Eric Ottaway and Brooklyn Brew Up Something Special

Brooklyn Brewery has just launched their first non-alcoholic beer in the US, called Special Effects, after its resounding success in Europe. Non-alc beer may often be seen as an alternative to traditional beer, but our guest, Brooklyn CEO Eric Ottaway, insists that Special Effects offers incremental sales, bringing “more places, more occasions, and more people” into the beer category. In the US, non-alc beer sales are tiny but growing quickly, and despite large brewers reportedly prioritizing the category, we’ve seen very little innovation in non-alc beer. In this episode, Eric sits down with the RaboResearch team to discuss his company’s surprising push into and refreshing approach to the non-alc category and whether non-alc beer can gain a meaningful foothold with US consumers.