Crux Fermentation Project

Bend has more breweries per head than almost anywhere in America, and Crux is the one that took non-alcoholic beer seriously first. NØ MØ launched as a non-alcoholic IPA and has since grown into a series — which matters, because a brewery that makes one NA beer is running an experiment and a brewery that makes three is running a product line.

The beer itself is properly built rather than dealcoholised into blandness. It comes in under 0.5% ABV at roughly 30 calories, made using traditional brewing methods so the body and mouthfeel survive: flaked oats for texture, honey and crystal malts for backbone, and Citra and Mosaic hops grown in the Pacific Northwest for the citrus-and-tropical nose that makes it read as an IPA rather than as hop-flavoured water. The name is a nod to Crux's own Gimme Mo IPA, brewed with the same hop pair, and head brewer Cam O'Connor developed it through a long run of test batches rather than a single recipe. The line now includes a hazy version and, in autumn, a fresh hop release that uses just-harvested hops — a seasonal treatment almost never applied to non-alcoholic beer.

The tasting room is a converted AAMCO transmission shop near where Colorado Avenue, Industrial Way and Highway 97 meet, and it is one of the best rooms in Bend for a non-drinker precisely because nothing about the experience changes. There are more than 28 taps, a rotating cast of food carts, fire pits for the cold months and a wide lawn that looks straight at the Cascades at golden hour. You order at the same bar, sit in the same seat and watch the same sunset.

Cases of the NA releases are usually available to take away, which makes this a stocking-up stop as well as a drinking one — useful in a town where most people are heading out to a trail, a river or a mountain the next morning.