Why booze-free booze isn't free: Shoddy Goods 005
10
Hey, Jason Toon here with the fifth issue of Shoddy Goods, the newsletter about the stuff people make, buy, and sell. More people are looking into non-alcoholic drinks that still give the taste and experience of having a drink, but often are surprised by the prices. I wanted to find out why alcohol-free didn’t come with a discount.
OK, nobody freak out, but in early 2023, I was diagnosed with cancer. Stage 3 colon cancer, specifically, or “bowel cancer” as Australians call it with their characteristic bluntness. I’m pretty much fine now, fingers crossed. But I had to go through six months of chemo to get here, during which alcohol was verboten. (Just when I needed a drink the most…)
To be honest, I’d been moving that way anyway. Hangovers, feeling stupid, feeling stupid about hangovers: the pleasure-to-pain ratio has been tilting bad for a while. The experience of chemo sealed the deal. Imagine a hangover that lasts six months and wasn’t even caused by anything fun. So yeah, I was ready to never get drunk again.
But the rituals of drinking were harder to give up. I still wanted a complex, bracing cocktail before dinner, or a beer on the softball field, just without the alcohol. And I thought, hey, maybe while I’m at it, I’ll save some money, too. Soda’s cheap. Coffee’s cheap. Water’s cheap. Non-alcoholic drinks should be just as cheap, right?
Uh, no. While there are booze-free offerings at all price points, their prices pretty much correspond to their alcoholic analogues. It got me wondering why, and judging by online chatter, I’m not the only one. I soon learned it’s the wrong question to ask.
I’m glad you’re getting sober, Google, but don’t be such a cheapskate about it.
From bribery to brewery
To disabuse me of my foolish assumptions, I turned to somebody who knows what he’s talking about. Andy McMillan is one of the founders of Heck, a non-alcoholic craft brewery in Portland, Oregon. McMillan first noticed the thirst for alcohol-free drinks while running the XOXO Festival, an intentionally small but mighty annual gathering of people doing interesting things online.
“We have a lot of people who come to the festival who don’t drink for myriad reasons,” McMillan says. “Fully one-third of U.S. adults don’t drink at all. There’s another third that would have, like, a glass of champagne or a little cocktail on their birthday kind of thing.”
Then McMillan happened to visit the Getaway Bar in New York, a pioneering venue for the new non-alcoholic cocktail movement (slogan: “Don’t Drink with Us”). That inspired him to open a “zero-proof” pop-up bar in Portland called Suckerpunch with Portland bartender and caterer Matt Mount.
Rather than try in vain to imitate the standards, Suckerpunch planted its flag for original drinks that aspired to the complexity of classic cocktails without mimicking them. “We were building all of these drinks around novel base components like tea, kombucha, you know, some of the other novel spirit alternatives that weren’t parroting liquor.”
After a booming response, a long pandemic-induced shutdown, and six months of packed houses, Suckerpunch lost their pop-up space and McMillan lost his illusions about the rigors of running a hospitality business. It closed in August 2022.
But the response to Suckerpunch’s house beer, brewed by longtime Portland brewing expert Justin Miller, got McMillan thinking. “Someone tried to slip me 20 bucks to take a six-pack home. I was like, ‘I can’t let you do that, because if you leave it out in the sun and try to drink it two weeks later, it’ll be alcoholic.’”
But they took it as an auspicious omen for their next move. “It was like, yeah, okay, that’s gonna be a very good anecdote for investors.” The first Heck beer, their Silver Linings IPA, rolled off the line this March, followed by the Gentle Persuasion Golden. It’s priced about the same as any other local craft six-pack, at $15.
Alcohol isn’t expensive, people are
McMillan explains to me that there are two ways to make non-alcoholic beer. The more common way in the past, especially for big corporate brewers, is to make regular beer, then remove the alcohol.
“You can’t just go in and find the alcohol and only the alcohol,” he says. “You end up ripping a lot of the body and the flavor and the subtlety out of the beer. That’s traditionally how non-alcoholic beer has been made. And that’s why non-alcoholic beer has a bad reputation, because it tastes watered back and it tastes like it’s not full and complete and intentional.”
The other way to do it is to control the brewing process so that it never quite turns alcoholic. That’s what Heck does.
