Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
Dry January would be much more of a sensation if it weren’t right in the middle of the year’s most important stretch of football. Taking the first 31 days of the year off from drinking is a rough option when the alternative is having a beer and watching the Rose Bowl or remaining couch-bound through the entirety of Super Wild Card Weekend ™.
It’s a smart idea, however. The last two weeks of December are typically reserved for stress eating and drinking enough to get you through family functions or the assembly of whichever high-involvement toy kitchen you stupidly bought your kid that year. A hard reset makes sense, even if it’s at odds with the football schedule.
In that spirit, today’s beer come from one of the fastest growing non-alcoholic breweries in the country. I first heard of Athletic Brewing Company a few years back, but didn’t really pay attention until I heard AEW wrestler Jox Moxley gush about it in a post-match press conference. I wouldn’t normally consider the a Cincinnati-born wrestler with a penchant for biting dudes in the ring as a tastemaker, but if Athletic was good enough to replace his post-match beer as part of his journey through sobriety, it must be pretty good.
Right?