Everything I drank in March.
Memento mori. Ad infinitum. And an early contender for Cronk’s Beer of the Year.
I didn’t quite reach the perfect 1:1 ratio of a new AF beer for each day in the month; those heady heights haven’t been hit since Dry January.
In March I posted rookie numbers (just 25).
Here’s a snapshot of what I did manage to track down and crack open last month. Including a contender, or two, for Cronk’s Beer of the Year.
Memento Mori. It means no worries (it really doesn’t).
A few weeks ago I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and posted a borderline unhinged article about having the same tattoo as Jake Humphrey (Bamzooki, High Performance Podcast, wet wipe).
This is the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon in full flow: my forearm led from 28 Years Later to Mr Humphrey to a Vittorio Angelone baseball cap to the The Streets’ 2006 song to the latest hazy IPA from Sheep In Wolf’s Clothing.
Memento mori. It’s everywhere.
Ad infinitum.
It only took 10 years, but AF Chubbles is here!
This is an important beer from Cloudwater. It does a few things all at once:
It makes an increasingly small group of men angry that the woke brigade are taking over.
It makes me a very happy little boy; I loved the hype and ceremony of the annual full fat Chubbles release on keg and cask*.
It shows those who came to AF without a personal history of craft beer what these indie behemoths can do.
I have an idea/article brewing about all the NA beers I’ve tried that have full fat big brothers (which I sunk pre-2023). For me, these are powerful touchstones of inclusivity, brand, technique and lots of other stuff I’ll try to conceptualise.
Guinness 0.0 is cool, great even. But Chubbles (Cloudwater), Sonoma (Track), Faith (Northern Monk) and so on are all filling a different, even more niche, niche.
And it’s the exact niche I occupy.
I didn’t arrive at AF beer in a vacuum. I know how great British craft beer can be. I’m deeply invested in it. So it’s exciting to see a number of my old favourites really step up to the AF plate.
*Pull yer socks up Verdant and release AF Putty in 2027!
SANS: is it too early to suggest BotY?
Track are knocking out consistently great AFs, often with our friends at We Can Be Friends — but the first in their new SANS series takes the biscuit.
I’m a sucker for a new hype hop, so Eggers Special is right in the slot. Combine that with the evergreen and omnipresent Citra and you have a bonafide, top of the class booze-free brew.
A cleverer man than I, Martin Dixon AKA @alcohol_free_world, gave this a silver star 90/100. But, in my very humble opinion, TRACK WOS ROBBED!
This beer sits on a perch, waiting to be knocked off, with one hand on the title of Cronk’s Beer of the Year (2026).
And finally, here are all of March’s beers, in no particular order, with the best in BOLD/orange:
Blanc Out - Alefarm Brewing
Faith Unwind - Northern Monk
Face Hopper - Tempest Brewing Co.
Free Wave - Athletic Brewing Co.
Torr Lager - Brew Toon
Cat On TV - Twice Brewed Brewing Co.
Ghost - We Can Be Friends
Zero Visibility - Docks Beers
Last Light - Siren Craft Brew
Lager Day Saints - Sheep In Wolf’s Clothing
Fresh: Strata Edition - Cloudwater Brew Co.
Rothaus Alkoholfrei - Badische Staatsbrauerei Rothaus
Reverence - Abbeydale Brewery
Peach Fuzz - Fierce Beer
Lemon Radler - Amundsen Brewery
Hades - We Can Be Friends
Memento Mori - Sheep In Wolf’s Clothing
Staropramen 0.0% - Pivovary Staropramen