(WWJ) -- Steve Johnson built his business on beer. Motor City Brew Tours offers all sorts of different beer-centric experiences throughout the city and surrounding areas.
But this month, Johnson has decided to participate in "Dry January," a movement that is getting a firm hold in the United States. First started in Europe, the premise of "Dry January" is that you give up alcohol for the entire month in hopes lead a bit of a healthier lifestyle.
"I've found that as I get into January, you're looking at 'do I want to get fit, do I want to get back into the swing of things as I come out of the holidays?' And going dry fits right into that, it's why we're hearing a lot more about it in the media this year over other years," Johnson told WWJ's Zach Clark. "I would say, living in the beer industry for the last 10 years, I've been taking a look at drinking lower-alcohol beers and other alternatives and just ways to kind of dial it down and live a little healthier. There's nothing wrong with taking a look at that if it fits for you and seeing what other alternatives are out there."
As the ever-changing craft beer industry tends to do, Dry January is rapidly evolving based on market trends. Moreover, the industry is gravitating toward non-alcoholic options, like Grizzly Peak's "Hop Soda" and kombucha at Urbanrest in Ferndale.
"I think we're really at the start of something that will become a bigger trend, a bigger part of the market in the coming years," Johnson says. "It's something that a few years ago when I was over in Europe and I was traveling in Germany and other countries, that was commonplace. You would go into a bar and you might have 3-4 beer choices and you'd always have a non-alcoholic beer choice. All the German breweries produce it, they've imported them for years. It hasn't always necessarily been commonplace, but now you're seeing craft breweries that are jumping into it, whether they're trying kombucha or trying their own, what they're calling a near beer, a non-alcoholic beer, with a craft beer twist to it. So they're trying to make them taste better and that's what we're starting to see that's a little different that we weren't seeing before."
For Dry January this year, Scottish company Brewdog launched an alcohol-free pub in London. More locally, The Athletic Brewing Co. from Connecticut, has been around for several years and they focus exclusively on non-alcoholic brews. Johnson says it's pretty good stuff, too.
"It looks like a beer, it tasted like a beer, it just didn't have alcohol, so you don't get a buzz from it. If you were in a social situation -- if I was standing there holding that can, drinking it and we were just talking, you wouldn't think anything of it," he said.