My name is Robin and I set up AF Beer Club to share my passion for alcohol-free beers beyond social media. However you stumbled across AFBC, I'm glad you're here and interesting in this world!
After a year of posting photos of AF beers, I began to form a community with a shared interest in craft beer and it became part of a growing alcohol free scene. Over that time I founded a number of different events and campaigns...
April 2021: AF Beer Festival
After such a fun and exciting inaugural festival in 2020, we returned with some amazing beers and special guests, including Beavertown, Tiny Rebel, Hammerton and Mash Gang, as well as international brewers Nittenauer (Germany) and Maltgarden (Poland). Hosting duties were shared this year, with AF beer bods @guiltfreepints and @zoeonpop both helping me out!
December 2020: AF Beer Awards
To celebrate an amazing year of AF beer, I organised a big virtual industry and public awards ceremony. With 'pre-party' breakout rooms to kick-off, brewers and founders mixed with drinkers and influencers before coming together to find out who won the prizes of Best Pale, Dark, Import, New Brewer, Lager and Classic alcohol-free beers. The beers were judged by a panel of industry AF drinkers, including Dom the beer buyer at Tesco and Square Root soda founder, Robyn.
September 2020: AF Beer Club partners with Wise Bartender
What started out with packing up 20 boxes of beer during lockdown, quickly escalated into 100 people signed-up for a monthly subscription box. After picking and packing the beers for the first three months from my flat, I then partnered up with Wise Bartender who is now handling the operations and logistics, while I'll find the beers, curate the monthly boxes and bring together the members through our social media community.
June 2020: Virtual AF Beer Festival
During the lockdown, I hosted a weekend of live interviews with 15 brewery representatives and campaigners to discuss alcohol-free beer, including Brewdog, Big Drop and Lucky Saint. People purchased beer boxes to drink-along at home during each session, very similar to a regular beer festival!
More info (website) // Interviews (YouTube)
April 2020: Desert Island Drinks
A weekly feature highlighting AF beer scenes around the world. I asked campaigners, influencers and company founders to share their eight 'essential' alcohol-free beers, including contributions from Sydney, Barcelona, Dublin, USA and Amsterdam.
March 2020: #nolowmonday
At the start of the global lockdown I established a 'Monday night drinking club', as a way of staying connected to each other. Hundreds of people shared their alcohol-free drinks and connected via the hashtag #nolowmonday and people have said how helpful it was to have this to look forward to.
Click here to see the posts: Instagram
January 2020: LOW ABV Charity T-shirt
Collaborating with longtime AF supporter @millionbevs, we designed and sold a LOW ABV t-shirt raising money for the Alcohol Change UK charity.
For more info: Teespring
January 2020: Boozehound 'Dry January' event
In January 2020 I hosted an AF beer evening with representatives from Big Drop and Thornbridge discussing their beers and pouring tasters.
For more info: Preview // Review
December 2019: ‘Friends Favourites’ - Best of 2019
At the end of the year I ran a poll to find the UK's favourite AF beers. Winners included Lucky Saint, Adnams, Brewdog and Big Drop. The full list of winners is here: Friends Favourites 2019
July 2019: Athletic Ambassador
Early on in my alcohol-free adventures I was lucky to get a lot of support from Athletic Brewing Company, the United States' leading AF brewery. I became an Ambassador for their brand; their quality and style was inspirational and really opened my eyes to a world of AF beer.
Throughout: Exclusive beer giveaways
Over the last 18 months I have given away a host of AF beers including UK exclusives from Mikkeller, Tool, Omnipollo and Brewdog, as well as previously unreleased Polish beers.
I'm always looking for new ways I can promote and share the wonders of AF beer, so if you want to link up, please email me: afbeerclub@gmail.com