Alcohol-free booze is becoming big business

https://www.economist.com/business/2025/01/06/alcohol-free-booze-is-becoming-big-business

by edward • 2 years ago

29 81 2 years ago

fredley2• 2 years ago

Anecdotally, my local (UK) brewery’s most profitable beer is their alcohol free one. Partly this is because it’s priced the same as their alcoholic beers, but they pay no duty!

gadders2• 2 years ago

This is what pisses me off about non-alcoholic products. They don't take all the duty out of the price of the new product.

fredley2• 2 years ago

I think if they did, they’d sell less of it. Consumers would associate the cheaper price with a poorer quality product (most are probably not directly aware of the amount of duty they’re paying or even that they are). The whole goal of non alcoholic beer is to make it feel as much as a real beer as possible. A big price disparity would create more of a difference.

mynegation2• 2 years ago

Not an expert, but as far as I know, the best way to make non-alcoholic drink is to make real thing and then carefully take alcohol out of it, so at least in terms of COGS the producer will spend more money. But mostly I think it is supply demand balance.

high_na_euv• 2 years ago

In Poland in last decade there was huge boom of 0% beers

trwired• 2 years ago

Another booming segment is energy drinks. I wonder if these two have a common root, that is a yet-to-be-(re)discovered market for soft drinks marketed towards adults. In the region's early history that niche was occupied by kvass. It is still very popular in ex-Soviet countries, but not so much in the CEE area.

Ekaros2• 2 years ago

Non-alcoholic ciders seem to have about half the sugar content of Cola. So even for non-light drinkers they can be somewhat better albeit more expensive option.

sebtron• 2 years ago

In the last 15 years or so 0% beer has improved from "sparkling piss" to something passable, I bet this explains at least part of it. Nowadays 0% Heineken is almost as good as regular Heineken - which means it is not that good, but you can keep a bottle in your hands and occasionally take a sip while you try to socialize.

mpawelski• 2 years ago

Can confirm. Plus nowadays you can find 0% beers that are actually quite good and very similar in taste to a regular beer. In the past there were really only shifty ones.

Vampiero• 2 years ago

Same as intercourse-free sex. A big business. But a sad one.

underyx• 2 years ago

Decreased poison intake is not sad, actually.

cduzz3• 2 years ago

The sayings are "the dose makes the poison." or "The solution is dilution."

I've found over time that neither aphorism is true. The poison is poison, regardless. Caffeine, Sugar, Plastic, Alcohol, Social media --- all bad like arsenic, but tastier (or more useful).

I want to drink some sugar free beverage that's not just water, and find that my only option is typically caffeinated (or alcoholic, which is nearly the same as sugar).

So indeed, decreasing poison intake is a good thing. Since life is inevitability fatal, I'll probably not go to the extreme of eliminating any of those.

wiseowise5• 2 years ago

Ah. Old and tired (false) equivalence of "alcohol free beer is like sex with a fake woman", or whatever alcoholics used to say.

ty68534• 2 years ago

Have you considered this comes from experience? Just because you don't have that experience doesn't mean others don't. 0 EtOH feels extremely fake to me even from the taste, I'm not sure fermented ethanol flavor can really be imitated.

Some people may like it but for most there's far better not beer tasting non ethanol drinks and fake beer just feels like fake Sriracha.

batch12• 2 years ago

STD-free sex maybe. I really don't drink anymore because I got tired of its negative aspects like weight gain, hangovers, doing stupid things, loss of self control, loss of productive time, etc.

I have a few Athletic beers in the fridge for when I get the craving for the taste of beer. It happens maybe once every few months when I'm doing something like grilling, but it usually only takes one to quench. I don't care if others drink, but it's really not something I care about much anymore.

alganet• 2 years ago

A billion dollar alcohol-free booze industry is a great way to advertise your trillion dollar alcohol business that had several advertisement restrictions placed worldwide in the latest decades.

Just put a 0% in the name and continue advertising the same brand, keep the same multi-billion dollar deals, etc.

It's disgusting.

teractiveodular2• 2 years ago

https://archive.is/2025.01.06-190547/https://www.economist.c...

jollyllama• 2 years ago

Is this a function of key demographics (i.e. millenials) aging? Is it possible that a decline in general health has resulted in people physically not processing alcohol as well compared to prior cohorts?

lm28469• 2 years ago

From what I understand zoomers are more concerned about their health, at least more than previous generations. That's one of the good things that came out of "influencers": sport, nutrition, no smoking, &c.

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/email/genz/2024/01...

Daneel_• 2 years ago

That, and alcohol is just so expensive.

globular-toast2• 2 years ago

Not smoking is a millennial thing. So expect smoking to come back as the children of millennials rebel against their parents.

rob742• 2 years ago

I suspect it's not a decline in general health, it's more the fact that people not used to consuming large amounts of alcohol will have more trouble processing it...

lambdaba6• 2 years ago

There is, I recently read about the enormous quantities of alcohol that the average American drank in the 1800s. They didn't live as long (but not by that much, considering they didn't have modern medicine), but they were physically active, had healthier social ties, and weren't exposed to the myriad of other poisons most of us are nowadays.

ty68534• 2 years ago

Weed is legal in 2/3 the population states, unless a federal prosecutor doesn't like you and you have a squirrel hunting gun.

