After more than 20 years of drinking beer daily, Gordon Whelpley decided to break up with beverage alcohol. The brewer, who previously worked at Magic Hat, Stony Creek and Twelve Percent Beer Project, had young children and parental demands didn’t align with disrupted sleep.
“A single beer kept me up all night,” Whelpley says. “With small kids, that wears on you quickly.” Cracking Non-alcohol (“NA”) beers somewhat scratched the end-of-day itch, but Whelpley missed alcohol’s unwinding effects. “ I don’t get a ton of time for relaxation and float, but when I do, I want to take advantage of it,” he says.
The overwhelming majority of NA beer buyers still consume alcohol, meaning they’re moderating consumption while still enjoying the flavors of favorite beers. To fill a personal need and perceived market void, Whelpley founded Float House to create THC-infused NA beers. Last year, the Windsor, Connecticut, company debuted its “Can-NA-Brews” that now include a low-dose light lager and IPA and the more potent DIPA, a “double dank THC brew.”
For drinkers loading shopping carts with double IPA four-packs and six-packs of Athletic, Float House is “another tool they can use,” Whelpley says. “The primary motivation seems to be that people want to enjoy themselves without suffering too much.”
Health-conscious consumers seeking to maximize and optimize their lives are increasingly filling their glasses with functional beverages, a fast-growing category of purported health drinks that range from kombuchas to prebiotic sodas, energy drinks, protein-boosted milks and adaptogen-packed seltzers. Global sales of functional drinks reached around $166 billion in 2025, according to Fortune Business Insights, and are expected to grow to $372 billion by 2034.
To explore this increasingly lucrative category, companies are adding caffeine and electrolytes to hop water, fermenting prebiotic sparkling seltzers, blending sports drinks with vodka and topping off NA beers with THC. Here’s how breweries are incorporating fun into functional beverages.
Breweries Must Tip-Toe Around Health Claims
A functional beverage aims to deliver benefits beyond hydration and nutrition, typically with a nod to health and wellness. A brewery mixing alcohol with functional ingredients like lion’s mane mushrooms — potentially beneficial to brain health — is banned from making a health claim.
“We can’t say that it’s functional or tell people what it does for them,” says Erin Rumsey, the senior director of innovation and brands for New Belgium Brewing. The limitations led New Belgium to get creative with last year’s debut of Lightstrike, a 5 percent ABV hard refresher modeled after sports drinks.
Similar to Gatorade, gluten-free Lightstrike is uncarbonated, available in bold flavors (Blue Rush, Orange Mango, Lemon Lime), and packaged in resealable 16.9-ounce plastic bottles. New Belgium produces Lightstrike with hydrating coconut water and sea salt, health-halo ingredients commonly found in functional beverages. All those cues help “consumers make the connection,” Rumsey says.
According to Rumsey, Lightstrike is building an active fanbase in warmer climates where people might snag several bottles on the way to play pickleball, sail boats or shoot 18 holes ofgolf.. Additionally, the brand resonates with younger LDA consumers who grew up drinking Gatorade, Powerade, Prime and other flavor-forward, fizz-free sports drinks.
“If you look at the sales maps, they’re right near college campuses,” Rumsey says. “We couldn’t be more excited because that’s exactly who we’re trying to attract.”
Lightstrike might have been the first boozy sports drink to market, but competitors are quickly crowding the playing field. January welcomed Spiked Ade, a 100-calorie “vodka-based enhanced beverage, inspired by iconic sports drink flavors,” while Stateside Brands — makers of the vodka-based Surfside iced teas — recently introduced Super Lyte.
The uncarbonated 90-calorie RTD delivers vodka with sports drink flavors such as Fruit Punch and Blue Chill. It channels the cerulean hue of golf-course favorite Water Hazard, a mix of blue Gatorade, vodka, lemonade and Sprite. “We have been ideating and developing Super Lyte for over two years, after identifying a growing trend from consumers who enjoy mixing sports drinks with vodka,” Stateside Brands president and cofounder Matt Quigley said in a statement.
The early 2020s included brands such as Karbach Brewing’s Game Changer (sea salt, açaí berries, turmeric), Harpoon Brewery’s Rec. League (chia seeds, buckwheat, sea salt), and athletic-minded Sufferfest Beer Company’s FKT pale ale that included 96 mg of sodium per 12-ounce serving. In recent past, breweries borrowing pages from the sports-drink playbook have yielded subpar results and none of these brands remain.
