A new nonalcoholic beverage is making its St. Louis debut this week. It’s aimed at drinkers looking for a functional, social alternative to alcohol.
DER—short for Drink. Enjoy. Repeat.—is a kratom-infused beverage developed through a partnership between actor and artist Nico Tortorella, St. Louis–based MNG Brands, and Korthals’ Collection, MNG’s kratom-focused wellness brand.
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DER first debuted nationally last month, but CBD Kratom in St. Charles (1560 Veterans Memorial Pkwy.) will host “Blackout Without the Blackout Wednesday: A Celebration of DER” on November 26 from 8–10 p.m. The event will include two free samples of DER and other nonalcoholic beverages, a sober-friendly twist on beer pong, special in-store promotions, and a toast from Nico Tortorella at 9 p.m.
The Backstory
Tortorella is best known for roles on Younger and The Walking Dead: World Beyond, but his interest in kratom is rooted in his own sobriety. After stepping away from alcohol in 2015, a shift detailed in a recent Forbes profile, he began searching for social rituals that still felt familiar without alcohol. Kratom eventually became part of that routine.
“Being sober doesn’t mean you lose the desire for ritual,” Tortorella says. “This plant helped me stay present.”
Many St. Louisans know MNG Brands through its CBD Kratom stores, which offer more than 650 CBD, THC, and kratom products. With the acquisition of WellBeing Brewing last year, MNG now has a full nonalcoholic brewing operation in St. Louis. That infrastructure made DER possible.
Although DER cannot legally be called “beer,” the team used WellBeing’s brewing experience to shape its flavor and mouthfeel. “Both beer and kratom share a natural bitterness, which allowed us to build a flavor that feels familiar instead of masked,” Tortorella says.
The Drink
Tortorella and MNG Brands co-founder Dafna Revah spent considerable time refining DER’s flavor. The drink opens with familiar hop bitterness, followed by a clean citrus note from grapefruit. The bitterness from kratom sits underneath, closer to what beer drinkers already know from traditional styles—not sharp and not medicinal.
“It’s lighter than an IPA but fuller than sparkling water,” Tortorella says. “We wanted it to feel like a real drink, not a flavored seltzer.”
Revah says it appeals even to people who don’t enjoy IPA-style bitterness. “I’m not the biggest IPA fan, and I loved DER,” she says. “To me it drinks closer to something like a Blue Moon than a heavy craft beer.”
DER is designed as a daytime or social beverage. Revah describes the 30-milligram dose as “entry-level.” “Personally, I would drink two,” she says. “That’s 60 milligrams, and for me, that’s the sweet spot.”
Tortorella emphasizes the subtlety of the experience. “It feels like an extra breath,” he says, “the kind of feeling that makes you want to stay in the moment rather than run away from it.” Revah adds that it is “not something I’d take before bed.”
For Tortorella, DER represents more than a new beverage category. “This is about rebranding a plant,” he says. “It’s about giving people clear information, a responsible option, and an experience that helps them feel like themselves.”
The Components
Kratom is a tropical tree in the coffee family. Its leaves contain dozens of natural plant compounds called alkaloids. The primary one is mitragynine, which provides a mild, functional lift at low doses.
A different compound, 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH), appears only in trace amounts in the natural leaf. Some manufacturers isolate and concentrate it into synthetic extracts, which behave differently and have shaped many of the negative headlines surrounding kratom. “Many of the alarming headlines people see online or on social media refer to these isolates, not the plant itself,” Tortorella says.
DER uses only whole-leaf extract. Each can contains:
- 30 milligrams of mitragynine (considered a low, functional dose in kratom beverages; many kratom drinks are closer to 100 milligrams of mitragynine)
- The full spectrum of naturally occurring kratom alkaloids
- No synthetic isolates. (“It would be inaccurate to say there’s none,” says Revah. “But the amount is trace. We don’t use isolates, and we’ve never sold them.”)
The Terminology
- Kratom: A tropical tree in the coffee family. Its leaves have been traditionally used in Southeast Asia for energy and focus.
- Alkaloids: Natural plant compounds. Coffee has caffeine; kratom contains dozens of alkaloids, including mitragynine.
- Mitragynine: Kratom’s primary active alkaloid. At low doses, it provides a mild, functional lift and increased focus.
- Full-spectrum kratom / Whole-leaf extract: A natural extract that includes all of the plant’s naturally occurring alkaloids, in their original proportions. This is what DER uses.
- 7-OH (7-hydroxymitragynine): A compound that exists only in tiny, trace amounts in the natural leaf. Synthetic, concentrated versions of 7-OH are responsible for many of the negative headlines surrounding kratom — DER does not use these isolates.
- Synthetic isolates: Lab-made, highly concentrated versions of individual plant compounds. They behave differently from the natural plant. DER uses no synthetic isolates.