“We brew our beer like a beer, so it costs the same as making a beer,” he says. “We’re controlling the fermentation, so it doesn’t become alcoholic. And that requires using different strains of yeast and different products in the beer. But it means that our costs are relatively similar to making a regular beer. It’s still the same malt bill, we’re still ordering hops, it’s the same amount of water.”
So, one method is a similar process to making standard beer. The other method is making standard beer, then doing more stuff to it. Nothing about this makes NA beer cheaper to make. It all has to be done by people, and takes time, which means it takes money.
“The most expensive part of these businesses is people,” McMillan says. “People are expensive. And taking care of people is expensive.”
Huh, looks like beer to me. Photo by Jessica Zollman Winslow @jayzombie, courtesy of Heck.
It’s harder to mimic alcohol than to make it
A lot of the characteristics we associate with alcoholic drinks are byproducts of the alcohol itself, especially with the highest-alcohol drinks: liquor. Think of the body of whiskey or gin, that verrry slightly heaviness and viscosity. There aren’t many other substances that can mimic that. And the most common one - sugar - is also something people are tending to avoid these days. Is a super-sugary “virgin” cocktail really any better for you than the hard stuff?
“It’s definitely an endemic condition to like, sort of to replace the strong flavor of alcohol,” McMillan says. “A lot of non-alcoholic drinks just pile on the sugar.”
The ethanol in alcohol also allows it to absorb flavors more deeply than water, and to absorb flavors that aren’t water-soluble. Approaching the complexity and variety of a half-decent spirit requires NA distillers to get creative, exploring techniques from the pharmaceutical and perfume industries. All of which, again, takes time, people, and money.
And don’t forget the burn. The bracing edge that’s essential to liquor might be the most elusive quality to capture. Mark Livings, head of the London-based non-alcoholic distiller Lyre’s, told Wired they "use things like Sichuan pepper, capsicum, chili, and black pepper” to give their drinks that edge.
But of course, all those ingredients have distinctive flavors of their own that might not make sense for the spirit in question. (Take it from me, you can’t just soak some jalapeños in an agave syrup solution and get anywhere near tequila. It’ll be hard to drink, but not for the right reasons.)
To be honest, I haven’t found an NA spirit that’s totally nailed it, of either the standard-stand-in or doing-its-own-thing varieties. Whoever does will have free access to my wallet.
Zero-proof drinks: still new, still small
And someone probably will nail it. McMillan reminds me just how new this industry is.
“We’re only a few years into this,” he says. “The history of beer is thousands of years old. The same thing goes for the liquor equivalents. The solution to this is nothing glamorous. It’s time. It’s new. People are bad at it because it’s the beginning.”
The immaturity and small scale of the NA industry is, of course, another factor behind its prices. Like many startup craft brewers of both the alcoholic and non-alcoholic varieties, Heck is contracting with an existing brewery to make its beer while it gets its own premises sorted out.
“A lot of new non-alcoholic products, which is basically everything at the moment,” McMillan says, “they’re all co-packing with someone. They’re paying someone to make it for them, which is an order of magnitude more expensive than making it yourself. And because you need to scale to the point where you could justify leasing a building, buying equipment, having production staff.”
When a minus becomes a plus
All that said, at both Suckerpunch and Heck, McMillan hasn’t gotten as much guff about Heck’s prices as online kvetching might lead you to expect. “We’re not finding any real consumer pushback to charging as much as you would for a craft beer,” he says, “because it tastes like a regular beer. It’s good. And in fact, actually, it’s a bonus. We took out the only part of beer that is bad, which is the poison they put in it. Like literally, there’s a thing in there that attacks your body and makes you feel like trash.”
That’s why, to me, “why are non-alcoholic drinks so expensive?” is the wrong question. The more germane, interesting one is “why did I expect non-alcoholic ones to be cheaper?” We’re used to alcohol costing more than other drinks, but the booze is an almost free byproduct of all the other work and care and time that go into their production.
The same work, or even more, goes into non-alcoholic alternatives so I can still have those moments without the regrets and hangovers. Why would they be cheaper? Now that I think of drinking zero-proof as not only the same experience, but a better experience, the price parity makes perfect sense. I would have paid a lot of money to not feel like shit during chemo, too.
