The brewer/chef team at Self Care first concocted this refresher for a gnarly gravel-bike race. They call it the sports drink of beers. Vibrant, thirst-murdering, fruity with a saline note, it goes down as easy as a Gatorade G2.

Self Care: When we encountered our first beer from the Olympia, Washington brewery, we pondered whether the touchy-feely Gen-Z name was tongue-in-cheek or earnest. Then we took a sip and ceased giving a shit. The first Self Care brew we tried was their West Coast IPA Batch #2 (now discontinued), and it was a freaking revelation.

Texture—that’s one thing alcohol gives beer, and that’s one thing that a lot of N/A brews have trouble getting right. Not Self Care. We won’t purport to know their secrets, but we do know that their brews are not pasteurized or reverse distilled. That means nothing aromatic, delicious, creamy, arousing, or titillating is escaping, once it’s in the beer. 

Here’s what else that means: You gotta keep their beers cold. First, to preserve flavor and quality. Second, to prevent any possible refermentation in the can. See, pasteurization kills yeast, which is why you’ve probably never had to worry about a can or bottle of beer refermenting en route to your place. But the yeast in Self Care aren’t dead. The cold just kinda puts them to sleep, which means there’s a chance that a heat wave could roust them from their slumber. If they wake up hungry, they’ll start chomping the sugars in the beer and belching out carbon dioxide, and the next thing you know, BOOM!—Self Care all over your suede chair. 

All that said: We keep them cold at Killjoy HQ, and you should keep them cold at home—until you suck them all down, which shouldn’t take long.