A New Non-Alc Beer Wants to Woo F1 Royalty Dan Ricciardo – but Can It Woo Drinkers?

Thought the non-alc drinks wave had finally crashed? Think again – it’s only just gathering momentum. Globally, the category is expected to reach US$4 billion by 2028. And – believe it or not – in Australia, most of that growth is being driven by beer.

Still, Dave Kerr – who previously owned influential Melbourne cocktail bar The Beaufort – was iffy when his friend Simon Gibson called him for advice about starting a new non-alcoholic beer brand called Drivers.

“Heaps Normal was already doing its thing; the margins are pretty low,” he tells Broadsheet. “But when I saw a rendering of the [Drivers] can I was like, ‘Fuck me, that’s good’.”

But if Drivers’ Monaro-meets-Marlboro branding doesn’t turn heads, its industry endorsements might. Some big names have jumped on board already: the Hot-Listed Caretakers Cottage in Melbourne – ranked 21 on the World’s 50 Best Bars list – currently has Drivers in the fridge. So do The Magpie, Ramblin’ Rascal and Double Deuce Lounge in Sydney.

But Kerr and the brand’s three other co-founders want to go even bigger: shortly after launching in March, they tried to lure retired F1 driver Daniel Ricciardo to the fold by offering him a 20 per cent stake in the business for free via a social media campaign cleverly dubbed “ The Riccstarter ”. Alas, no callback from the Honey Badger just yet – he’s too busy enjoying “ life in the slow lane ”.

“We know he’s seen it, but our official line is that the offer still stands. If he surprises us with a DM, we’re good to go,” says Kerr.

While most players in the non-alc beer space tend to lean towards tropical, hop-forward beer styles like the universally loved XPA, Kerr and co decided to launch with a classic lager – a style that’s traditionally more finicky to brew than others due to the strict temperature control involved.

“It’s very easy to hide behind hops. I think that’s the reason why you’ve got a lot of XPAs in [the non-alc category] because it’s quite difficult to make something simple,” says Kerr. “Making a lager was a lot more difficult than we thought.”

To nail Drivers’ crisp, clean profile, the team went with extra pale and Vienna malts, and Magnum and Saphir hops. Like category king Heaps Normal, Drivers uses a special yeast strain that doesn’t convert all the beer’s available sugars into alcohol. Yes, Drivers is still a fermented product (albeit one that’s pasteurised, like the vast majority of commercial beers), but its ABV lands below 0.5 per cent. That’s roughly the same amount of alcohol in a supermarket kombucha.

Drivers has just secured national wholesale distribution, which means you might be seeing the brand’s retro tins at a bar or bottle shop near you. With all its ducks in a row, Drivers has a real shot at taking pole position in the non-alc beer category. There's a lot of traffic, though, and the competition has never been stiffer.

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