So, I have completed Dry January, give or take the few hours left of today. And I’ve not got a bottle sat by my side waiting for the minutes to tick by. It’s the first time I have tried it and I was surprised at how easy it’s been. The main reason, I think, for this is the massive improvement in the choice and availability in alcohol free beer.
I’ve been using DryDrinker.com as my main supply source (no affiliation) as it has a pretty wide selection and OK prices. But local supermarkets generally have a smaller offering too.
Here’s a list of my 6 favourite alcohol free beers plus a few that I was a bit disappointed with.
Insel Brauerei, Snorkeler’s Sea Salt – Low Alcohol IPA.
This IPA is my absolute favourite. It’s not thin and weedy like some alcohol free IPAs. It looks right, pours nicely and tastes great. I’m pretty sure that a lot of people wouldn’t even know it was alcohol free.
I also know there’s a bunch of IPA fans out there who won’t touch anything under a certain percentage. But they can piss right off, this stuff is great.
VandeStreek AF Range
This Dutch brewery knows their stuff. They do a range of non-alcoholic beers alongside their regular beers, and they are all good.
The Grapefruit IPA is my current favourite and they do a very decent hard pour stout which I also like. Their regular IPA is good, but it’s not as good as Snorkelers but still worth giving it a bash.
St Peter’s Without – Original
I like a dark beer such as an ale or bitter and they’re not that great generally in the alcohol free market.
St Peter’s Without Original is an exception to this. It has a strong malty flavour, which I really enjoy and has that British beer feel about it, but it may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
If you’re looking for a AF dark beer give it a try.
Maisel’s Weisse – Wheat Beer
My favourite AF beers always seem to be those with a little bit extra to them. So a wheat beer rather than a lager generally seems to give more flavour and be closer to its regular cousin.
This wheat beer is excellent. As with my other favourites, it pours well, looks right in the glass and has a strong flavour close to the original.
German breweries seem to be the market leaders in AF beers for me and this is a really nice beer. They do go on about it being isotonic as well on their website but really – who cares? Is that why we drink beer?
Trak Sonoma Pale Ale
The best AF Pale Ale on the market.
Forget all the ones with mushrooms and mood enhancers, they’re OK but this is the one you want. Sonoma with alcohol is around 3.8% and is also a good beer. Trak have managed to do what most seem unable to do, which is recreate an AF version of one of their Pale Ales, that still retains some of the hop flavour and looks and tastes like an ale.
Great beer.
Guinness Zero
I was surprised I have to admit but how much I liked this beer. I guess they have a pretty massive development budget in comparison to the others listed but they’ve done a good job.
I had a nice pub meal the other day and had a pint of this with it and it was excellent. For a brief moment I thought they’d given me the wrong version. I have drunk quite a lot of this and I think in a can it’s better than regular Guinness.
So those are my favourites. The ones that I was less keen on have tended to be the “mood enhancers”. Maybe they do and maybe they don’t but I was struggling to detect any real impact. Some of the flashier brands seem to have also forgotten about the flavour, so their marketing is nice but I have found the end result a let down.
If you find better versions of those I’ve listed then happy to give them a go, just drop a comment below. It’s all based on personal opnion, so there’s no real right or wrong. If you enjoy it then that’s good enough for me.
As many small brewers are struggling and this seems to be one market that is growing it can perhaps help keep them going.
*I have no affiliation with any of these brewers or websites listed and the images are all copyrighted to them. I paid for all the products mentioned (and have just ordered some more).
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