Like many people, Joe Chura found himself drinking more during COVID-19 lockdown. It wasn’t a new struggle for Chura, whose father had died from complications from alcoholism in 2006 and whose younger brother also had struggled with dependency, but the craving to have a drink would always hit him by 5 p.m. So he and his wife decided to take action, challenging themselves to abstain from drinking for 75 days.
“I did not think I was going to make it,” Chura says. “In the first few days, I was trying to exercise and I’d run past bars and I’ve never felt more of a craving. Then I came home and I had a nonalcoholic beer and that craving dissipated significantly. I made it through the night, and the next day I did the same thing.”
Chura knew nothing about making beer; his background is in e-commerce and digital marketing, but he saw an opportunity to help people like himself. He found a location — Naperville’s shuttered 2 Fools Cider — and put out a job posting for a head brewer for a nonalcoholic brewery.
James Bigler had been working at Downer Grove’s Alter Brewing and during COVID he’d found he started drinking earlier and earlier in the day. He decided to switch to nonalcoholic beer and immediately began thinking about how he’d make his own. Bigler saw Chura’s job posting on Facebook. A friend was making fun of the idea, but Bigler took Chura’s business idea seriously and submitted his resume…