It’s a Monday night in Pittsburgh — Garfield, to be exact. The evening’s cold and dark. But a little ways down Penn Avenue there’s a tiny brewery with massive windows on the front and side, with bright lights and loud voices and music and laughter spilling out.
Two Frays Brewery is warm and welcoming. And when the front door swings open, the atmosphere rushes forward and wraps around passersby, inviting them in to enjoy a beer or two. Or three.
There’s nothing odd about the scene at first. But if you walk up to the bar and try to order a beer, you’ll hear something that might surprise you: Two Frays isn’t selling any beer tonight.
No beer with more than 0.5% alcohol in it, anyway.
Moderation Monday, or “Mod Monday” as it’s come to be known, is a weekly event during Dry January at Two Frays Brewery where, just for the night, only non-alcoholic beverages are for sale. Once February rolls around, the brewery plans to host the event once a month.
And when the owners — married couple Jenn and Mike Onofray — say there’s no alcohol for sale, that’s exactly what they mean.
“We remove all of the alcohol from anywhere in the taproom,” Jenn Onofray said. “You can't take it to go. You can't grab a four pack and say ‘well, I'm going to drink it at home.’ We don't have them for sale for the evening.”
The demand for non-alcoholic (NA) beverages is on the rise in Pittsburgh and across the country. In 2024 alone, non-alcoholic beer sales shot up nationally by 30%. Breweries, bars, and other local businesses are taking notice. Two Frays Brewery, Trace Brewing, and East End Brewing are just a few craft beer businesses that are now offering NA beverages.
This rise in popularity for non-alcoholic beverages might also be affected by the Surgeon General’s recent advisory linking alcohol to some forms of cancer. The advisory points out that some 20,000 alcohol-related cancer deaths occur every year, a number that surpasses the 13,500 deaths that occur annually as a result of drinking and driving. It also recommended that current labels posted on alcoholic beverages be more prominent and include language that warns consumers about cancer risks associated with drinking alcohol.
Moving forward, non-alc at home sales are expected to increase 4.63% by 2029. And that’s despite the fact that the craft beer industry’s upward trajectory has leveled-off the last few years.
To stay ahead of the curve, brewery owners are getting crafty through several means — new dining options, more family-friendly activities, and adding cocktails to their menus. But considering the recent growth in the popularity of NA beverages, and a cultural shift embracing alcohol moderation, brewing non-alcoholic beers is also an option for breweries looking to stay competitive.
But breweries aren’t the only players in the non-alc game. Although some, like Two Frays, do partner with other businesses serving up non-alcoholic options. And one of them is a mainstay at every Mod Monday event.
Five years on The Open Road
Mel Babitz is the owner of The Open Road — a bottle shop and bar that serves non-alcoholic beverages exclusively. And while Two Frays has amassed an impressive collection of non-alcoholic beverages at their brewery, The Open Road has a few more NA options for customers — hundreds more, actually.
“So we have a little bit of everything from The Open Road,” Babitz said, showing off her pop-up stand at Two Frays Brewery on a Mod Monday event during Dry January. “We carry non-alcoholic everything — beer, wine, spirits, cocktails, ciders, ready-to-drink options and functional stuff with active ingredients that might be uplifting or help with sleep or focus or anxiety.”
The Open Road sells many other non-alcoholic products as well, such as THC/CBC sodas.
This Mod Monday is a particularly sweet one for Babitz — The Open Road is celebrating five years of being in business. Surrounded by scores of people, Babitz is called over to the bar and introduced by Jenn Onofray. As she works her way around the bar to face the crowd of supporters, a bright orange and white birthday cake with a “5” candle is placed in front of her.
Babitz, on the verge of tears with a huge smile on her face, holds her hands up high while the crowd sings “happy birthday” and applauds her achievement. Just before they cut the cake, Babitz takes a few moments to speak to the crowd.
“For everybody I do know — who I’ve known for a very long time, or for a less-long time, or just recently met — thanks for supporting or being interested in non-alc, and this was super different five to seven years ago when this started.”
The Open Road currently shares storefront space in Lawrenceville. But not for long. The business is weeks away from moving into a 2,000-square-foot warehouse in Garfield, near Two Frays Brewery.
The (non-alcoholic) business of beer
Mike Onofray, co-owner and brewmaster of Two Frays Brewery, is aware of the industry flatline when it comes to craft beer. He credits his and wife Jenn Onofray’s success, at least partially, on getting into the non-alcoholic beverages game.
“This industry is not thriving, I think,” Onofray said. He opened Two Frays in 2020 when craft brewing was still steadily trending upward both in Pittsburgh and nationally. “You know, part of the reason why Two Frays is doing okay right now is because we're doing non-alcoholic.”
Despite the rise in popularity with non-alcoholic beverage options, there’s still some hesitation with some when it comes to fully-embracing the non-alc movement. Especially when considering people in recovery.
Dr. Scott Cook is the regional medical director with Recovery Centers of America, and has worked in addiction medicine for more than 20 years. Dr. Cook points out that “non-alcoholic” doesn’t necessarily mean “alcohol-free.” Many nonalcoholic beverages have trace amounts of alcohol in them, less than 0.5.% — which is in-line with FDA regulations.
