Your actual real life alcohol-free ‘zebra striping’
The increasing ubiquity, quality and variety of alcohol-free beer has meant that it’s slowly become a meaningful part of our drinking habits.
A few years ago it was common for people like the late Peter ‘Pub Curmudgeon’ Edwardson to argue that nobody ever drank AF beer except as an emergency measure. For example, because they were the designated driver. And if you told them that, actually, you were going to pay for cabs for everyone, they’d hurl their half-finished bottle of Heineken 0.0 into the nearest bin and order a barley wine to start catching up.
This was largely true, we think, because however much we kidded ourselves, almost no AF beers were truly enjoyable. In craft beer circles, where being fussy and having high standards were part of the game, why would we expect people to be tolerant of thin, vegetal, fizzy, weird-tasting brews?
But some people do actually like them. Ray’s mum, for example, is actually excited to drink BrewDog Punk AF. Perhaps it’s because she’s never been a real ale enthusiast or beer snob, and mostly drinks whisky when she does want to get a buzz on, but she genuinely finds it enjoyable. What might read as thin and one-dimensional to some is, to her, pleasingly crisp, dry and bitter.
The first AF beer that we recall finding pleasant to drink – as in, we occasionally crave it – is Bristol Beer Factory’s Clear Head. It still has some of the typical flaws but, crucially, nothing that reads to us an off-flavour, and its hop aroma is actually pleasing. On the right occasion, it can be quite refreshing.
We still find most AF beers unsatisfying or even unpleasant. We’re baffled, for example, by the lie that Schneider alcohol-free Weizen is any good when it is, in fact, like drinking Cup-a-Soup.
In recent months, however, as perhaps our alcohol tolerance has taken yet another turn for the worse – we’re both now in our late forties – there have been occasions when AF beer has been a vital part of our tactical approach to a session.
At the Lost & Grounded Oktoberfest event a few weeks ago, we needed to be around for several hours to meet friends who could only get there later in the afternoon. On top of that, we wanted to make sure we got to drink plenty of L&G’s Festbier which, at 5.8%, is by no means sessionable under normal circumstances.
What worked for us was something like:
- Festbier.
- AF beer.
- Festbier mixed with AF beer.
- Festbier.
- Repeat.
We were still a touch giddy by the end of the afternoon but not vomiting-in-the-bushes pissed. And we were able to get up the next day, do all the life admin that needs to be squeezed into the weekend, and go to the pub later in the afternoon.
We also found the AF beers unobtrusive enough that we forgot we were drinking them at times, perhaps partly because the real pleasures were the music, the company, and the general vibe of the event.
You might say, ah, but this is still a version of the Pub Curmudgeon’s ‘distress purchase’; you don’t actually want the AF beer; it’s about utility, not pleasure; if you could drink without getting intoxicated, you wouldn’t touch the AF beer at all. That’s fair.
What we will say, though, is that zebra-striping (alternating AF and normal beer) has another interesting pleasure-intensifying effect…
You know how the first beer of the session, or the first beer after a few dry days, tastes amazing, but the second, third, fourth beers of the session never quite have the same zing? Resetting with an AF beer between every round, or every couple of rounds, solves this problem.
That’s right: if you step down from the heights of pleasure and drink a merely adequate, inoffensive AF beer, then every proper beer you drink feels like the first of the session. You appreciate it more, and you value what alcohol brings to the party.
Contrast – white stripes, black stripes – increases your overall enjoyment.