“Could we have everything about beer,” McMillan says, "everything about the flavors of beer that don’t exist anywhere else, everything about the experience of cracking a beer at five o’clock on a Friday and enjoying it at the end of a long work week, and being able to drink something cold and crisp and refreshing on a hot day when you’re floating down a river or whatever… can we have all of that but without the problems of beer?
“And it turns out, yes, we can.”
Huh, there’s a whole other industry I apparently knew nothing about. Have you ventured into the world of non-alcoholic drinks? Got any favorites, or tips for anyone wanting to, ahem, give it a shot? Join us for this week’s Shoddy Goods forum chat.
- Dave (and the rest of Meh)
Oh, and if you’re new to Shoddy Goods, check out our past issues:
The biggest, weirdest advertising flop in Olympics history
Does Temu creep you out? It’s worse than you think
The new vinylists
From a King to a Jack
- 17 comments, 27 replies
- Comment
Beer minus alcohol: Why? I’ve never been able to figure that one out.
Same not-great taste, and none of the fun side effects!
@werehatrack For me it’s all about the social situation. A beer at the bar after work or by my side on the softball field: the experience just isn’t the same without it.
I understand that beer is considered to be an acquired taste to a significant extent. I have never required that taste. And, having sampled a number of beers over the years at the behest of others, I have no particularly strong desire to try to acquire that taste. In fact, I have a rather stronger desire not to. I will admit that I have encountered a very small number of beers that I would willingly drink in the absence of something I liked better. I’ve encountered far more that would cause dehydration if they were the only liquid accessible to me.
@JasonToon @werehatrack if it’s the social aspect, I hang out with my friends holding a Coke all the same
@pakopako @werehatrack Social maybe doesn’t totally cover it… the ritual, the vibe, the experience. I was vegetarian for a long time and similarly, enjoyed a ballgame just a little bit more with a veggie hot dog and Thanksgiving more with some kind of imitation turkey. I get the idea that things are better when they are what they are. And I’m not above a Coke, believe me. But those emotional responses to those flavors are deeply ingrained and connected to those situations. If there’s a half-decent substitute, I’ll usually take it.
After my thing, I can’t drink like I used to, but I do enjoy a cold NA from time to time. NA beer has come along way since the days when O’Doul’s was the only option. A lot of the big players in the craft beer market are putting out some pretty tasty stuff. There is quite a selection of well-hopped NA IPAs. Heck, even Guinness makes a NA that would be tough to distinguish from the original. I get the ‘why bother’ question. But I like good beer, just can’t drink it like I used to. There is even a hopped seltzer that is pretty good. I do like hops!
@capnjb yes, a friend of mine is in remission from liver cancer and beer is what he missed the most. He likes Heineken 0.0. Which I have also discovered makes pretty decent beer bread. The last bottle he left in my fridge saved me from making a trip to the store when testing out a recipe.
@capnjb @ironcheftoni Yes I have tried some craft hopped seltzers and they are not bad at all. I did find one kind at a Trader Joes but their stock is often regional on things like that.
Weak taste is the problem. The IPA’s are your best bet. Partake13 & Athletic Brewing Co.
@bswanney IPAs exemplify everything that I find revolting about beer.
Alcohol isn’t the point of beer (at least not to me)… Beer isn’t really all that alcoholic, unless you’re absolutely chugging them down super fast you cant really get intoxicated on beer.
Beer is about flavour.
@OnionSoup If that is the case, why bother?
Sorry, not a beer fan. I’ll do a stout now and then in a Pub, but in most cases, nah.
@Cerridwyn usually I don’t. I don’t drink beer often, and when I do I never drink crappy beer.
I won’t touch most lagers. I prefer ales, usually darker the better. I’d rather drink water than swill like Miller or Budweiser. But I do enjoy a good beer.
@Cerridwyn @OnionSoup I like the flavor of beer with the right balance of malt and hops (not super bitter, just lots of floral flavor notes). Most of the really tasty ones have been IPAs, but lately I’ve come across some nicely balanced pale ales that are around 5-5.5% ABV. Fortunately I’m in the PNW which has an almost overwhelming number of really good local beers to pick from. Current favorites are Ninkasi, Buoy and Fort George pale ales.
