For Los Angeles resident Michael Burns, ordering a beer-and-shot combo is synonymous with going out to the bar, a hallmark of his “prime young drinking years” in Baltimore and Chicago. But since having a kid almost two years ago, he mostly steers clear of boilermakers, which he knows he’ll feel the next day. Instead, the new dad has found a workaround: At his local bar, where there’s a Miller High Life and amaro shot special, Burns will allow himself the amaro, but chase it with a nonalcoholic beer. He calls it a boilerfaker.
Subbing in N/A beers plus the occasional boozy dalliance allows Burns to still go out with friends, minus the threat of hangovers. You could call it a hack: “Why not get some booze in the system and participate in the ritual of the boilermaker,” he says, “but without the consequences that come with ordering it post-40?”
What might initially sound like either a strange bit or a misunderstanding of how to act normal at a drinking establishment, the N/A-plus-full-proof combo is more like microdosing, but for alcohol.
Riding the pendulum swing from pandemic overindulgence to a “Cali sober” (or sober-ish) lifestyle, many of us are navigating a gray-area middle: still drinking, but perhaps more mindfully. Consider zebra striping, which names the practice of alternating alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks.
N/A beer, while nothing new, has seen a boom in recent years: A Nielsen IQ trend report for 2024 found that the nonalcoholic beer, wine and spirits category approached $1 billion in sales, “demonstrating a growing consumer preference for moderation”—moderation, rather than abstinence, being the key term here. It helps that brands like Athletic Brewing Co. figured out how to make the stuff taste a lot better. At a Valentine’s Day dance party I attended, with a crowd that skewed 30-something, the bar actually sold out of Athletic. These days, it’s just another beer on the menu.
“We have more options than ever before when it comes to consuming beverages,” says beverage journalist Joshua M. Bernstein, “and there’s not a lot of codified rules; we’re making them up as we go along.”
Melton Sharpe, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, is another boilerfaker convert. He says it does the trick on nights he’s DJing and wants to feel just a touch less than sober. In a sense, it’s a step toward knowing thyself. “Alcohol plus alcohol has never done me any good,” he says, shuddering over Jäger bombs past. “But if I can do alcohol and N/A, I’m usually in a pretty good space.”
You’re not yet likely to see an N/A-beer-and-alcoholic-shot special advertised at the bar, though the pairing potential is right there if you’re feeling creative. Bernstein tells me that he’s also seen a reverse boilerfaker: pairing a shot of Pathfinder, a hemp- and herb-based N/A spirit, with full-proof beer. And some bars offer it on a word-of-mouth basis; per GQ, there’s an unofficial Athletic-and-tequila-shot pairing that goes by The Hypocrite at Pencil Factory Bar in Brooklyn, or The Wild Buffalo, an Athletic Run Wild IPA and a shot of bourbon, that’s popular down in Florida.
I had to see for myself. So recently at my local bar, I ordered a shot of whiskey with the only Athletic beer they had in stock, the Run Wild. My tolerance level is such that I am going to get buzzed off a shot, and I did. As a chaser, I can’t recommend the Run Wild—if one of the lighter Athletics is available, or an N/A lager, I’d suggest that. But after the initial flavor clash of the whiskey and too-hoppy beer, I enjoyed sipping something nonalcoholic while the buzz from the whiskey carried me through, making the neutered beer seem almost legit. A friend at the bar likened it to “ordering the black bean burger and adding cheese and bacon.” Doesn’t necessarily sound bad to me.
