If you fancy a dry Christmas, are there any alcohol-free drinks that bear comparison with their alcoholic counterparts?
It’s Christmas party season, where the temptation to eat and drink a bit too much is very strong.
But what if you’re driving, or you just don’t fancy the hangover from hell the next day?
You could opt for soft drinks. However, if you prefer to be drinking beer, wine or cider for taste or social reasons, there are various alcohol-free and low-alcohol options out there.
Indeed, business is booming in this sector, particularly overseas. According to this Economist article, 80% more alcohol-free beer was drunk last year than five years ago.
But this isn’t just a way for people to avoid looking out of place at the office do. It’s becoming a lifestyle choice and is also now permitted in cultures that don’t allow the consumption of alcohol.
On the wagon
I had a dry November and used the opportunity to taste several different beer, cider and wine options.
Disappointingly, most of them tasted like the alcoholic product but with all the good flavour ripped out. In particular, the lagers just smelled and tasted of malt – as if Nestle had begun brewing Shreddies beer (other wheat cereals are available).
That’s because in most cases the ‘ordinary’ beer is boiled down to reduce the alcohol in it.
In the case of wine, the alcohol is extracted via either filtering or vacuuming.
However, most alcohol-free and low-alcohol wines just taste like incredibly sweet grape juice, which is essentially what they are.
Indeed, in a Which taste test last year, wine experts said the 10 wines they sampled more closely resembled "breakfast juice" more than a vintage. They recommended sticking to elderflower and ginger beer instead.
Taste test time
I decided it would be interesting to conduct a blind taste test of my own to see, firstly, if anyone could identify the no-alcohol variety and, secondly, if anyone preferred them.
I set up two lagers (Becks and Cobra) and Kopparberg pear cider in both alcoholic and alcohol-free versions. Interestingly, the testers couldn't identify the fact that one variety of each was alcohol-free although they could definitely tell the difference between the two.
In fact, in the case of the Becks the alcohol-free version was preferred by over half of the testers.
Top of the non-alcoholic tree
So which readily-available drinks did I find that actually tasted like something approximating the real thing?
One of the most easy-to-find alcohol-free lagers, which is handy as it's arguably the best. Unlike most of its competitors, it has a crisper, cleaner taste which isn't dominated by the malt, and means it doesn't taste like a cereal drink. It also comes in the same style bottles as its alcoholic counterpart.
In this case, the removal of the alcohol has led to a taste akin to drinking boiled sweets. Yet that isn't unpleasant, as anyone who grew up on 'quarters' of rhubarb and custard can attest. Having said that, I'm not sure you could drink too much of it.
While it doesn't have the nose or the sharp finish of an alcoholic wine, this still has a pretty good crisp taste. It's more than just a fizzy grape juice, which is more than can be said for most of its competitors.
Work to be done
Alcohol-free beer may be flying off the shelves in other parts of the world, in part because it opens up a new drinking experience while obeying cultural laws.
However, in terms of the product itself there's still plenty of work to be done in terms of improving the taste. And that goes double for alcohol-free wine. Only then will it become a worthy substitute for the real thing.
Do you have any good alcohol-free and low-alcohol drink suggestions? Or do you stick to soft drinks? Let us know in the Comments box below.
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