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Innovations have helped brewers make non-alcoholic beers that look and taste like their full-strength counterparts. Pictured here: Clausthaler's lager, and Athletic's Free Wave IPA. Bill Chappell/NPR hide caption
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Innovations have helped brewers make non-alcoholic beers that look and taste like their full-strength counterparts. Pictured here: Clausthaler's lager, and Athletic's Free Wave IPA.
Bill Chappell/NPRFor years, non-alcoholic beer required a sacrifice: to lose the buzz, you also had to lose the flavor. But that has changed in recent years, thanks to new technology that lets brewers make beer that tastes great, without the alcohol.
"The non-alcoholic beers of the past tasted like punishment," as beer expert John Holl put it.
That's changed in recent years. For beer fans who want the deep flavors of IPAs and porters without the baggage of alcohol, the new brews are hitting the spot.
The shift is due to a culmination of factors, including innovations in vacuum evaporation, filtration and other techniques that let brewers extract alcohol from beer while leaving its flavor largely intact.
"They've really been able to make it taste like regular beer, and I'm constantly impressed," said Dana Garves, who wouldknow: she's a beer chemist who owns the Oregon BrewLab, which analyzes beer and other fermented drinks.
Going non-alcoholic isn't just for non-drinkersThe advances in non-alcoholic beer are helping brewers align themselves with health trends and people who are "sober curious," said Holl, who hosts the Drink Beer, Think Beer podcast and is beer editor at Wine Enthusiast magazine.
While Dry January might be when many people talk about non-alcoholic beer, more people drink it in the summer, says Bart Watson, chief economist of the Brewers Association, the craft beer trade group.
"Dry January appears to be a period where new [customers]get introduced to NA products," Watson said, adding that non-alcoholic beer's share of sales within the broader category spikes in January.
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"That said, January doesn't drive most of the sales volume," he added. "The highest-selling week for NA beer throughout the year is the same as for total beer – the week surrounding the 4th of July."
And while NA beers of the past courted non-drinkers, Watson says that has changed.
"A lot of the consumption is coming from people who drink [alcohol]," he said. "This isn't people who don't drink who are trying to fully replace beer, but people who do drink and are just looking for occasions where they can substitute something that tastes like beer, but doesn't have the alcohol."
NA beer gets two unlikely boosts: social media and the pandemicBy many measures, brewers are producing better non-alcoholic beer at just the right time. The early days of the pandemic might have opened the floodgates of day-drinking, but since then, it has also prompted more focus on mental health, including alcohol consumption.
That trend is even more prominent during Dry January, as people abstaining from alcohol post updates and their NA drink tips to social media. Alcohol is absent from those posts, and so is the stigma.
"We've become more accepting of other people's beverage choices," Garves said, describing how the conversation about the physical and mental health aspects of drinking has evolved.
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A woman drinks an alcohol-free beer during the annual "Fete de la Musique" (music day), in the courtyard of the Elysee Palace in Paris in 2018. Christophe Petit Tesson/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
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