I drink coffee for the taste, not just the caffeine. I don’t often drink decaffeinated coffee, but if it’s late in the day and I just feel like having a hot (well, warm-ish, really)) cup of flavorful coffee, I might go for a high-quality decaffeinated coffee.
Well, just as I said there are exceptions to N/A beer, there are exceptions to decaffeinated coffee. Though as much as I enjoy a good cup of coffee, I don’t know that I’d drink it just for the taste. Also, as with N/A beer, posters are saying they avoid it because they drink beer for the buzz, but there is a flavor component that alcohol adds as well. N/A beer often tastes too sweet to me, since it’s basically malt soda. Without the astringent edge of alcohol it’s just not the same flavor-wise. I would venture that coffee is similar-- I suspect ti’s difficult to get a really good-tasting cup of decaf lacking the bitter edge of caffiene. I could be wrong though.
Mmm… nature’s screwdriver.
Well, if you let unpasteurized OJ site around long enough to ferment, maybe.
Safely processed orange juice has a tenth more or less of the alcohol content of “nonalcoholic” beer at the maximally permitted 0.5% limit, which in turn averages about a tenth of the alcohol content of some popular regular beers. You could look it up.
And a number of addiction/recovery specialists recommend against alcoholics drinking 'nonalcoholic" beer. Example.
“There have also been studies that have shown that up to 30% of non-alcoholic labeled beers actually exceed the 0.5% alcohol contents by volume limit, some reaching up to 1.8% ABV*, mislabeled as alcohol-free. If you drank an excessive amount of these beers, you may be able to achieve a buzz, so it is important to note that chugging several non-alcoholic beers is not a safe habit to cultivate as a person in recovery.”
Update: Great news! Even though soccer fans won’t be able to purchase beer at World Cup venues under pressure from Qatar, they’ll still be able to drink Bud Zero!
*“regular” beer tends to run about 4-5% ABV.
Everyone I know that drank or drinks NA beers was an ex-drinker, or perhaps having a break from booze.
I don’t drink because I discovered as a teen that even a sip of communion wine was enough to make me sick. Even a half-percent product might be iffy, if I’m drinking a full serving of it.
I’ve never had the inclination to try a non-alcoholic beer because, chemical intolerance aside, I don’t like the smell of beer, so I don’t expect I would like the taste, either. The few sips of wine I’ve tasted, though, were fine, and grape juice is fine, so a “non-alcoholic wine” (whatever it is that distinguishes that from “juice”) wouldn’t be an issue. I do drink sparkling juice on special occasions, if that’s what you mean.
I’ve always been a teetotaler. Nothing religious, I simply don’t desire intoxication.
Also, I am a finicky eater. As it happens, I don’t like the taste of alcohol. Since I don’t like the taste of regular beer, I never felt any urge to try the non-alcoholic version.
On New Year, I will drink carbonated grape juice.
In the words of Gene Simmons, “I get as much pleasure from a cheese Danish as some people get from a glass of fine wine. You take the wine, I’ll take the Danish, and we’ll both be happy.”
Carbonated grape juice is yummy and all, but there’s just a boat load of sugar in it. I find that non-alcoholic beers can offer more interesting tasting experiences, or at least something different every once in a while.
+1. This. What they said.
I stopped drinking at 27 when I met my ex-wife, a Muslim, who objected to alcohol on religious grounds. Since I had never drank a lot anyway, it wasn’t much of a sacrifice.
We have been divorced for a couple of years now, but I haven’t gone back to my old ways which means that I’ve spent more than two-thirds of my life as teetotaler.
I do very occasionally try mocktails of alcohol-free wine and I’m always amazed at how close they come to the real thing in terms of taste as I remember it (minus the alcohol of course).
In an amusing, but probably short-lived, reversal of the situation I was in 20 years ago, I’ve been in contact with a woman on Bumble who’s really pretty but seems, based on the few messages we’ve exchanged and her pictures, to drink daily. She’s just expressed astonishment at the fact that I don’t drink. It looks like it could be a deal-breaker for her.
People have to be batshit crazy to like this
No, the only thing quasi-associated with beer that I like is Murree’s Peach Malt.
They offered no credible cite for that claim, so I am calling bullshit.
At least in the United States the brewing and liquor industries are heavily regulated by both the federal and state governments. And those industries have stern quality control processes. You don’t really think large, reputable companies like Miller-Coors or Anhauser Busch are going to get caught with their pants down and distribute product labeled “non-alcoholic” when it actually had almost 2% ABV, do you? They would get their dicks smacked seven ways from Sunday if they were caught doing that. There is no motivation to distribute N/A brew with alcohol content greater than the lawful amount.
If there were any chance of anyone getting a buzz off N/A it wouldn’t be legal to sell to minors, which it is in most locations.