Beyond the percentage of alcohol itself though, Dr. Cook argues that even if a beverage is non-alcoholic — or even alcohol-free — it can still be triggering for people maintaining or struggling with sobriety. He says just being in a setting that offers alcohol can be problematic.
“When you're thinking about non-alcoholic drinks like beer or wine, the thought is it mimics the taste of the drink, but there is either little or no alcohol content,” Dr. Cook said. “And that's problematic only because of the trigger that it sets in the brain, where it reminds people of the substance that they struggled with. Some people do okay using this methodology, but other people will slip into relapse just because it's so similar appearing and similar tasting that it triggers the brain.”
While research concerning the impact of non-alcoholic beverages on people who have struggled with alcohol abuse is scarce, studies have found that cravings and the desire to drink alcohol can increase after the consumption of non-or-low-alcoholic beverages.
Two Frays Brewery owners Jenn and Mike Onofray are aware that taste and setting can be triggering. It informed their decision to cease alcohol sales altogether during their Mod Monday events.
“That is the unique design of this night is that they want to be in a bar space,” Jenn Onofray said. “They're okay being in a bar space, but they don't want to be around alcohol and that is extremely hard to find.”
According to Jenn and Mike, Two Frays Brewery was not only the first craft brewery in Pittsburgh to brew and sell non-alcoholic options, they were the first craft brewery in all of Pennsylvania to do so. But while other craft breweries in the city have since added NA options to their offerings, Two Frays is possibly the only one to cease sales of their alcoholic options in their brewery for an event.
Unique to the brewery as well is the number of non-alcoholic options on their roster. At six varieties, Jenn, Mike, and head brewer Lauren Hughes have managed to create enough in-house options to satisfy most folks who walk through their door. Which is in-keeping with their company motto: “something for everyone.”
“Our North Star is ‘something for everyone,’” Jenn Onofray said. “It's a North Star because I don't think we'll ever get there. Can we really practically have something for everyone? No, but it's a North Star for us that we're going to keep shooting for.”
“Something for everyone” is a motto that permeates throughout the brewery. Whether it’s the brewers experimenting with new methods of crafting NA beers, ownership closing down alcohol sales for an evening, or even a single beertender making a connection with a surprising guest.
A Buddhist monk walks into a bar
Yangzer El is a lot of things. He’s a multi-dimensional artist and a professional dancer. He’s a model and a musician, too. He’s also a well-known beertender at Two Frays Brewery, where he’s worked almost every Moderation Monday event.
“Beertender” at a small brewery isn’t as glamorous as his other titles. But if you sit at his bar on a Monday night and chat with him, you’ll find out pretty quickly that Yangzer, the guy slinging pints behind the bar, is sober.
“I've worked pretty much every Monday and it's like a really important thing for me because being sober and for other people,” El said. “I feel like it will be important to have somebody who is pouring their drinks to be somebody they can relate to.”
But of all the people El has served on Mod Mondays, one stands out more than the others.
“I actually met somebody last week. He was a monk — a Buddhist monk,” El recalled just moments before Andrew Freitas walked in.
“I just recently moved to Pittsburgh after six years of living in Buddhist monasteries,” Freitas said. “It was a great experience. I learned a lot about myself. But then at a certain point, I made a decision that I think I had taken that as far as I was going to be able to take it.”
After exiting the monastic life a few months ago, Freitas moved to Pittsburgh to be closer to his family. 11 years prior, Freitas was struggling with alcohol abuse and decided to quit drinking altogether. He’s maintained his sobriety ever since.
Freitas doesn’t miss drinking alcohol, but the transition into sobriety was tough for him.
“My whole social life was around drinking, so it was really hard to readjust,” Freitas said.
After getting settled in Pittsburgh, Freitas — who wanted to get out and socialize but avoid alcohol — Googled “sober Pittsburgh.” Two Frays Brewery and their non-alcoholic Mod Monday event popped up. Shortly after that, Freitas wandered into the brewery. El remembers the night well.
“He had just came back into society like a couple months ago,” El said. “And this was his first experience ever going into a bar slash brewery and then being like, wow, like it's completely non alcoholic. And he was just, like, astonished.”
Since that night, Feitas has become a regular on Mod Mondays.
“I'm really grateful for places like this that have sort of non-alcohol nights,” Freitas said.
Freitas isn't alone. And as long as Two Frays hosts Mod Monday, it seems likely that they’ll have a packed room. But even if no one shows up, and non-alcoholic beer proves to be a passing novelty to the vast majority of people in Pittsburgh, chances are good that they’ll still have a sober, former Buddhist monk sitting behind the bar on Moderation Mondays.
“I decided as long as they're doing this, I'm going to show up,” Freitas said.
QUICK FACTS:
- Adults 21+ drank on average 9.9 gallons of beer across Pennsylvania in 2023.
- With over 3 million barrels of beer produced across Pennsylvania in 2023, it’s no wonder that the state ranks second in the nation in the category. For context, one barrel of beer is about 31 gallons, or approximately 330 pints.
- Cinderlands Beer Company — Foederhouse took Gold during the 2024 World Beer Cup with their experimental beer Hill & Hollow: Cayuga.
- Burghers Brewing Company won Silver during the 2024 Great American Beer festival in the “smoke beer” category with their in-house brew Smoke Control.
