Athletic Brewing NA beers are pretty good. Of course, they don’t get you buzzed, but the flavor is there. I especially enjoy the First Ride, from them. Wit’s peak is good for that I want a Witbier style of beers.
First off, it is 100% ok to not like beer. That being said, you might want to try some other styles. If you like roasted coffee/chocolate flavors, try stouts or porters. Belgians are also one of my favorites. Tend to be more caramely, and a little yeasty. Delirium Tremens and Le Chouffe are a couple of my favorites that tend to be easy to get. If those are not around, Unibrowe brewing from Canada does Belgian style beers. Sours can also be pretty fun, and can approach juice like flavors.
I could probably go on for a bit, but there are a lot of options out there.
If you like beer, a good NA beer is going to be better than seltzers most of the time. If given the choice between an Athletic NA beer and a La Croix, I will take the Athletic unless it is sweltering hot outside.
I think it’s a very personal choice but NA beer just makes me miss normal beer. I’d rather drink seltzer most of the time and have real beer when I feel like drinking. Plus I’m pretty careful about watching my weight and I avoid empty calories where I can.
That is totally fair. Usually if I am in a position to drink NA beer I am out at a bar and just want to have something without alcohol to reduce consumption.
One of the issues I have with non alcoholic products is that because they are meant to be a drop in replacement for alcoholic they wind up being comparable in price sometimes even more expensive.
For what is effectively a softdrink you wind up paying almost 14-$20 a 6pack and a mocktail at a bar can cost $10+ a cup. Compared to something like soda, flavored seltzers, or a malty brewed softdrink like malta the prices are so high. You can get 12-24 packs for what theyre asking. Some mocktails actually take quite a lot of effort to put together to justify the pricetag, but most Ive seen in the wild tend to be simple to make and in terms of labor not much more than a late or milkshake despite being priced way above them.
That said there’s nothing wrong with giving people more options to drink while out and about and if you do enjoy the taste of beer to be able to enjoy it without having to get buzzed(even if for some even a mild kick is part of the point)
I think some of the reasoning is that because it’s taken the same ingredients/processes/time etc. then commodores can charge the same as conventional beer. Where this falls down is here in UK the stronger the alcohol, the higher the tax. Companies probably will justify higher price despite less alcohol because of the expense of research or extra equipment.
Most breweries use one of just a few basic options for production, each of which comes with its own set of considerations. There’s dealcoholization through evaporation, aka vacuum distillation, in which beer is heated and distilled to remove the ethanol. Dealcoholization via reverse osmosis, meanwhile, uses membranes to separate the alcohol from the rest of the liquid. The former method can strip some desirable flavor compounds, and both options are a financial stretch for smaller craft breweries.
Emphasis on the last line. So yeah it does add some significant cost. Which is why they resort to cold-contact brewing which can result in worty/bready taste as the article notes. So if you want good NA beer yeah, it’s more expensive probably because they’re using all the same ingredients and then doing the extra process. Obviously there won’t be the alcohol tax though.
The pricing is infuriating in Canada, since nearly half the price of real beer is alcohol-related excise duties and taxes, which do not apply to non-alcoholic beers. So when companies charge the same or more they are just keeping the difference, it is not “sin tax” related like we’ve been conditioned to accept up here…
I agree with you in principle. As someone who stopped drinking, it would be great if I were paying a buck or two less for that mocktail or bottle of O'Douls.
But it's a matter of scale, right? Both large brewers and soft drink makers have distilleries/bottling factories that dwarf anything an NA product (especially NA spirit makers) can produce. Even Heineken or Guinness with their Zero beers are only dedicating a small portion of their facilities to make it.
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