How to buy nonalcoholic beer

The beer aisle is where production type stops being pedantry and starts saving you money. A 0.0 can be a full-strength recipe with the alcohol taken out. It can be a beer that never climbed past 0.5%. It can also be flavored water with hops on the label. All three show up next to each other.

Decide what you want the glass to do

If you want a pub pour that still behaves like beer — roast, bitterness, head — start with dealcoholized stubs of known brands and with low-fermentation craft that publishes a method. If you want citrus and chill without malt weight, hop water and RTDs are a different category. Do not grade one against the other.

For the process fork itself, see dealcoholized beer versus beer brewed to 0.5%. Ranked removal beers live on Best dealcoholized beer. Producers who declined to name the process are on Process withheld.

Read for a named process, not a lifestyle claim

Words that help: cold filtration, membrane, vacuum, reverse osmosis, arrested fermentation, specialized yeast. Words that do not: “crafted for mindful drinking,” “zero compromise,” “brewed differently.” A brand that will not say how the alcohol left — or never arrived — leaves you guessing.

Athletic-style proprietary NA brewing can be excellent. Treat it as naturally low alcohol until they document a removal step. Guinness-style cold filtration is dealcoholized when the producer says so with a source you can cite.

Taste for bitterness and dry finish, not for ethanol heat

Ethanol is gone. Body has to come from malt, protein, nitrogen, or residual sugar. A stout that finishes dry and bitter is doing the category’s work. An IPA that collapses into hop tea after two sips is not saved by a loud aroma. Fructose and lactose show up often; they are patches, not disqualifiers, but you should know they are there.

Shop cold, then rotate stock

NA beer stales. Prefer a shop with a cold box and a date code you can read. Multipacks of a beer you already like beat a mixed case of strangers. Once you have a house lager, pils, and IPA that hold up, expand by style — not by whatever is new on the endcap.

Use the cellar filters

On this site, filter beer by production type and method first, then by style. Score alone will not tell you whether you wanted a filtered stout or a hop seltzer. The badge and the number answer different questions; buy with both in view.

For ranked bottles already tasted here, start at Best beer. The process fork is dealcoholized beer versus beer brewed to 0.5%.

In the cellar

Compare holds up to four. Want to try keeps a bottle in My Bottles.