Free Wave - NA Hazy IPA - 12oz

Free Wave is Athletic Brewing's non-alcoholic Hazy IPA for people who never stopped wanting a real beer — just not the version that slows them down.

This is a full craft brew: malted barley, wheat, hops, and yeast, brewed the way an IPA is supposed to be brewed, then finished at under 0.5% ABV so it fits the morning after a long run as easily as it fits Friday night. Expect the cloudy pour, the hop aroma, and the body of a proper Hazy IPA — Athletic built their brewing process specifically to hit that mark without leaning on alcohol to carry the flavor.

It also comes in meaningfully lighter than a traditional IPA on calories, which matters if you're drinking more often and want a beer that doesn't work against the rest of how you eat and train. Because it's brewed from malted barley and wheat, it isn't a fit for keto, paleo, or carnivore diets or anyone avoiding gluten — this is a traditional grain-based beer, just without the alcohol.

Pour it cold, straight from the can — no glass required, though a shaker pint helps show off the haze. It's the beer to bring to a trailhead, a climbing gym parking lot, a Sunday morning tailgate, or any table where someone's not drinking but still wants to hold a real NA beer worth drinking.

Suitable for anyone cutting back on alcohol, training for something, or simply choosing a lower-ABV night without giving up craft flavor. Store in a cool, dry place; best enjoyed cold.

Ingredients: Water, Malted Barley, Wheat, Hops, and Yeast.

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Common Questions

How does Free Wave compare nutritionally to a regular IPA?
A typical craft IPA runs 180 to 240 calories and 14 to 18 grams of carbs per 12-ounce can, with ABV usually between 6 and 7.5 percent. Free Wave comes in at roughly 90 calories and about 19 grams of carbs, with alcohol capped under 0.5 percent. So you're getting close to half the calories of a standard IPA while keeping a similar carb load, because the fermentable sugars that would normally convert to alcohol are instead left as residual carbohydrate or processed out through Athletic's brewing method. The tradeoff is that you lose the caloric contribution alcohol normally adds, which is where most of the calorie savings comes from.

How do they get the alcohol out without losing the hazy IPA character?
Athletic Brewing uses a proprietary brewing process rather than distilling or vacuum-stripping alcohol out of a full-strength beer after the fact, which is the method many competitors use and which tends to strip flavor along with the ethanol. Their approach controls fermentation itself so the beer never develops significant alcohol in the first place, preserving the hop aroma compounds and the wheat-driven haze and mouthfeel that define the style. This is why Free Wave pours cloudy and carries real hop bitterness and citrus-forward aroma instead of tasting thin, which is the common complaint about older non-alcoholic beers made by dealcoholizing a regular brew.

Does Free Wave fit into a keto, paleo, or carnivore eating plan?
Not well for strict keto or carnivore. At roughly 19 grams of carbs per can, one serving can use up close to your entire daily carb allowance on a tight ketogenic plan, so it doesn't fit those macros the way a spirit-based non-alcoholic drink might. It's more compatible with a general lower-alcohol or paleo-adjacent lifestyle where the focus is on ingredient quality rather than strict carb counting, since the ingredient list is just water, malted barley, wheat, hops, and yeast with nothing artificial. If you're tracking carbs closely, treat this as an occasional beer rather than a daily keto staple.

What foods or occasions does Free Wave pair well with?
It works the way any hazy IPA would at the table: it stands up to spicy food like Thai curry or buffalo wings, cuts through fatty foods like burgers or fried chicken, and holds its own next to citrus-forward dishes like fish tacos or ceviche because the hop bitterness and haze mimic what a regular IPA brings to those pairings. It's also a straightforward swap in any recipe that calls for beer as a cooking ingredient, like beer-battered fish, beer bread, or a beer-braised pot of chili, since you get the malt and hop flavor without adding meaningful alcohol to the dish. No adjustment to cook times or ratios is needed since it behaves like a normal beer volumetrically.

What do the certifications on this can actually mean?
Certified B Corporation means Athletic Brewing has been independently audited by B Lab against standards covering worker treatment, environmental impact, and corporate transparency, and has to recertify periodically to keep the label. The under 0.5% ABV figure is a labeling standard the company adheres to for all its non-alcoholic beers, which is the same threshold the US uses to distinguish non-alcoholic from alcoholic beverages. Craft brewed simply signals it's made in a traditional small-batch brewing process rather than large-scale industrial production. None of these are marketing terms with no backing, they're all things you can look up through B Lab's public registry or the label itself.

Is Free Wave actually a full beer or a beer-flavored substitute?
It's brewed the same way a real IPA is: malted barley and wheat provide the fermentable sugars and body, hops are added for bitterness and aroma, and yeast does the fermenting, exactly like a conventional beer recipe. The difference is that Athletic Brewing's process limits how much alcohol that fermentation produces, landing under 0.5% ABV instead of the 6 to 7.5 percent you'd get from a standard IPA yeast strain and fermentation schedule. So the ingredient list and brewing steps are those of a genuine beer, not a malt beverage dressed up to taste like one, which is why it has real hop character and a proper cloudy pour instead of tasting like soda with hop extract added.

How many of these can I drink without worrying about impairment?
At under 0.5% ABV, you'd need to drink an unrealistic volume in a short window to approach any measurable blood alcohol effect, which is why it's legally classified as non-alcoholic in the US. For reference, a 0.5% ABV beer has roughly a tenth of the alcohol of a standard 5% beer, so a six-pack of Free Wave contains less total alcohol than a single standard beer. That's the whole point of drinking it after a long run or before driving, since there's no meaningful alcohol load to account for.