@OnionSoup Oh yes, one can get intoxicated on beer.
Many, many decades ago, in the 1950s when I was in high school, I had a science teacher, a former Marine fresh out of school on the G.I. bill after service in Korea (if you’re weak on history, you can look this up. It was in all the papers at the time.)
Chappell was his name. Great guy. He maintained as you do, that one cannot get drunk on beer.
A few years later… I was in college, a chemistry major, and was duly invited to the department secretary’s house for her annual fall beer bash. There was a gathering of all my chemistry buddies there in her back yard, some chips, dips, and a huge keg of beer sitting in a washtub of ice.
I began to quaff the beer. (Note: Quaffing is a lot like drinking except you spill more.) After more beer than I now remember, I began to not feel so well.
Not well at all.
Not well atall, atall.
Increasingly desperate, I staggered around to near the front of her house out of sight of the rest of the crowd. I crawled up under some bushes and lost my cookies. I lost my cookies along with everything I had eaten in the past week, if not the month before.
Something told me that it was time to go. I told my wife that she was driving as I was beginning to have real trouble standing.
On the way home, I had to open the car door more than once while we were moving nonetheless and do you know what. I would open the door (no seatbelts in those days), and just lean out – not caring whether I fell out or not.
That was one of the longest short drives of my life to that point.
When we got home (we parked on the street) and lived in a “garden apartment” (translation from realtor speech, aka a basement) under a large house. I remember having to crawl up the slight hill across the lawn and some how making it down the little sidewalk into our one room.
The next morning, I awoke in a beam of sunlight though our one small window (Yes, it is true some dungeons have windows) I was laying on the bed, but all the bed covers and pillows were on the floor.
I wasn’t feeling bad.
Puzzled, I asked my wife what was going on. She wasn’t speaking to me.
A good while later, I learned that according to her, I would just raise upright in the bed and heave.
And that is why I say, balderdash, bah humbug, nonsense, claptrap, poppycock, bull dust, and that yes, indeedy, one can certainly get quite, quite drunk on beer.
Of course, YMMV. I was young, thin, and unused to drinking, naive, and foolish enough to believe what I had been told.
“Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.” – Steven Wright
@OnionSoup I find the flavor to be light and bad. (Compared to say a stout or lager)
I find cutting my IPA with apple juice or barley tea preferable. Because it at least tastes like a watered down juice or tea as opposed to watered down hops and bitters.
Like the taste if beer, the hoppier the better. Hate the effects of alcohol. I get sleepy and cranky long before I get intoxicated. Athletic IPAs are my happy answer.
The reason NA beer and liqueur should be cheaper is the tax. There is a huge tax for alcoholic drinks
@Ron_W 100%. I get it takes as much or more work to make, but taxes are a big part of why booze costs so much. Just being tax free should at least give them a price advantage.
@Ron_W @simnick From what I’ve just looked up, beer excise taxes average 7.2%. That’s about a buck on a $15 six-pack of beer - that’s not nothing, but I wouldn’t call that a big part of the consumer cost.
That’s from this report, which adds in another 9.4% in various other taxes, but I think those are a bit dubious, since they’re including things like the fact that US beer is often made in the US and so has to pay more US taxes, which…doesn’t feel particularly relevant (and would also be true of NA beer, regardless).
@dave @Ron_W But those taxes are generally on wholesale in most jurisdictions, and much higher than 7.2% in many states. If I increase wholesale cost by 7.2%, that generally has a much larger impact on the final shelf price.
@Ron_W @simnick Part of this may be that I’m in Missouri, where it’s apparently $0.06 per gallon, and the producer interviewed in this issue is in Oregon, where it’s $0.08 per gallon (according to this). It does certainly vary hugely by state.
Wait. I expected an episode of Shoddy Goods to tell me something terrible about the NA alcohol industry. Instead I get an interesting and possibly even uplifting essay about a new and growing industry.
I’m mad!
Take away. Something I’ve been saying for a very long time. The human cost of making something is what impacts the price the most. The ingredients in most cases are the least expensive part
@Cerridwyn And profit is how much that human sweat factor can be underpaid.
Me, too. January 2023. At least NA alcohol is a lot cheaper than cancer.
