Happy 2025! NA KSA and NA Villager are here!

We made non-alcoholic Fort Point beer! This marks our most in-depth R&D project in the history of Fort Point, resulting in two new 6-packs we’re really, really proud of. To introduce you to NA KSA and NA Villager properly, I sat down with the creators themselves: Mike Schnebeck, Head of Innovation, and Cameron Collier, Director of Production.

First things first, why did Fort Point venture into non-alcoholic beer?

Cameron: Well...we kept hearing that people wanted Fort Point NA! And, we’ve been drinking more and more NA beer ourselves over the last few years. Sometimes you want to drink a beer without the buzz, or you’re craving the flavor of beer but just want something a bit lighter. 

Mike: We are pretty cautious about getting into new categories at Fort Point, but NA felt really natural and exciting. We had tried a lot of NA beers, and thought we could contribute in our own way, and introduce something different than what’s already out there.

What’s the story with NA beer, how far back does it go? 

Mike: NA wasn’t on the cicerone test…it’s been popular in Europe for a while, but wasn’t taken seriously by the American beer community until recently. It was only really made by big macro breweries (think: St. Pauli Girl and O’Doul’s). Five or six years ago, there weren’t even NA IPAs out there. Now that craft has gotten a hold of NA, it’s booming, and there’s a lot more creative stuff happening.

What do you think changed? Why did it take so long for NA to go craft?

Mike: Well, until recently, there were huge financial limitations for smaller breweries who wanted to make NA, because the processing equipment is really expensive. 

It’s still challenging, but thankfully there’s been a lot of research and experimentation in NA and it’s changed what the landscape looks like. Now there are new techniques and yeast strains that make creating non-alcoholic beer a lot more accessible.  

You mentioned that you felt like Fort Point could contribute something new to NA beer, what do you think makes our NA beers different?

Mike: At a high level, our NA beers are different for the same reasons our alcoholic beers are. Our NA lineup stays true to our brewing philosophy of balance, nuance, and approachability. But also, we’re the only beer company from SF that’s producing NA 6-packs right here in the Bay…and that’s actually really special in and of itself. 

We’ve found that most NA beers are produced outside of their home state due to the need for specialized dealcoholization equipment. Our process is different so that wasn’t an issue – but more on that later. 

Cameron: Also, while most NA beers are totally new products (like Athletic, Best Day or even Sierra Nevada’s NA), we decided to make non-alcoholic versions of our most popular beers, KSA Kölsch and Villager IPA, which have been around for 10 years. 

That made the whole project a lot more challenging because we weren’t just trying to make great tasting NA beer, but NA that tasted just as good as alcoholic beer that people were already familiar with. Ultimately, we knew that a lot of our drinkers had grown to really love these two beers, and we wanted to give them the option to have that same satisfying experience but without the alcohol. 

Did you start the project knowing that it would be NA versions of KSA and Villager? 

Mike: Not quite. Before we decided on style or approach, we wanted to get a really solid understanding of what was already out there–to see what we liked, and what we didn’t, and things we could learn from. The goal was to literally taste every NA beer we could find. We scoured bottle shops and markets in the Bay, and ordered what we could find online. 

Then we started to consider what a Fort Point NA beer should look, taste and feel like–you know, what’s the experience we want people to have with Fort Point NA. We like to think of Fort Point beer as kind of an SF standard–favorites people come back to again and again. It made sense for that to extend to NA. That’s how we decided that the most “Fort Point” thing to do would be to make NA KSA and Villager. Keep it classic, and familiar in a way that feels both comforting and special.

The Grand NA Tasting held at the brewery in early 2023

We’ve been brewing KSA and Villager for over a decade, what was different about brewing the NA versions?

Cameron: NA brewing isn’t a 1:1 with brewing alcoholic beer. We spent a lot of time doing NA brewing for the sake of it, just for practice, before we even started applying what we were learning to more intentional NA beer recipes. We even made some hop water!

