Non-Alcoholic Beer

Tier A · Not a style. A legal category. Any beer of any style that ends up under 0.5% alcohol by volume, reached by three completely different production routes.

ABV

under 0.5%

IBU

0-85

SRM

varies with style

Serve

38-45F

Glass

as the style copied

Calories

25-90 per 12 oz

Identify

It looks exactly like the beer it is imitating, because it usually is that beer with a step added or removed. Colour, head and clarity give you nothing at all. The label is the only visual clue, and by law it has to carry one. Right up until you swallow, this can be convincing. Then nothing happens. There is no warmth, no spread through the chest, and no lingering. The body is often a shade thinner than the flavour promises, and many examples are a little sweeter than their full strength originals.

Place

The United States figure comes from Prohibition. The Volstead Act of 1919 defined intoxicating liquor as 0.5% alcohol and above, so brewers made a beer at 0.5% and called it near beer. The modern wave starts with Athletic Brewing in Connecticut in 2017 and has grown by double digits every year since.

Cause

Two words first. Wort is the sweet liquid a brewer gets after soaking crushed grain in hot water, before the yeast goes in. Attenuation is how far the yeast gets through the sugar in that liquid before it stops. Every method below is a way of controlling attenuation or of undoing its result. Alcohol is what yeast makes out of sugar.

Confused with

Low alcohol beer, which is legally a different thing and can go up to 2.5%. Hop water, which contains no malt and is not beer. Full strength light lager, which is still 4% or so. Kombucha, which is fermented and often sits right at the same threshold.

Numbers

Say this part plainly, because for some readers it is the only line on the page that matters. In the United States, the words non-alcoholic on a beer label mean the drink contains less than 0.5% alcohol by volume. They do not mean zero. The rule is federal and specific.

Will you like it and Try

You are driving, on call, or have an early start, and you still want the drink rather than a soft drink. You are pacing yourself. Alternating an ordinary beer with a non-alcoholic one is the single most useful trick in this course.

Order and Pair

Ask what they have non-alcoholic. Most bars now carry at least one and many keep it out of sight under the counter. Ask how long they have had it. This matters more here than for any other beer on the list, and the reason is on the next slide. Ask for the proper glass.

Judge, Myth and Remember

No worty character. Nothing that tastes of raw sweet liquid, canned sweetcorn or cooked vegetables. A real aroma. Modern examples smell of hops or malt clearly, and a beer with almost no smell has usually lost it in processing.