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My journey to find a go-to non-alcoholic beer continues. So far, they have all followed the same basic recipe which is to crank up the hops add a bunch of water, and try to do some marionette version of a beer. Some do it better than others, but none of them do it great. The closest to a good one that I've encountered so far is the Guinness, and that just might be my fondness for Guinness showing through. Well, I have a fondness for Lagunitas IPA, and most of their other beers, so maybe this is going to be a hit.
The beer is almost indistinguishable from other beers, as it has a nice, gold color that is almost brassy it's so dark. I understand that there are two main methods of brewing a non-alcoholic beer. One is to brew a beer and prevent the alcohol from being developed in the first place, and the other is to remove the alcohol afterward. I don't really understand how either method works, and I don't know which one they used here. For that matter, I don't know which one is supposed to be better than the other. Hopefully, they do. The head is not retained particularly well, and it's gone by the time I take my picture outside. The aroma is mostly pine hops, and it is little else. This does not seem to bode well for the taste of the beverage.
I think this is the first time I've ever had a sip of a beer and immediately tasted celery. I taste celery more than I taste any things that I expect to find in a beer. I kind of like celery, so this isn't particularly offensive, but it's not tasting like beer. I didn't really even taste the pine that I expected to taste. This is quite confusing, a bit confounding, and I'm left without a conclusion. Instead, I'm going to have to resort to the full gulp.
Tip-in is too much carbonation combined with some of the celery, quite a bit of water, and a strange tartness. The middle can best be described as crushable, as I can crush a bottle of water, and this is basically just fizzy water in the middle. The finish has the return of celery, and I wish I could say there were more flavors, but I don't taste them.
Bottom Line: It is confounding that they would put this out.
0.75/5
