Photo: Gary L Hider (Shutterstock)
Beer is one of mankind’s greatest achievements. We’ve been brewing it according to various recipes for thousands of years—the ancient Egyptians were brewing up a storm, and we can actually replicate their recipes in the modern day. While beer is often associated with alcohol and inebriation, people who love beer actually love it as a beverage, not just an alcohol-delivery mechanism.
Of course, beer is an alcohol-delivery mechanism, which can sometimes be problematic if you’re a designated driver, if you have a big meeting in the morning, or if you’re just not drinking for whatever reason. That’s why we have non-alcoholic (NA) beer. (Pro tip: There is actually alcohol in NA beer—legally a beer can have up to 0.5% ABV and still be considered NA.)
But anyone who has ever tried an O’Douls knows it is a terrible, no-good, awful beer, and its reputation has dominated our conceptions of NA beer for decades. But the world of NA beer has advanced a lot in recent years. Small craft breweries and the huge players alike have discovered there’s a market for NA beer, and they’ve been upping their game by employing techniques like vacuum distilling, which lowers the boiling point of alcohol so you don’t need as much damaging heat, and “reverse osmosis,” which leeches the alcohol from the beer using an extremely fine filter.
So which non-alcoholic beers are worth drinking today? Here are the 10 best you can enjoy right now.