Communicating the added-value benefits of electrolyte-enhanced beer is tricky, despite how commonplace electrolytes are in everyday beer. “Beer does contain a good amount of electrolytes, otherwise just known as salts,” says Jack Hendler, founding brewer of Hendler Family Brewing, which includes Jack’s Abby, Wormtown and Night Shift.
For functional-beverage inspiration, Hendler looked to organic German soda Bionade. A German brewery developed the popular soda through a lactic acid fermentation that doesn’t produce alcohol. “The tart, lightly sweetened soda is really enjoyable,” Hendler says. This led him to develop Night Shift’s Levity line of electrolyte-packed, zero-calorie sparkling waters produced through probiotic fermentation.
Released this March, Levity is sold in two flavors, cucumber mint and lavender lemonade. Interestingly, the lavender flavor is based on the brewery’s oak-aged sour ale Lavenade. “That was just a flavor profile we loved,” Hendler says. “It’s funny how that’s transitioned to Levity.”
Functional Ingredients Can Help Brand Positioning
Sparkling hop water’s value proposition is the flavor and aroma of IPAs, minus all those calories and alcohol. Mainstream drinkers, though, might question why a six-pack costs upward of $10. Why not just buy bulk seltzer at Aldi?
Earlier this year, Von Ebert Brewing in Portland, Oregon, sought to solve that conundrum by layering functional ingredients into three hop waters designed to be consumed during different times of day. Morning means caffeinated Boost, daytime brings electrolyte-enhanced Flow and evening delivers the calming Chill containing lavender and chamomile.
“Instead of having to explain hop water, people already know what caffeine and electrolytes are,” says Sam Pecoraro, brewmaster at Von Ebert.
Stone Brewing in Escondido, California, waded into the hoppy waters by collaborating with one of the category’s biggest brands, HOPWTR, on a limited-edition release. “A partnership allowed us to explore consumer and retailer interest without the distraction of a new product in our breweries,” says Lizzie Younkin, brand marketing director for Stone. HOPWTR used hops from Stone’s flagship IPA to create a zesty sipper that also contains adaptogens and nootropics. “This partnership was rooted in some fan crossover, but we’re confident that we introduced new audiences to each others’ products,” Younkin says.
Adding functionality to NA products can require navigating a thorny legal thicket, especially with THC. Companies can’t mix the psychoactive compound with any beverage that could be classified as beer, even the NA kind. NA beer producer Go Brewing stumbled upon a solution when submitting a gluten-free beer made with buckwheat, millet, oats and corn to the TTB for label approval.
The lack of traditional brewing ingredients like barley and wheat meant that the TTB couldn’t classify the recipe as beer; instead, the FDA approved the formula, opening the door to adding THC to a beer-like NA beverage. In January 2025, the Go team introduced the Easy Man line of low-dose THC beverages that “drinks like a beer,” now including versions inspired by a light lager and pale ale. “That brought some ease to the path to market,” says Matt Steinke, head of sales for Go and Easy Man.
Buoyed by rising sales, Go expanded Easy Man to now include the higher-potency Reserve and a version flavored, like a Mexican-style lager, with lime and salt. Oh, there’s also lion’s mane in there for bonus functional appeal. “We wanted to pilot an adaptogenic value on top,” Steinke says.
Fall’s looming federal ban on hemp-derived edibles and beverages jeopardizes the nascent category. Float House currently meets legal compliance for its Can-NA-Brews by sourcing Float’s House base, which isn’t considered a malt beverage, and finishing it at its Connecticut facility. But how long will that process pass legal muster? Making business calculations is difficult in “this fractured regulatory environment that’s constantly in flux,” Whelpley says.
Carving out fresh space in the functional-beverage category requires tweaking and refining the approach to formula, sales, packaging and marketing. New Belgium introduced Lightstrike in four-packs of plastic bottles, finding the multipack discouraged trial — especially for an unfamiliar product building a new category. This year, New Belgium is focusing on single-serve sales with revised packaging that more prominently calls out Lightstrike’s alcohol content. “It’s like a sports drink, so it can be confusing that it contains alcohol,” Rumsey says.
Companies can overthink consumer behavior, wracking brains and budgets trying to hit specific calorie counts and ABV levels that, combined with the right ingredients, will unlock consumer spending. Functional beverages might tout the latest adaptogenic discovery, but in product innovation, success is often a matter of taste.
When New Belgium first tested Lightstrike with consumers, the company discovered that salt wasn’t a massive selling point. “It was low on the list of what attracted them to the product,” Rumsey says. “They were almost more attracted to the taste than anything else.”
By Joshua M. Bernstein
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