Beer Pearing

With the rise of non-alcoholic beer in recent years it was perhaps inevitable that established players outside of the beer industry would take notice. After all, no brewing licence or, arguably, expertise is needed, while a brand profile, especially in the healthy food sector, can only be beneficial. Hence it shouldn't have been a surprise to discover that omnipresent food and lifestyle gurus the Happy Pear twins had released a couple of zero-alcohol beers.

Well, almost zero: both of these are 0.5% ABV. I start with High Tide, the lager. It looks well in the glass: a fine and pale spun gold with a tight continental-style head. There's a slight hint of tell-tale wort in the aroma, but also some enticing lemon notes too. It's not sweet, which is a big plus, but it goes a little too much in the opposite direction. For one thing the texture is very watery, resembling nothing so much as sparkling water itself. A bit of malt sweetness and body would have been welcome. What flavour there is is very dry, somewhere between Shredded Wheat and old brown paper, twanging like it's oxidised. It's not pleasant, and barely beer-like. While it's easy to drink when cold and fizzy, the stale grain of the aftertaste undoes any enjoyment factor.

You can tell it's not beer-people behind this as the pale ale is hardly hazy at all. Hoppy Days is a mostly-clear light shade of amber and smells of mango, peach and passionfruit, much in the way of modern pale ales. A slightly saccharine sweetness sits behind this but doesn't get too much in the way. If they can pull the tropical complexity through into the flavour they'll have a winner, I thought. In the event, they manage it to a certain extent. I'm made very aware of the role of alcohol as a carrier of flavour, because while this has the hop fruit in its taste, it's faint, muted, and a bit drowned out by watery fizz. While it doesn't taste unpleasant, I couldn't recommend it as a suitable replacement for a real beer: it's definitely a compromised drinking experience.

Honestly, I thought these would be worse than they were. They can't be accused of going for the lowest common denominator or turning out non-alcoholic clichés. They've put the work in and may even be in the upper tier of this sort of product available in Ireland. Not that that's saying much.