When you hear the term nonalcoholic beer, you probably think of one of the beers in the picture above, or Odoul’s. Over the years many different near beers and such have been introduced to us by the larger American brewing companies. If you are like me, you have always come away thinking that there seem to be no point considering this beer had little flavor and if you bought it at a bar, it generally cost you more than an alcoholic counterpart. A lot of people have said what’s the point? Do you really need to drink or pretend to drink that much that there was ever any reason for this to happen?
I never really thought too much about this subject until a couple years back when situations in my life caused me to take a year off from drinking. I knew what was on the market and asked my friend Charles if he thought there would ever be a future for craft nonalcoholic beer. Back in late 2017 he said yes if they followed along the more European versions of beer making and how they extract the alcohol from the beer. Having tried Kaliber from Guinness, and St Pauli’s NA, I vaguely had a general idea of what he was talking about. And then on a trip to Chicago when I was a designated driver, I tried Clausthaler Original, and was rather impressed with the flavor of this nonalcoholic beer. It was satisfying, and something I could drink again.
So I was intrigued a few years back bye the excellent nonalcoholic beers being made in Europe. I didn’t get a chance to drink them very often, and partly didn’t go to them because European lagers aren’t my go to when I drink beer anyway. There was a point in my life before good craft beer wasn’t readily available that that would’ve been my direction, but my taste have moved on to American IPAs, Brown Ales, Stouts, and others. If I was going to be interested in nonalcoholic beer, it would be a replication of these styles that would probably be the avatar to turn me on to nonalcoholic beer.
If we fast forward to this January, the subject has become a widely discussed one. Many beer drinkers are doing a dry January, and since I like to write about beer, I thought it was time to discuss the subject. Recently quite a few craft breweries have begun making nonalcoholic beer, and at least two of them make nothing but nonalcoholic beer. On a recent trip to SoBro Liquors in Indianapolis, Indiana, there were about 25 different nonalcoholic beers to choose from. If this was something someone was going to take seriously, they would certainly have plenty of beer to choose from. IPAs were well represented, as were darker beers as well. I heard good things about some of them from people that had tried them, so I was anxious to see how they were going to taste!
I returned home with a six pack of nonalcoholic beer from each of the four Breweries on the top two shelves in the picture. I had a mixture of IPA’s and dark ales. Having never tried a nonalcoholic brew from anyone in the craft industry to this point, I was excited and interested on how they would taste. Rather than describing separately each of the four brews I tried, I will discuss all of them because I found common flavor profiles in all four despite the fact that they were different styles.
Each beer was drinkable, yet there was no disguise to the fact that it was a nonalcoholic brew. They all tasted exactly what I expected non alcoholic beer to taste like. I tasted a little bit of malt in them, with the darker beers having a larger presence of malt flavor. Each had a slightly sour tinge to them. But what I noticed about all four of the beers was that the hop flavor was prominent, and it didn’t taste anything but raw. All four beers tasted like the hops were added after the beer was made and this created quite the bitter flavor on the finish. Most hoppy Beers don’t generally do this, so these nonalcoholic beers all reminded me a little bit of the hop water that I tried at a beer festival last winter.
I’m not disappointed with the flavor of the beers I tried. I clearly feel that nonalcoholic craft beer is still a work in progress, and from looking at the reviews on Untapped, some people claim to really love the flavors of these beers. Since there are a lot of them out there, I will continue to look for the flavor that I enjoy the most, and I truly hope those making these beers continue to tweak them until they get the flavor perfect. In the meantime, I will enjoy what I’ve purchased because they are starting to grow on me.
So if you are taking a month off, or are a designated driver, you always have a choice when it comes to these beverages. I think this is a trend that will continue, and perhaps a lot of breweries will have a nonalcoholic beer in their repertoire in the near future. Whatever reason you have for wanting to sample this beer, I salute you and hope that you find a flavor that you like. There’s already quite a few out there, if you know where to look. And also, I like to keep my wits about me when I’m drinking so it would be nice to know I have a an option because like the motto of Hairless Dog says, sometimes you want to “party like there’s a tomorrow!”
So Much Beer So Little Time 