At the risk of oversharing, I’ve been a bit depressed lately—and one of the side effects has been weight gain. Very recently, I’ve found a foothold that should allow me to try to climb out of this hole, but there is much work to do. Since a huge part of weight loss involves diet, an obvious move is to curtail my alcohol consumption.
But what if I still want beer?
That’s right: We are going to take another look at non-alcoholic beers. I’m fortunate that this is the best time to be a teetotaling beer lover, because so many breweries today are either completely dedicated to N/A beers, or making N/A options in addition to their regular beers. (If you want a primer on how N/A beers are made, you’ll find my most recent column on N/A beers, from three years ago, helpful.)
With no further ado, let’s get to drinking.
Let’s begin with the craft option. The selection in shops locally is quite good (certainly better than the regular beer section nowadays), and I chose to go with a variety pack from Best Day Brewing. Located in Sausalito, Best Day is a strictly non-alcoholic operation. As with many N/A producers, the marketing is all toward outdoorsy, active people. Yeah, yeah, sure, but how’s the beer?
The Electro-Lime Mexican lager is a fun place to kick this off, as I wouldn’t naturally be drawn toward a beer like this. (I like my beers to be beer-flavored, generally.) This is a Mexican-style pale lager with sea salt, lime and Motueka hops, and I was expecting an overbearing lime experience, so you can imagine my surprise when I could still very much smell beer in my glass. This was crisp and refreshing, with a really well-balanced flavor from all of the ingredients.
Next up was their kölsch-style lager; it had a slight doughy flavor with a nice bitter backbone and a slight citrus note as well. I could actually see myself having this at a backyard barbecue or a pool party.
Now for the hoppy beers. The hazy IPA had an aroma and taste of malted grain and peaches, as well as a slight citrus tang. It was pretty refreshing—and light for a hazy, too. Finally, the West Coast IPA had a similar aroma and flavor of grain, but with tangerine and grapefruit instead of peach. It was delightfully spritzy as well. Overall, Best Day impressed me greatly with these offerings, and I’ll be happy to reach for them from time to time throughout my weight-loss journey.
For the remaining N/A beers to try, I decided to go as mainstream as possible. For one thing, I was curious, and for another, I figured these would be the most easily purchased at a wide variety of locations if you, too, have an inkling to go N/A.
Since a huge part of weight loss involves diet, an obvious move is to curtail my alcohol consumption.
Sapporo Premium Non-Alcoholic is the N/A version of their famous Japanese lager. I haven’t had a regular Sapporo for many a year, and what I found was a beer with a floral, fruity (almost plum-like) nose and flavor, alongside a slight bitterness and a dry finish. I found myself quite impressed, and I was left wondering if regular Sapporo is this good, and I just don’t remember.
Bitburger 0.0% is the popular German brewer’s N/A offering of their pilsner. I also bought a regular version so I could do a little comparing—while also having something for a guest at my house. The verdict? They’re pretty similar. In fact, I think I enjoyed the N/A version a little more. It’s your standard German pilsner with herbal notes, and the only difference between the two was a slightly skunky note in the non-alcoholic one, and a slightly sulfuric note in the alcoholic. (The difference could be accounted for by the fact that the former was a bottle, and the latter was canned.) Not the best beer, but not the worst I’ve had, to be sure.
Heineken 0.0 was the final beer of the bunch—and a logical end point, because if Heineken can’t figure out a good N/A version of their extremely popular lager, I would be very shocked. What I found was golden beer with a nice head (that didn’t last long), the smell of cereal (think corn flakes) and hay, and a slight sweetness in the flavor—all of which was ultimately well-balanced by hops and dryness. There was no sign of the skunkiness which Heineken was well-known for in the past, despite the green bottle in which it came.
If you tried non-alcoholic beers in the moderately distant past, you know how disappointing they were. They usually didn’t resemble their normal beers in any way (other than perhaps mouthfeel) and left many sober people with a desire to not even try to simulate the beer experience. But today, things are different. In fact, the N/A beers seemed fresher overall (perhaps due to the current popularity of N/A beer). The code seems to have been cracked across the board—and there is simply no need to settle for an inferior drink anymore.
I shall see you down the road—a few pounds lighter, hopefully, with a happier liver.
