Courtesy of Joshua “Loyal” Grigaitis
Joshua “Loyal” Grigaitis
If you see Joshua “Loyal” Grigaitis in the carpool pickup line at his 9-year-old kid’s school swilling a beer, don’t be alarmed. It doesn’t have any alcohol, and he’s starting a revolution.
Grigaitis is a stalwart in the St. Louis nightlife scene. Among other things, he’s worked at the family business, Pop’s Blue Moon, for decades. Lately, he’s trying something new there.
Since early November, Saturday nights at the bar are just like any other Saturday night at the bar: live music, good friends, great drinks. The only difference is the alcohol—or rather, its absence. Saturday nights are now New Moon NA Saturday (Booze-Free Atmosphere). Stop by Saturday between 7 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. to try brews, elixirs, and snacks.
There are people who want to come hang out, and for one reason or another might not want to catch a buzz, Grigaitis finds.
“To completely neglect the non-alcoholic side of things was pretty crazy,” Grigaitis says. In Europe, there are non-alcoholic craft brews aplenty, but the U.S. has been lagging on the trend. Non-alcoholic beer itself is not a new thing. But sad afterthoughts (cough, O’Doul’s, cough) were the extent of what was available for a long time.
“Why would anyone drink it unless you were forced to?” Grigaitis asks of mass-market NA swill.
A couple years back, Grigaitis was making some changes, including closing down his much-missed venue on Cherokee Street, 2720.
“I decided to take a break from drinking to put myself in another world,” he says. “I really just kind of did it to give a jolt to my system. Even more than physically, it was a social thing.”
The change in habits led Grigaitis to try new things and make new friends, including the founders of WellBeing Brewing, a local company brewing solely non-alcoholic beers. (He now works in sales and marketing for WellBeing, in addition to his bar owner duties.)
“They were just getting ready to launch the product,” he says of the WellBeing folks. “A lot of it was going to depend on the taste. The first beer came out—within a week it changed the way I was looking at beer in general.”
The brew’s complexity and nuance were well beyond what he expected, he says. Any kind of “beer nerd” obsessiveness totally applies to it, and folks can enjoy it with lunch—or even breakfast.
He started planning a one-off night at Pop’s Blue Moon featuring the brew, but in the lead-up to the night interest was so great that it’s now an indefinite feature of the bar.
“This past Saturday was the best one overall. I didn’t recognize 80 percent of the people,” he says. The mix included “college kids that don’t speak English, people from a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, local musicians, a birthday party.”
Besides the brews from WellBeing, the nights feature mocktails made with syrups from Heirloom Bottling Co. and herbal infusion Wakava—both St. Louis–based companies.
To Grigaitis, it looked like any other night from behind the bar—OK, maybe with a lower obnoxiousness quotient.
