If you had told me two years ago that I’d be drinking a no-alcohol beer with as much pleasure as a full-strength one, I’d have said you were bonkers, but the quality has improved to such an extent that some are now almost indistinguishable from their full-strength equivalents. The rate of growth is such that breweries such as Big Drop, Small Beer Brew Co and Infinite Session have been able to set up solely on the basis of selling alcohol-free and very low-alcohol beers. It’s no surprise, then, that some of the UK’s best-known breweries are getting in on the act.
I guess it shouldn’t be that unexpected. Unlike wine, beer is well-suited to being delivered with lower levels of alcohol – in fact, historically, when beer was safer to drink than water, “small beer” was the norm. Take the alcohol out of wine, and you’re left more or less with sugar, but do the same to beer, and its main flavouring ingredients – hops and malt – are still present.
That said, making a palatable no- or low-alcohol (nolo) beer to the standard of today’s best brews is no easy matter. “The version of Big Easy we’re selling now is batch number five,” says Simon Webster, CEO of Thornbridge brewery. “In the development, we ditched four entire brews, which was like pouring 60,000 bottles down the drain.” Thornbridge’s solution, in addition to using some first-class hops (amarillo and cascade), was to build body by playing around with specific malts (maris otter, munich and crystal).
Such ingredients can make nolo beers much the same price as a full-strength craft beer, despite the fact that beers with an abv below 1.2% are exempt from duty and that those under 2.8% attract a lower rate. I’m sure some readers will balk at the price of the Mikkeller in today’s recommendations, but it’s so good, I simply couldn’t leave it out. (If you’re looking for a bargain, Lidl does a decent 2.6% abv French lager under the Argus label at £1.99 for a pack of eight.)
The good news is that, with the growing interest in alcohol-free drinks, the market is bound to expand. When you think this means you can have a drink at 10am should the mood take you, go for a beer at lunchtime even when you’re at work and have a pint before you drive home, demand can only grow, particularly when the presentation and packaging of many of these new bottles are as slick as they currently are. Now we just need pubs and restaurants to come on board and give us a better choice when we drink out.
Four ‘nolo’ beers to try at home
Mikkeller Drink’In The Sun £2.25 for 330ml Wine Society, £15.99 for six bottles drydrinker.com, 0.3%
The name says it all: fragrant, hoppy, packed with passionfruit and citrus – the perfect summer beer
Thornbridge Big Easy £16.80 for 12 bottles Thornbridge Brewery, 0.5%
Fresh, hoppy and happy-making. The best of the LA beers I tasted
Infinite Session Pale £1.89 for 330ml beerhawk.co.uk, £23.82 for 12 bottles Amazon, 0.5%
Satisfyingly rich, smooth and rounded, with appealing notes of apricot and mango. And only 36 calories a bottle
Nirvana Kosmic Stout £15.99 for six 330ml bottles drydrinker.com, 0%
Dark, full-flavoured, chocolatey – and gluten-free. (I was less impressed by other beers in the range)
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