But, if you need further convincing, the consumer champions at Which? magazine recently decided that alcohol-free beers are worthy of putting through their paces.
Join our new WhatsApp channel: The Morning Round-Up
Get the biggest pub trade stories straight to your phone. Listen to our one-minute daily news briefing and receive breaking news, exclusives and sector updates throughout the day....just remember to turn notifications on in top right corner!
Join the channel here.
Considering only bottles, the publication tasked 64 people to blind taste a variety of beers, including budget supermarkets’ own brands. Its panel preferred Corona Cero above all, with Lidl’s Perlenbache coming second – both of which are 0.0% ABV.
Not knowing who was judging the brews makes it harder to tell how seriously to take the results and, of course, it was only looking at off-trade beers but the fact remains Which? gave it close to double page spread. This suggests consumers are actively wondering which low & no beers are the best.
Big flavour
For me, the most interesting thing about the article was not which beer was rated highest but the fact that it only looked at lagers. I suppose it makes for easier side-by-side comparison but it overlooks the wide variety of styles in the category and the part that has likely played in the rise and rise of these sober brews.
Lager may be the most popular of beers but low & no alcohol pale ales usually pack much more flavour. I still remember how Adnams 0.5% ABV Ghost Ship wowed me for having such big flavour without the booze and my utter excitement at Gadds’ No.11 Ultra-Light Pale Ale, which is brewed to just 1.2% ABV rather than the brewery opting to de-alcoholise one of their standard beers.
I still think these are two of the best available. I find low & no stouts and darker brews not so convincing because, to me, they taste less beery but there are still some good ones to be had – such as Ilkley Brewery’s Nowt Mary, a 0.5% ABV milk stout.
Back to those consumers though. There is surely going to come a point where marketing low & no alcohol beers needs to go much further than telling drinkers how popular the category is and promoting it to the so-called ‘sober curious’. Alcohol-free brewer Lucky Saint has already popularised the concept of ‘zebra striping’, whereby drinkers alternate between an alcoholic and an alcohol-free drink on nights out.
Publicise the many styles
To this, I’d add that we need, once again, to borrow from craft beer methods and do more to publicise the many different styles of low & no beer as well as offering food pairing suggestions. And although many say the shift away from alcohol is a cultural one that is here to stay, we’d be daft to ignore those that continue to enjoy a tipple.
Promoting low & alcohol-free brews should aim to enthuse those who mostly prefer alcohol in their beer at times when they choose less alcohol – not with a view to encouraging them to replace it entirely. Others may be free to spread health messages but imagine what a rocky road it would be if pubs began telling people not to drink.
In common with cask ale, low & alcohol-free beers need a variety of marketing methods. Again, we can look to Lucky Saint who have played a blinder with their award-winning Thou Shalt Go to the Pub initiative. The double-pronged campaign boosting their own sales and supporting the wider industry through dry January (and beyond) is just the sort of thing low & no beers need.
It will be interesting to see what new ideas other sober thinking caps produce.
