Because I’m sure N/A beer is on the forefront of everyone’s mind right now…
This is a great one though, if you can find it (probably easier back east). It’s very smooth with a nice hop character/aroma and enjoyable malt flavors (with just a hint of sweetness). It pushes the line of being difficult to distinguish from a regular ABV beer.
From what I’ve read you’ve sampled a number of NA/Low Alcohol beers. Can you give me your top ten? I’ve tried a couple of real duds lately. This made me a little gun shy about buy a full six pack of new ones.
In no particular order, I like all of the ones listed below.
Heineken 0 - smooth, refreshing, tastes like I remember beer tasting, has a bit of that Heineken twang
Clausthaler Original - nice body, lager flavor, dry/hoppy finish
Clausthaler Dry Hopped - This is a darker, sweeter beer with a full body. According to the label, it is dry hopped with Cascade, but I’ve not picked up any Cascade flavor (it’s possible the bottles I’m getting here are not all that fresh; I don’t know).
Brooklyn Brewery Special Effects
Wellbeing Brewing Golden Wheat - To me this tastes like a can of Modelo; it has a certain mass market lager aroma that I enjoy.
Two Roots Brewing - I’m not sure if they distribute outside of California, but they make the best N/A IPAs I have tried. Their Helles-style lager and tropical wheat beer are both really good as well.
Athletic Brewing Golden Ale - This is a good one which I would drink more often if I could buy it locally. I haven’t tried their other offerings, but I’m willing to be they are also good.
Bravus Brewing Oatmeal Stout - It doesn’t taste much like real oatmeal stout to me, and it would probably disappoint most people but I enjoy it.
Which ones have you tried and not liked?
In general lager suffers a lot less from losing the body provided by alcohol, some people try to throw hops at the problem but it never quite works. Special Effects is definitely one of the best I’ve had. The 0% version of Adnams Ghost Ship ain’t bad either. Brewdog Nanny State is kinda OK, Punk AF is meant to be better but I’ve not had it.
But N/A is a big thing in Europe, Spain is close to 15% of all beer being N/A, and Germany is up to something like 5% - after all, Germans love their beer and cars, but they don’t go well together! The Spanish are helped by the fact that the Estrella one is probably the best of the macro N/A’s, but it’s not as good as what’s coming out of some of the smaller breweries in Germany/Czech like Rothaus and the Bernard Amber. It’s a format that suits wheat beers, the Erdinger weiss is widely available here and is pretty decent, but there are a couple of cracking ones out there whose names I forget.
Bavaria is terrible, the new Carlsberg one is terrible, Heineken isn’t great (the best that can be said is it does taste a bit like Heineken, but isn’t as good as the Estrella), Becks Blue used to be the best of a bad bunch but the competition has moved on and it now looks rather outclassed.