I drink because it's fairly well ingrained as a libation at this point as weed was highly illegal when I formed adult / adolescent habits.

The young ones will likely phase out alcohol simply because it no longer makes sense amongst their options for chemical relaxation.

linsomniac• 2 years ago

Gen X here. Sometimes I don't want the calories. Sometimes I want to do things after having a beer, and the alcohol tends to make me feel lazy. Around here we tend towards pretty big beers, it's nearly impossible to get something with less than 5% ABV.

teractiveodular2• 2 years ago

Brands are doing what they can to lift the appeal of alcohol-free alternatives.

In Indonesia and India, public alcohol advertising is basically banned, so for decades you've seen huge outdoor ads for Bintang Zero (which is terrible) and Kingfisher Water (same logo as the beer) for the sole purpose of circumventing these laws.

rpastuszak• 2 years ago

I remember the same happening in Poland ca. 15-20 years ago (I’m not sure if that’s still the case).

Another way of sneaking in alcohol into ads relied on linguistic jokes, e.g.:

You’ll get an ad telling people that Bols (a vodka brand) sponsored a boat with the same name.

In Polish łódka Bols (the Bols boat, /wootkah/) sounds almost the same as wódka Bols (Bols vodka /vootkah/). Given the stronger association between the word Bols and vodka it requires a conscious effort not to hear the implied word vs what is actually spoken.

Sinister, but gotta admire the chutzpah.

I few weeks back I saw some ads for cocktails with alcohol free gin (in Italy IIRC)

jackstraw14• 2 years ago

Pretty sure you see Heineken Zero ads all over some Formula 1 tracks for the same reason.

rob742• 2 years ago

Alcohol free beer is nice, what I don't get is alcohol free spirits. Above a certain alcohol content, the burning sensation caused by the alcohol is part of the experience of drinking it, and that can't be replicated without alcohol. So alcohol-free gin is maybe good for cocktails, but does anybody really drink it in its pure form?

foooorsyth• 2 years ago

Just being able to hold a drink in your hand as social cover is part of what you’re buying. At a Christmas party, you just want to have what appears to be the peppermint Christmas-themed drink in your hand like everyone else, even if you’re pregnant or don’t drink for whatever reason. People will stop asking if they can get you a drink. Not everyone buying an NA drink cares about perfectly emulating the sensation of alcohol entering the body.

chung8123• 2 years ago

Tonic and lime or club soda and lime can do that as well.

kasey_junk2• 2 years ago

Mostly I just use it for cocktails but I’ve found a couple of na “spirits” that I’ll drink over ice like a real alcohol. Particularly the Free Spirits Bourbon and the Almave Amber.

https://drinkfreespirits.com/collections/non-alcoholic-spiri...

https://www.almave.com/

mynegation2• 2 years ago

Maybe not the gin (did not like it to begin with), but alcohol-free wine, yes. The taste still gives some memories of ritual and celebration without associated health damage. Good likeness of wine, turns out, is not very cheap. You can buy a cheap non-alcoholic wine that taste something like kombucha or grape juice, but really good brands are constantly sold out in our local alcohol-free drink shop, despite being 2-3x the price of the real wine.

matthewmcg• 2 years ago

The pricing makes sense for the better brands as they have to basically make a nice wine, and then take additional steps to remove the alcohol. At least that’s what they do for the better alcohol-free Rieslings. See https://thezeroproof.com/products/buy-eins-zwei-zero-rieslin...

esprehn• 2 years ago

alcohol-free gin is maybe good for cocktails, but does anybody really drink it in its pure form?

That depends on what the zero proof spirit is aiming for. I've found some of them are not very good alone because they're trying to replicate a particular flavor in the cocktail, but others (ex. Monday's Gin) are great with just ice. We keep a bottle of it around for a fun evening beverage.

The "savory non-tea zero proof beverage" for the evening is a difficult thing to come by. That's the space these fake spirits are trying to fill.

spacebanana7• 2 years ago

I recommend trying alcohol free gin & tonic. It’s very competitive with ‘normal’ soft drinks like Pepsi & Fanta, especially if you’re looking for variety.

zeta0134• 2 years ago

Oh absolutely. At most restaurants, my options are water, badly stale tea, a variety of sodas, and alcoholic beverages. All of the interesting drinks are poisoned. I want to enjoy the variety and see what flavors and experiences are out there without the poison, and the N/A menu is my key to actually doing that. Suddenly I can try "real drinks" and get all of the fun with none of the nauseating headache.