Last word on this: During my first career in law enforcement I was a compliance investigator in the vice sector of a large metropolitan Sheriffs Office. I did all sorts of things. Made sure taverns and restaurants were up to code on their licensing, made sure there were tax stamps on cigarettes and liquor, investigate complaints of places selling to minors, making sure dance clubs didn’t have underagers stripping (it happens) and so on.
One training I attended was real fun and interesting. We all drank as much Miller Sharps as we could in under an hour. Most of us got about 9 down, one guy got 11. This woman that only weighed about a buck managed to get 7 down in about 40 minutes. We knew before hand what we were going to do and arrived with empty stomachs. The goal was to see if any amount of BAC could be detected.
Then we blew into an Intoxilizer. Not one of us (there were about 15 of us all together) registered any amount. Zero. Zip. Might as well have been drinking Kool Aid. Would have tasted better, anyway.
I’ve never been in a relationship with a woman who didn’t drink, and can’t imagine it ever happening. Thinking more on this, I realized many of the women I’ve been in relationships with began when I met them in a bar.
ETA: on further reflection, I wonder if someone has to be a bit drunk to become involved with me.
One such study.
“Methods: Forty-five different beverages claiming to contain no or low alcohol content in the Canadian market were tested for ethanol concentration using gas chromatography.”
“Results: Thirteen (29%) of the beverages contained ethanol levels higher than the declared concentration on their label. Six beverages claiming to contain no alcohol were found to contain greater than 1% ethanol.”
“Conclusion: Pregnant women seeking replacement to alcoholic beverages may be misled by these labels, unknowingly exposing themselves and their unborn babies to ethanol.”
Not a credible cite.
As I posted I was talking about products made in the United States. I see no cite regarding those.
And if sharing a personal experience is not a credible cite it means anyone on these boards that shares any personal experience has no credibility and is therefor a liar.
That training session was video taped like a lot of ours were. I doubt the video still exists as this was over 20 years ago. And if it does it would be on 8mm or VHS. I would have no way of showing it here.
If I could I’d show the video of us drinking real alcohol to see how much it took for us to get legally intoxicated. Then we attempted to pass our EVOC test on a closed track. It took eight cans of beer to get me over the limit (.10 at the time) and I could successfully pass the test until I hit .16. After that I was killing cones in the serpentine.
Now THAT was a fun training session. I bet nobody does such things any more. Too bad. It really gives one a perspective on alcohols effects and how intoxicated people are perceiving the driving experience.
Hold your horses there, Yosemite.
I was pointing out the irony of your first having dismissed an addiction treatment group’s statements as “unreliable” because specific literature references weren’t provided, but then posted an unverifiable personal anecdote to supposedly prove otherwise.
Lying was neither suggested nor implied.
I hear you on the taste of beer. Can’t stand it. A few I’ve tasted have literally gagged me. People say “Oh, well you haven’t tried X.” I try X, and it tastes like beer.
I have a couple of reasons for having gone completely alcohol-free five years ago, but the main one was that it has a high association with a few kinds of cancer, and my parents both died of cancer, neither pleasantly.
But I have never been much of a drinker, and never kept alcohol in the house. I buy it before a party, and usually give the leftovers to guests to take home, because it isn’t going to get used soon.
I had a roommate for a couple of years after college, and she was in recovery. She said she didn’t mind if I brought home something for immediate consumption, but was it OK if we didn’t keep alcohol in the house? I didn’t keep alcohol in the house as it was, so, no problem.
I may not be a fair gauge, then. But I’m another for whom NA beer isn’t on the radar. If I ever did drink beer, it would be as an alcohol delivery system.
I kinda feel the same way, as a vegetarian, about TVP “meats.” If I wanted to eat meat, I’d eat meat. I don’t eat meat, because I don’t like meat. There are other nice benefits, but mainly it’s a personal preference.
So if I’m out and everyone else is ordering drinks, I get a Coke.
I agree here. The USA regulates these things quite strongly.
Now, things that are not supposed to have alcohol but sometimes do is another thing entirely. I have heard that Kombucha sometimes gets some abv.
I went thru 5 pages of Google scholar with Non-alcoholic beer… and assorted keywords, and @Jackmannii Jackmannii cite was the only one I found that claimed higher ABV content, and I am not sure what was tested there in Canada.
If your label said no more tha 0.5 percent alcohol by volume and your product routinely exceeded that amount, you would be opening yourself up to immense legal liability on the United States.
This is one of the reasons I think our American litigiousness and class action system is one of the greatest things in the world. It helps get things fucking solved I a way you just could not do otherwise.
Cripes, any cold medicine with alcohol as a preservative (it can be an anti-tussive, but I’m pretty sure it’s only a preservative in OTC meds) cannot be labeled as “children’s,” and no one under 18 can buy it.
Mouthwash, too.