trials. John is really the person who reinvented how non-alcoholic beer is made.”
Protecting their proprietary secrets is part of the reason they do not outsource production. Athletic’s Milford brewery is massive, at 150,000 square feet, with rows of towering fermentation tanks, looming stacks of vibrant cans and a serpentine mile-long conveyer belt winding through the facility, carrying waves of cans through a series of high-tech robotic stations (far fewer humans than in Laverne and Shirley’s workplace). It’s fascinating to observe the smooth precision of the process. The brewery yields 450 cans per minute and 450,000 barrels of beer annually. A smaller San Diego facility adds another 150,000 barrels a year, and a second facility recently acquired in San Diego can produce a whopping 750,000 barrels per year.
Upside Dawn, a golden ale, was Athletic Brewing’s first product. “It’s very crisp and clean,” says Shufelt, “and has 45 calories. As a general rule of thumb, non-alcoholic beers have 20 to 33 percent of the alcoholic version. Our flagship IPAs are 65 or 70 calories, where most craft IPAs are 200 to 300 calories. Our light beer has 25 calories versus 95 to 100.”
Thirty to fifty flavors are launched each year on the Athletic Brewing site. Looking for a chocolate, citrus, honey, hoppy, lime, nutty, pumpkin, sour or spiced flavor? They’ve got it and more. There are dark beers, like All Out and First Ride (extra-dark with coffee); Run Wild, an IPA; Wit’s Peak, a Belgian-Style White beer. Retailers generally carry four to six varieties.
“Upside Dawn is the biggest seller in our store,” says Jennifer Alves, owner of Sam’s Wine & Liquor in Old Greenwich. “They’ve done a really nice job of creating a beer that tastes like beer with no alcohol. They’ve crafted it perfectly. It’s our top non-alcoholic seller.”
Alves has seen Athletic Brewing’s popularity grow, especially in the last year. “People are becoming more health-conscious, more aware of what they are putting in their bodies,” she says. “Non-alcoholic drinks are socially on trend now. People are more sober-curious.” (For those still in a tipsy haze, the term comes from the 2018 book Sober Curious, by Ruby Warrington, which kicked off a trend in questioning why and how much we drink, and if it is necessary at all.)
Sean Leary, who co-owns Leary Liquor Cabinet in Darien with his father, comments, “Athletic Brewing beers are really popular during the work week, when you want a beer after work but don’t want to commit to the hangover. A lot of people are buying twelve-packs to stock in their fridge for when a friend who doesn’t drink comes over. It definitely helps when you have a product that tastes great. I love the variety and the seasonal stuff they come out with.” The Athletic Light is Leary’s favorite. “It’s really crisp, not too malty or hoppy,” he says. During a recent night out with his wife and mother-in-law, Leary indulged in four Run Wild IPAs. “My mother-in-law didn’t realize they were non-alcoholic. She was getting worried,” he says, chuckling.
TWO FOR THE TRAILS
Giving back was part of Athletic Brewing Company’s mission since the initial business plan. The company donates 2 percent of sales—up to $2 million annually—to revitalize trail systems and preserve outdoor access. The current total is a whopping $6.5 million. “We have made dozens of donations in Connecticut,” says Shufelt. Beneficiaries, too numerous to list, include the Nature Conservancy, Earthplace, Connecticut Forest and Park Association, Connecticut River Conservancy, Appalachian Trail Conservancy, Nichols Improvement Association, Ocean Recovery Community Alliance and Surfrider Foundation.
The business employs 270 people and is a Certified B Corp, meaning it meets the highest standard of social and environmental impact. “We have been doing B Corp-like things since inception: Two for the Trails; Two for the Team, an equity ownership program for Athletic ‘teammates’ [employees]; full health benefits,” says Shufelt. The company’s mission statement is “to positively impact our customers’ lifestyle while greatly impacting our communities and environment for the better.”
At the time of this interview, not long after Hurricane Helene ravaged North Carolina, a heap of donations sat near the lobby. Shufelt gestures toward the stack and glances at it with kind blue eyes. “Our hearts go out to the people of North Carolina and hurricane-affected areas,” he says. “We have done a collection on-site at the brewery, mostly by our team so we can fill a couple tractor trailers to send down. We are also diverting $250,000 of Two for the Trails funds to Asheville.”
Shufelt offers an assorted six-pack for the road from a cooler of colorful brews. Imagine: a beer you can drink while driving, which has fewer calories than a tangerine and helps make the world a better place. Dry January? Bring it on.
ATHLETIC FACTS & STATS
AMERICA’S #1 NON-ALCOHOLIC beer brand, with over 19% market share
RANKED THE 10TH LARGEST CRAFT BREWER IN AMERICA in 2023 by The Brewers Association
In 2024 named one of TIME magazine’s 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL COMPANIES
THE 4TH FASTEST-GROWING COMPANY in the Americas in 2023 according to the Financial Times
NAMED ONE OF THE 20 MOST CREATIVE COMPANIES in the world by GQ in 2024
NORTH AMERICAN BREWER OF THE YEAR at the last four International Beer Challenge competitions
RUN WILD IPA IS NOW A TOP 10 IPA IN AMERICA, including alcoholic beers
41% OF AMERICANS are trying to drink less alcohol in 2024 (NC Solutions)
80% OF ATHLETIC CUSTOMERS still drink alcohol (using Athletic as a means of moderating intake)
45% OF 21+ GEN Z consumers have never consumed alcohol, compared to 36% of millennia and 32% of Gen X (NIQ)