Why wouldn't I want to do this?

onion2k• 2 years ago

Manufacturers made alcohol-free versions of their products so that governments wouldn't step in to regulate them. They can claim to be responsible product owners who offer low-alcohol versions of their drinks to keep people safe from harm, which is true to an extent, which means governments don't force them to do things to be safer in other ways (reduced alcohol on main brand offerings, proof-based taxation, etc.)

They don't really make these things because they're a good idea. They do them because it's cheaper than not doing them.

SebFender3• 2 years ago

Alcohol is the unknown killer, not talked enough in health and part of so many complications, I'm happy to see this now a bigger business. I'm not really seeing these products over here but hope it gets more traction. To anyone touched by this, great news can only come from it.

BoxFour• 2 years ago

It’s a topic that comes up quite often in recent years, so I don’t know what you mean by “not talked enough in health”.

The Surgeon General recently issued a warning about it, plenty of popular science articles about how even small amounts are unhealthy, and younger generations are drinking quite a bit less.

SebFender3• 2 years ago

In certain circles maybe - but in generally relationships with major problems, cancers and so on are really under the radar.

chii• 2 years ago

you're assuming the increase in non-alcoholic drink sales is due to a decrease in alcoholic ones.

SebFender3• 2 years ago

No but I do hope it does - That's my call for the future - alcohol is a destroyer and needs to be held as such - just like smoking and drugs.

cantSpellSober• 2 years ago

N/A beer lists the calories on the can, as a bonus

I don't wanna guess how many calories are in the quadruple IPAs I've had

dinkblam• 2 years ago

Instead of selling you extremely expensive juice that has no effect apart from increasing your belly and decreasing your wallet they should ideally try to develop something that has the positive attributes of alcohol without the negative side-effects.

There is Sentia ( https://sentiaspirits.com ) but so far it has basically little to no effect.

a12k• 2 years ago

It has an awesome effect of being able to more effortlessly spend time with friends, of whom 50% of them drink alcohol, in environments that are generally meant for alcohol drinking like cocktail bars and pubs. You’ll also be happy to know that NA cocktails and NA beers tend to have substantially less calories, so better for the “belly” than alcohol-based drinks.

Further, if you’re going to look at it through the lens you’ve chosen, I recommend just drinking water, which has been shown to have strong positive side effects without the downsides on calories or cost.

mk89• 2 years ago

This is visible also in Germany since 5-10 years. There has been now some development of really tasty alternatives, from the classic "radler" now with a mix with everything (e.g., Becks Ice) to 0.0% alcohol like Bitburger Isotonic, which is really tasty and refreshing.

Wine, on the other hand, is impossible to make alcohol free.

sbuttgereit• 2 years ago

I like beer. One might say it makes me a jolly good fellow... but...

I use to really dislike non-alcoholic beer. Not because I had any problem with the idea of it, but because they all tasted like crap.

These days, I'm finding that there are some I actually like. By taste, they are clearly not regular beers: they have to be taken as their own thing. But they're not bad at all and they are close enough to satisfy the want of a nice beer. I like them when I don't want any of the effects of the alcohol... maybe I'm working on something that requires, you know, thought, or I will drink them during my monthly poker game. I'm glad there are more and better choices.

What I am missing is something in between the full-on-not-worried-about-alcohol beers and non-alcoholic beers. I want a good range of choices in "small beers", where they're good and they'll get me relaxed but I can have a few without getting too buzzed or drunk. I've seen some advertised here and there (none anywhere close to where I live).

As for non-alcoholic spirits, I agree with those that don't get it. The spirits I like depend far too much on the interaction of alcohol and how it evaporates for the overall experience to see the point.

jakubmazanec• 2 years ago

I recommend non-alcoholic beers from Nilio [1]. Probably only available in Czechia and Slovakia though.

[1] https://www.pivonilio.cz/

lambdaba6• 2 years ago

Just curious - why is this flagged?

archagon• 2 years ago

Maybe some drinkers are triggered by the idea that not everyone wants to drink alcohol?

It’s a bizarre attitude but one that I’ve certainly encountered before.

zabil• 2 years ago

I enjoy the taste of hops and personally, I find zero version better than their alcoholic counterparts, not sure everyone else feels like that.

I wonder why it took the market so long to boom in this segment. Nice to see other recommendations.

nojvek• 2 years ago

Zero IPA is really good

bellgrove• 2 years ago

Anecdotally I've found that almost all alcohol-free cocktails on the menu are priced the same as regular version cocktails; like $15-$20! In Canada, at least, I believe there are licensing and taxes that contribute to the price of alcoholic beverages, so I don't understand why an alcohol-free cocktail should cost anywhere close to the regular drink.

InfiniteRand• 2 years ago

I'm curious how many people tasted beer for the first time, and purely based on the taste wanted to drink more. My impression, and this might just be limited exposure, is most bitter drinks are niche products unless they deliver alcohol or caffeine. Does anyone have a good counter-example?

Alcohol-free booze is becoming big business

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