GO Brewing in Naperville IL for Chicago/IL peeps…great beers!
Gobrewing dot com
Popping in to squeak about being in the (inconsequentially tiny) minority of people who have a medical intolerance for and/or allergy to capsaicin, and are disappointed that some distillers find it necessary to include it in their elixirs—unlabeled, of course—to recreate the burn that is the least pleasant part of alcoholic beverages anyway. That said, I have a couple of excellent NA spirits in the house right now, and either they’re “clean” of capsaicin -or- something about the distilling process makes them safe (for me; YMMV). Guess I’ll have to grab an epi-pen and try Lyre’s to be sure!
@ampersandranch did not know that was a thing. Always thought the bite would be from something like nutritional yeast or vinegar.
@ampersandranch @pakopako I have a book somewhere called How to Make the Finest Wines at Home that has an anecdote about a bar owner who would buy the cheapest whiskey he could find and empty a box of peppercorns into it, and had the reputation for serving the strongest whiskey in town.
@ampersandranch
Wow!
I can’t imagine being intolerant to capsaicin!
I had no idea people suffered from that.
I love spicy things too much, I’m grateful I don’t have any food allergies that I’m aware of.
@simeon527 Growing up on the east coast when I did, it wasn’t such a big deal. My move to Colorado—where chili peppers are prized and used ubiquitously—made it more of an issue. I had an unpleasant experience just last week with a patty melt, of all things (they’d added nacho cheese sauce, not mentioned on the menu and who does that?). But we’re on the cusp of pepper roasting season, and boy, do I love that aroma!
As a 12-year survivor of stage-3 colo-rectal cancer, it’s great to hear other positive stories. Thankfully we both caught it early! Thank you for sharing your story! If one person reads it and decides to get a scope or get tested, you’ve saved a life. Well done!
@adwriter Congrats on 12 years of telling colo-rectal stories
I didn’t have cancer, but my colon did rupture, and I spent about two months in a coma while the doctors and nurses put humpty dumpty back together again. I mentioned it when I was a goat, but my favorite dad joke is - “If you were a punctuation mark, what would you be?” Me - Obviously, I’m a semi-colon 
It never gets old. At least to me… and at this point I don’t have time to care 
@capnjb
that is STILL one of the very best lines from your reign as goat!
We did a dry January in 2023, and tried about every NA red wine (our drug of choice) we could find. The worst of them tasted like an awful combination of vinegar and Welch’s. A couple were OK, but didn’t really taste like red wine (Ariel, most notably). Ironically, we found the most wine-like of the bunch was Fre by Sutter Home, but it just tasted like blander Sutter Home.
We did a “Dry-er January” for 2024 (one bottle, Saturday night only, like savages), and this time I found Chateau Diana Zero cab. And you know, it’s halfway enjoyable. It’s definitely not the real deal, but it tastes mostly like red wine, and I enjoy drinking it. And it’s pretty cheap. So there is some hope yet, even in something as tricky as red wine, for all the non-alcoholic/de-alcoholized stuff.
@tnarg42 I was hoping someone would bring up the NA wines. I’ll look for the Chateau Diana. The local markets only carry NA Chards and Cabs, which have been pretty disappointing while costing as much or more ($15-25) as the regular variety.
We’d love to get the same level of details on the challenges of NA wine that the beers received here. Guess we’ll have to do some research - from our limited knowledge of the process, seems like there’d be the same approach of catching it before the alcohol starts.
@stolicat for better or for worse, I like the Chateau Diana Zero Cab best (or at least better than their red blend), but they make their “Zero” wine with several varietals. They sell sampler packs and even whole cases on Am@zon that they ship direct. Definitely check them out.
It’s mostly not fake beers, but I really love hoplark’s line of hopteas and hoppy waters and kinda fake beers. The hopteas are hops, tea, and sparkly water, but way better than your typical seltzer (the bubbles are smaller I think and last longer). The hop waters are just hops and water usually, and they also do a lot of one-off weird ones sometimes with other ingredients (one had spruce tips, for example). I’ve found they are pretty divisive when sharing with friends and everyone seems to have a strong opinion on which one is the best flavor of the core lineup. As you’d expect, these are more geared towards people who enjoy hops, but each drink has a hop rating from “wee bit” to “whoa” so if you aren’t a hophead, you aren’t totally out of luck. You can find some of 'em in the whole foods individual cold drinks section to try, but once you know what you like, it’s cheaper to order online direct from them, plus that’s the only way to get the one-offs. I’ve seen their fake beers at bars a couple of times but idk how common that is. I like their fake beers, which are the kind that aren’t alcoholic and won’t be, but I also like their other stuff so ymmv.