Mike: Deciding on the process–how we were going to brew the NA beer–was a pretty big challenge, which literally took years. We started back in 2022. We tried out different methods–mash techniques, yeast strains, filtration technologies–to figure out how we wanted to produce our NA. More than a year into R&D a local company, Berkeley Yeast, ended up talking to us about a new yeast strain they had. It was pretty serendipitous because that yeast strain was our silver bullet. 

What makes this yeast strain so special?

Mike: The yeast we use is specifically designed for NA beer. Here's the fascinating part: in regular brewing, a sugar called maltose makes up about half of what eventually becomes alcohol. Our yeast strain simply can't process maltose, which means much less alcohol is produced. It’s like having a picky eater that leaves most of their plate untouched. That combined with other process tweaks we worked on allowed us to get the beer to less than 0.5% alcohol by volume. 

Cameron: Beyond that, this process with the yeast also resulted in the best tasting NA pilots we came across compared to all the other methods we explored. Instead of using highly specialized equipment, we get to use our traditional brewing process, which in turn helps preserve flavor and aroma so the NA version tastes more like real beer.

A weekly tasting of Fort Point NA iterations with our Product Committee

Obviously, alcohol contributes to flavor so it’s hard to make NA an exact parallel to the alcoholic version. How did you get the NA versions to taste as close to KSA and Villager as possible?

Cameron: Once we had the process locked in, we were able to work on the actual structure of the recipes, and it definitely required a lot of trial and error…like most good things. 

We have really specific sensory guidelines for each of our beers–how they should look, taste, smell, everything. We check the liquid against them every single time we brew a batch to make sure that it’s “true to the brand” and tastes just as it should. The KSA and Villager sensory guidelines were our North Star for each NA recipe. 

We kept iterating and evaluating different ingredients we needed to add to achieve that on-brand flavor, while ensuring the overall liquid was as delicious, and we weren’t compromising on quality. Just as a point of reference: we did about 20 total pilots just for NA KSA, all a little different. It’s the most pilots we’ve ever done for any product…by a long shot, but it paid off.

Mike: Our goal was to get the NA versions as close as possible to the originals, but like you’re saying they’re not absolutely identical.  A good analogy would be to think of them like Coke and Diet Coke. The NA version is hitting all the important notes that you love about the original, it tastes like real beer, but it’s also got a little bit of its own unique character.

Debatable whether Diet Coke is better for you than Coke…but would you say that NA KSA and Villager are a healthier option than the originals?

Cameron: Our approach was to make the best tasting NA KSA and NA Villager that we could. We were optimizing for flavor first, but because there’s no alcohol, these products are inherently a lot lower in calories. Both NA KSA and NA Villager are about 78 calories each, less than half the calories of the original styles. So if that’s something you’re paying attention to, it’s an added benefit. 

Ok let’s talk a little bit about each style. What does NA KSA taste like? 

Cameron: The overall intention is that the drinker feels that it represents KSA–refreshing, light, hits the notes that KSA hits. There are subtle differences, but the dominant characteristics of KSA shine through. The Kix character is very much present, you get the floral orange blossom and the bread dough. 

There are some nuances within each flavor category. Instead of a softer Kix cereal character, we are getting a toasty corn, but it’s still in the Kix zone. If you put it on a spider chart with our original KSA, all the branches would be in the same zones as our KSA. 

What about NA Villager, how does the taste compare to the original? 

Cameron: There’s an assertive pine and citrus aroma that hits you off the bat, and then you get the signature floral aroma and touch of stone fruit to follow.

It has a mild malt character, nothing overpowering, but the Torrified wheat gives it an interesting, round wheat flavor. 

Overall the bitterness is fairly balanced – a touch more bitter than alcoholic Villager. The finish is very clean, we use a very neutral yeast so it doesn’t impart much ester profile. 

What’s the ideal experience you want someone to have with NA Villager or NA KSA?

Cameron: We hope it opens the door to the NA category and what can be done. For those who stopped drinking beer, we hope each of these NAs deliver some nice nostalgia and remind them of something they’ve enjoyed in the past.

Mike: We really worked hard to bring the craft element to NA, and to create NA beer that drinks like the real thing. We’re very excited for everyone to try it, and let us know what they think!