Recently, I decided to try all of the available alcohol free beers in the shops near me. For each one, I made some notes about the taste, the similarity to its nearest alcohol equivalent (where possible), and then gave it a score out of five. Obviously, this is just my own, very subjective opinion. Here are the comments and results:
So, the winner is probably the Mikkeller Weird Weather Non-Alcoholic IPA, which had the most enjoyable and interesting flavour overall. It wasn’t trying too hard to be like other beers in the style, and this seemed to work. It is one of the most expensive beers in the list though.
Close runners up were the Sigtuna NAPA, and the Poppels Alcohol Free Ale, both of which managed interesting flavours with a lot of body and genuine real ale feel. In general, the beers that still had a small percentage of alcohol (like 0.4) seemed to work better, but maybe that was just my impression. A surprise success was the Carlsberg Hoppy Lager, which I didn’t expect to be any good at all, but was a decent equivalent to the alcoholic version.
Would I drink these instead of their alcoholic equivalents? Surprisingly, in the case of the higher scoring ones I tried, I would probably say yes. Especially as summer beers, these would work really well. Even the Guinness I found surprisingly drinkable, but would still choose the alcoholic version for its body.