Sierra Nevada Trail Pass Non-Alcoholic IPA Review

It feels like I’ve been banging on and on about the rapid improvement of non-alcoholic craft beer styles for years now … and that’s likely because I have been. My appreciation for these beers has grown on the same steady plane–I love that many of them can now provide a solid facsimile of a style such as India pale ale or even stout, and unlike many of my beer writing peers, I genuinely find most of these NA beers more interesting and engaging than hop-infused seltzer waters. Even those with zero tolerance for alcohol of any kind are being provided for, with the steady rise of the 0.0 demographic within NA beer itself.

But at the same time, when you look at the craft NA beer space, you couldn’t help but notice there were still some glaring omissions. It’s natural to expect the biggest and most iconic companies in the industry to get in on the niche at some point, which is why it was curious that for so long, there was no non-alcoholic beer brand from the likes of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. But as it turns out, that was just because the company was toiling away on the creation of this particular brand for the last five years and change. Now, Sierra Nevada Trail Pass is here, and its goal is nothing less than becoming the best version of NA craft beer on the shelves today.

The concept for Sierra Nevada Trail Pass began its life more than five years ago, with company founder Ken Grossman noting the more robust non-alcoholic beer culture available in European beer markets. Thus began a twisty process of trying to bring their own American sensibilities to NA beer, an endeavor that initially didn’t see much success. According to Sierra Nevada, development was even put on hold at one point when the company determined that no available commercial yeast was going to work for their specifications.

The limiting factor here was Sierra Nevada’s choice of how they wanted to operate fermentation for Trail Pass. Most NA beer is made by brewing a standard beer, and then using one of several common techniques to “gently” remove the alcohol, at least down under the federal maximum of .5% ABV for beers listed as “non alcoholic.” Sierra Nevada, on the other hand, wanted to create the beer via traditional fermentation, with a presumably much smaller level of fermentable sugars and a yeast strain that would simply stop itself at the right point, before the beer reached .5% ABV. They theorized that this would allow the company to deliver a more accurate, familiar take on styles such as India pale ale, but it took years of searching before a yeast strain was found that could both reliably hit the right fermentation profile and restrict undesirable off flavors. That yeast strain finally unlocked the possibility of Sierra Nevada Trail Pass.

Of course, Trail Pass is now an entire brand rather than a single beer–the company’s mixed NA pack includes IPA, Golden Ale, Hazy IPA and the rather cornily named “Brewveza.” For the purposes of this first taste, though–I haven’t had a chance to sample Trail Pass before now–I’m simply examining the core Trail Pass IPA, which is brewed with a familiar West Coast panoply of Amarillo and CTZ hops.