The Non Alcoholic Beer Market
FMB 101 Blonde Non Alcoholic is brewed by Figueroa Mountain Brewing, a craft brewer located in Southern California. Figueroa Mountain brews Danish Red Lager, Davy Brown Ale and several IPAs. The non alcoholic beer market has grown rapidly in recent years with the introduction of non alcoholic beers that taste more like regular beer. Non alcoholic beers have several health advantages over regular beers, including fewer calories, sugar, carbs and of course, alcohol. Non alcoholic means less than 0.5% alcohol, so non alcoholic beers can still have traces of alcohol.
Athletic Brewing is the current market leader in non alcoholic beers with an estimated 19% market share, but more and more specialty non alcoholic breweries are entering the market, as well as traditional breweries. Not a day goes by without some news story about the rise of non alcoholic beer and societal trends towards reducing alcohol intake.
Figueroa Mountain Brewing
Figueroa Mountain Brewing has four tasting rooms in Southern California in Buellton, Los Olivos, Westlake Village and Santa Barbara. I have been to the one in Santa Barbara several times, which is located in the “Funk Zone” downtown and is a great place to try their beers. It has an outdoor covered area and live bands and is adjacent to Lucky Penny, which has great pizzas. You can order from Lucky Penny right there and they will deliver it to you.
Figueroa Mountain Brewing was founded by a father and son team, Jim and Jaime Dietenhofer, in 2010. With a passion for craft beer, they set out to pay homage to the beautiful Santa Ynez Valley with handcrafted beer and hand-drawn artwork depicting the local landscape on their labels.
Figueroa Mountain has a large selection of beers, including several IPAs, a Mexican lager, Danish Red Lager, Davy Brown Ale, several non alcoholic beers and more.
FMB 101 Blonde Non Alcoholic
Figueroa Mountain introduced three non alcoholic beers in 2023, Hoppy Poppy IPA, Hikers High Hazy IPA and FMB 101 Blonde. Each is a non alcoholic version of a beer they were already brewing with alcohol. Figueroa Mountain has no online description of FMB 101 Blonde Non Alcoholic. We did find a description of the alcoholic version from Untappd that appears to be taken from Figueroa Mountain: “California’s Central Coast is home to surf, sand, and fun in the sun. The mountains meet the sea in our backyard, so we brewed FMB 101 as a tribute to the best of both worlds. Our smooth and balanced blonde ale has a light body and refreshing taste fit for seafarers and landlubbers alike.”
FMB 101 Blonde non alcoholic has 70 calories, 18g carbs, 0g fat and 1g protein. There is no IBU information. It has no rating on Beer Advocate and 8 reviews but no rating on Untappd.
Our Review of FMB 101 Blonde Non Alcoholic
If you read our post about ProofNoMore, I bought 35 single non alcoholic beers to try. I decided to start with non alcoholic beers from large well known breweries. O’Doul’s and Claustauler, two of the most well known and most hated non alcoholic beers, Budweiser Zero, Becks NA and Corona NA. Clausthauler was awful and O’Doul’s was better than expected. Budweiser Zero tasted like regular Budweiser and Becks NA and Corona NA were both better than their respective regular beers. Corona was a pleasant surprise.
Next I moved on to craft brewers’ non alcoholic beers. Sierra Nevada Trail Pass IPA was an excellent non alcoholic IPA but Trail Pass Golden was just okay. The first from Figueroa Mountain was Hoppy Poppy IPA, which wasn’t very hoppy and may not appeal to IPA lovers. The second was Hikers High Hazy IPA, which was much better than Hoppy Poppy.
The Tasting
Figueroa Mountain has promoted Hoppy Poppy much more than the other two non alcoholic beers, but I found the other two to be much better. FMB 101 Blonde was better than most non-IPA non alcoholic beers I have tasted, including Athletic Brewing Upside Dawn and Sierra Nevada Trail Pass Golden. It had a more robust taste for a lighter non alcoholic beer and was very drinkable.
The table below is the same one we showed in our review of Trail Pass Golden. It shows a summary of some of the more drinkable non-IPA non alcoholic beers I have tried. We include the Beer Advocate ratings for more opinions which are all close except Becks. I would rate FMB 101 better than all of these except Athletic Brewing Cerveza Atletica and Best Day Kolsch, and even then it is close. The Athletic Brewing Upside Dawn in particular does not live up to its hype and is overrated.
Non Alcoholic Beer Nutritional Information
| Brewery | Beer | Beer Advocate Rating | ABV (%) | IBU | Calories | Carbs (g) | Protein (g) | Fat (g) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Athletic Brewing | Upside Dawn | 83 | less than 0.5 | 25 | 45 | 10 | 1 | 0 |
| Athletic Brewing | Cerveza Atletica | 80 | less than 0.5 | 15 | 60 | 14 | 1 | 0 |
| Best Day Brewing | Kolsch | 86 | less than 0.5 | na | 55 | 11 | 3 | 0 |
| Sierra Nevada | Trail Pass Golden | 84 | less than 0.5 | 15 | 95 | 19 | 1 | 1 |
| Corona | Corona Non Alcoholic | 82 | less than 0.5 | na | 60 | 17.5 | 1.3 | 0 |
| Anheuser-Busch/Becks | Becks Non Alcoholic | 62 | 0.5 | na | 68 | 14.6 | 1.2 | 0 |
For more recommendations, try Athletic Brewing Cerveza Atletica, Best Day Brewing Kolsch, Corona Non Alcoholic and Becks Non Alcoholic.
For non alcoholic beer nutritional information for all NA beers we have reviewed and more, see NA Beer Nutritional Information.
