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?
Cerveza Atletica: B+
There’s nothing in the pour to suggest this is an NA beer. There’s a nice copper color to the beer itself and a sticky, tan foam that rises about half an inch above the fray before settling in like the crush on a fresh baked pie. The smell betrays a little of the pumped-up hops endemic to non-alcoholic brews — it was especially prevalent in Clausthaler’s offerings, but less so here.
But while Clausthaler was kind of hollow and screwy, Athletic instead nails a full-bodied brew at 60 calories. The first sip is a malt-forward brew with balanced carbonation that doesn’t quite snap off each sip but doesn’t leave much room for a lingering aftertaste, either. The hops wafting off the head make a push for a nice, balanced beer that’s drinkable and familiar all in one.
The Cerveza Atletica is a crisp, faithful recreation of … well, not a Corona, because lord knows it clears that subterranean bar with ease, but for a Mexican style beer the big malt profile suggests it is something else entirely. This feels more European than south of our border, but that’s not a complaint. It’s bread-y and toasty but retains the crispness of a lager and remains easy to drink.
It loses some charm as it gets warm, revealing some corn-y notes and fading toward cheaper beer. But that’s OK; I’m very much into it. In fact, it makes me kinda sad I didn’t expand my horizons to some of their other offerings this time around.
This is a great option for keeping your beer routine at 10 percent of the alcohol and roughly a third of the calories, even if it’s not cheap ($15 for a six-pack). Once football season is over I’m gonna need to get myself back in shape. Athletic will work its way into the rotation for a few college basketball games in the process.