As far as cocktails go, St Agrestis Phony Negroni is pretty good, as is the Lapos version. I’m a huge negroni fan, so it’s nice to be able to get one of these. Could probably make a halfway decent spagliato too, not sure what the best na prosecco alternative is but I bet there’s something drier than your good 'ol martinellis somewhere. Meanwhile I’ve been pretty happy with most of the na beers I’ve tried. Athletic is of course a top-tier brand, but a lot of regular breweries have been coming out with na versions lately too. I’ve been pretty happy with Brooklyn’s Special Effects line, for example. And while the big beers aren’t usually my jam, I have tried the Heineken 0.0 (does this exist because of F1?) and it’s about as good as Heineken.
My sibling is big on mixing drinks at home and has made me some nice tiki-esque mocktails with spindrift + juices + ginger beer. Ginger is imo a great way to get that burn without pepper, though obviously it’s got its own flavor profile. Fortunately it’s already present in the regular cocktail world (dark & stormy!) and the spice doesn’t linger as much as capsacin based heat. Also, if you aren’t avoiding alcohol 100%, you can use high flavor ingredients like bitters or vanilla which, while technically alcoholic, you’re only getting a couple of drops in an entire drink. For me, that’s low enough to not feel shitty in the morning and it’s definitely low enough to not worry about driving home safely.
Apropos all of this, I will point out that there are examples of the parallel evolution of a specific type of beverage-centric gathering place that’s also non-alcoholic, and that’s the bubble tea shop. Here in Houston, the Teahouse location nearest to the Rice University campus has been thriving for more than two decades, expanding into adjoining retail space as that became available. I won’t say that their success is easily replicated, because there have been many examples of Teahouse locations that have failed to make a go of it, but as a proof of possibility, they’re still going strong. And much of their success lies in the dizzying variety of their beverage selections, nearly all of which are concocted on the premises from base ingredients.
Congrats on still being alive, Jason.
I hope you keep doing that.
I’m genuinely happy to hear your health seems to have improved.
As for the non-booze, my favorite is kombucha, although that technically DOES have alcohol in small amounts.
I hate the taste of beer and other alcoholic beverages, wine… so not very inclined to try the non-alcoholic versions of these either. Why not just create good tasting things to drink that don’t have alcohol in them?
Glad you have medically come out the other side of that dark tunnel in remission. Hope it stays that way. Good luck dealing with the emotional earthquake that comes from a cancer diagnosis… plenty of after shocks but as you are probably noticing, over time the periods of intense emotion last shorter and shorter periods of time and are further and further apart. Dealing with the unknown with respect to the future can also be hard to get a handle on at times too. Don’t beat yourself up if you still have occasions where you stress out a bit. I think, with my first cancer it took me 4 years before I didn’t think about it every single day at least once - even if just briefly. With cancer number 3 I am not there yet primarily because it is one with no cure (but a longer life span) and that is qualitatively a bit different. On the other hand cancer is not who we are (unlike what the breast cancer marketing machine wants us to believe) it is what happened to us. Who we are is what we do with our lives, regardless of the uncertainty that surrounds those post cancer treatment days… Good luck and I hope you continue to do well!
@Kidsandliz
I think the issue here is not that he doesn’t want ‘good tasting things to drink’ but rather wants things that taste like those things he already likes (i.e. beer/liquor/wine)
I like beer, and I also like a lot of other drinks that are non-alcoholic, but would sorely miss having the occasional mojito, moscow mule, old fashion(ed), bee sting, etc
I understand that lots of folks don’t like beer (or coffee, or tea or what-have-you) but for those who do like it, trying to replicate the taste without the EtOH is a logical goal.
Kombucha is not my bag, but I don’t have any desire to keep people from continuing to enjoy it and try to “improve” it if that is what they want.