Basqueland Alcohol-Free Beers

Basqueland: San Sebastián craft with an alcohol-free Hero

Basqueland Brewing was founded in 2015 in Hernani, just outside San Sebastián, by American expats Kevin Patricio and Ben Rozzi — two friends who wanted craft beer good enough to sit beside Basque cuisine, arguably Europe’s most celebrated food culture. With Donostia-born brewmaster Oscar Sáez at the kettles, it grew into one of Spain’s most decorated craft breweries, winning Best Brewery at the Barcelona Beer Challenge two years running (2021 and 2022) and running its own Izakaia gastropub in San Sebastián.

Its alcohol-free line is called Hero — and unusually for a craft AF range, it comes in both of modern IPA’s main dialects. Given the brewery’s food-pairing DNA, it’s no surprise the Heroes are built to drink alongside pintxos rather than as an afterthought. More recently the brewery has been backed by Hijos de Rivera — the family group behind Estrella Galicia — while keeping its brewing independence.

The scale tells its own story: from a standing start the team has brewed several hundred different beers, now produces around a million litres a year with a staff of about twenty-five, and in 2024 was named Spain’s best craft brewery. The Hero range gives alcohol-free drinkers a genuine seat at that table.

There’s also the Izakaia itself — the brewery’s San Sebastián tavern pairing its beers with Asian-Basque cooking — which tells you how Basqueland thinks about beer: as something that belongs at the table.

Basqueland’s alcohol-free range on Unhopped

We list both Heroes: Hero Hazy IPA, soft and juicy, and Hero West Coast IPA, dry and resinous — a genuinely rare hazy-vs-west-coast choice at 0.5%. They feature in our Spanish alcohol-free beer guide and our hazy vs west coast explainer.