
Story
The story of THRIVE starts with a group of friends that had set themselves one of the biggest challenges possible in sports: a full distance Ironman triathlon in Frankfurt, Germany. That is a 3.8k swim, 180k bike ride and a 42k marathon to wrap things up. Yikes. To top it off, the race took place in June ’19 during a 40°C heatwave. Not something we were used to. But Ironman says anything is possible and they were right. All five of us finished right behind Jan Frodeno with just a couple hundred athletes in between.
The race itself was the culmination of over a year worth of training. Sometimes we trained solo, but mostly we shared the pain by completing our workouts together. During training we had one problem though. And it was bigger than the blood, sweat and tears we had to put in to achieve our big goal. As Belgians, we loved our beer and nothing could beat enjoying a cold one after a tough workout. Unfortunately though, sports and alcohol don’t play well together as alcohol prevents physical recovery after exercise. Recovery which is crucial to build fitness and be ready for the next workout. Bummer. What you need instead is proper nutrition with the right mix of carbs and protein. So we ended up having chocolate flavoured recovery shakes followed by non-alcoholic beers after our workouts. Now that doesn’t sound like a great mix does it?
A couple of months after walking the Ironman red carpet, I started to wonder though. What if a non-alcoholic beer could be made with the functionality of a sports recovery shake? A delicious refreshing beer to enjoy after sports, that at the same time gives you the perfect mix of protein and carbs that your body needs to recover. I knew nothing about making beer, so that is probably why I was crazy enough to think this could be done. It took over a year and a team of innovative brewers and scientists, but we were able to pull it off. With THRIVE Recovery IPA we managed to create world's 1st true sports recovery beer. Best of all? It tastes great. But please do judge for yourself.
I am extremely proud of the beer we have created and hope you enjoy it on your path to achieving your own goals! #GOTHRIVE
Cheers, Laurens D'Hoore