An honest comparison
Otavo vs Athletic Brewing: an honest comparison
We'll save you the suspense. If you want a great non-alcoholic beer today, buy Athletic. Otavo is a different bet, and it isn't on shelves yet.
It would be easy to write a comparison that makes us look good and the leader look bad. That's not this page, and it wouldn't be honest. Athletic Brewing is excellent and available everywhere, and Otavo isn't even on shelves yet. So instead of a fake matchup, here's a straight read on what each one is for.
Where Athletic Brewing wins
Athletic earned its place. It made non-alcoholic beer mainstream, the range is deep across lagers, IPAs, stouts, and seasonals, and you can find it in most grocery stores and a lot of bars. The quality is consistent, and the beer is built to taste like beer rather than to do anything extra. If your goal is a reliable, genuinely good NA beer that you can buy in the next hour, Athletic is the better choice, full stop. Nothing Otavo can say changes that today.
What Otavo is doing differently
Otavo is a narrower bet. Rather than covering every style, it's built around one job, the wind-down at the end of the day. It's brewed with green tea for a gentle calm and kept caffeine-free, so it adds the soft ease that most non-alcoholic beer drops along with the alcohol. Two SKUs to start, a lager and an IPA, with the waitlist helping decide which comes first. The calm angle is the whole point, and it's the thing Athletic, by design, doesn't try to do.
Brewed under 0.5% ABV with green tea, caffeine-free, made for the wind-down. Otavo isn't on shelves yet, so reserve your spot for the first batch.
The honest trade-off
The real difference isn't quality, it's availability and intent. Athletic gives you breadth and a beer you can drink tonight. Otavo gives you a specific feeling, the calm, but asks you to wait and to help shape an early product. One is a finished, proven option. The other is an early-stage bet on a gap in the category. Both can be true at once, and plenty of people will want one of each.
So which should you pick
Want a great NA beer with lots of choices, available now, go Athletic and enjoy it. Want a non-alcoholic beer designed to help you actually unwind, and you don't mind getting in early, join the Otavo waitlist. If you're still deciding what matters most to you, our roundup of the best non-alcoholic beers to relax with lays out the wider field, competitors included.
Common questions
Not in the way that question usually means. Athletic makes excellent non-alcoholic beer across many styles and you can buy it right now. Otavo is a smaller, calm-first idea built around green tea, and it's still pre-launch. They're aiming at different things, so the honest answer is that the right pick depends on what you want.
A non-alcoholic craft beer with notes of green tea and citrus. Calm, not a buzz. Reserve your spot and get an early taste.