On lunch break today, a friend and I went to Safeway. After a corndog and jojos, I got the idea of trying some non-alcoholic beer. (To drink after school–even non-alc, it would be foolish to drink it in class.) We chose a random brand, and brought a pair to the checkout.
“Do you have ID?” he asks.
“It’s non-alcoholic,” I clarify.
“Well, you still need to be 18.”
This is ridiculous. My state has chosen not to give teens an alternative to drinking. Brilliant, Oregon. And it implies that it’s OK to get wasted by drinking gallons of this stuff, as long as I’m 18.
What BAC would be ‘buzzed?’ Let’s take a conservative 0.05. Now according to this cool nurse, If I drank an entire 6-pack of O’Doul’s in one hour, my BAC would be “negligible.” To achieve 0.05 BAC, I would have to drink a heroic six times that amount– thirty-six bottles or 482 ounces. In one hour. And the nurse still says
Try another clerk. Some people make an assumption and then when questioned they clam up and wing it (they pretend they are right and continue to refuse beer)
Geeze, why did the Puritans have to screw things up for us so much? Europe doesn’t have these problems because they know and respect alcohol more than we’re allowed to here.
The point made here is that, yes, minors can consume NA beer, but there’s no way for an observer (or law enforcement) to verify that the minor is actually in posession of NA beer in a bar or restaurant. So, unless there’s a fool-proof way for the alcohol content of a beverage on the spot, people will be very wary of selling NA beer to minors for fear of being cited by the OLCC or other agency.
I’ve had O’Doul’s, and it was a meh-beer. Tasted like Coors or Miller (no offense ) I picked one that looked like it might be premium near-beer (oxymoron?)
I wondered if it was just an idiot checker, but I went to another grocery store later on (the refusal really encouraged me…) and was told, again, I must be 18.
It’s not a stupid checker (or waitress or bartender). So-called Non-Alcoholic beer has a negligable amount of alcohol in it, and therefore cannot be sold to minors. You can make the argument that Nyquil (or whatever) has alcohol in it, which is true, but the fact remains, you still cannot sell non-alcoholic beer simply because it is not truely alcohol free.
This issue is obviously different from that of high-alc beverages. You seem to be saying that they’re all the same–any alcohol, all the restictions. It’s different – see the Oregon age 18. Drinking ages are federally imposed (in the form of highway funds, IIRC) but the federal gov’t doesn’t say anything about the NA beers.
Clearly, you’ve never drunk honest-to-goodness actual beer before. Then again, I’ve never tasted a non-alcoholic beer that tasted like honest-to-goodness actual beer either, so people who LIKE beer are kind of out of luck, taste-wise, if they want to avoid the alcohol.
“Shitty beer” is redundant, as far as I’m concerned. There is no such thing as good beer. I’ve had Guinness straight from the tap in a UK pub, and it was the nastiest liquid I’ve ever had in my mouth. If I’ve got to drink beer, at least give me a crappy American brand that only tastes like contaminated water. I don’t like it, but at least I can choke it down without gagging. But if I’ve got a choice, I’ll take any other alcohol, no matter how rank: bad scotch, Jaegermeister, fruity umbrella drinks in novelty mugs, hell, I’ll down a bottle of ouzo and smile before I’d drink another beer.
slight hijack. Remember the candy cigarettes? When’s the last time you saw them at the store? This is just another “cause” where people will tell you what legal product you can use, and denying you NA “beer” since it isn’t good for people to use a “wrong” product.
Now, so-called NA beer does have some alcohol, so I agree it shouldn’t be sold to under-21’s. It does have some alcohol. But keep in mind, it’s the first volley of the “don’t let them have fun or choice” directed at responsible drinkers.
After Desert Storm, I was talking to a veteran in a bar who explained that Budweiser airlifted O’douls to the troups.
He went on to say that it IS possible to get drunk off the stuff and also relayed the math involved. Assuming one six-pack = one regular beer, you only need to drink a case and a half to get the alcohol in a normal six pack. A mere three cases of O’Douls and you’ve drank the alcohol in a normal twelve pack!
He said they would end up leaving their dicks out and basically continually pee while chugging.
Seems to me the danger would be moreso from the vast amounts of water being drunk, which could lead to hyponatremia, but I don’t know. Maybe there’s enough salt in NA beer to prevent swelling of the brain.
Disclaimer: This was a drunken bar story, take with requisite grain of salt.
) I picked one that looked like it might be premium near-beer (oxymoron?)
