We’ve all seen the occasional 0% beer for sale at the grocery store, but Sober City was curious exactly how many options there were and if they were any good. Would you believe there are over 20 near-beer options between Walmart, Costco, Sobeys, Shoppers Drug Mart, Pete’s Frootique, and Superstore? There are non-alcoholic pilsners, blondes, reds, radlers, IPAs, and much more! So, with over 20 varieties to taste, it only made sense to throw a blind taste test event and invite 6 beer lovers to score and give their honest opinions on what Halifax’s grocery stores had to offer customers looking for great beer taste For this taste test, it only made sense to select 20 non-alcoholic beers that all fell more or less within the same taste range, so radlers, stouts, IPAs, and reds weren’t included. Six people were selected to taste all samples throughout 3 rounds where each round had 6-8 beers with similar character- istics. The tasters sipped each beer thoughtful- ly, wrote down their opinions on scorecards, and ranked each option from their favourite to least favourite. Once all 20 beers were sampled, the numbers were tallied, and the top 2 favourite beers from each round were then brought to the finals. In the final round, each taster judged each of the top 6 beers again and scored each one to determine the overall winners. With all the details worked out, the score cards printed, it was time for tasting! without the alcohol. The Blind Taste Test As for the results on which non-alcoholic beers do we suggest you purchase on your next trip to the grocery store based on our tastebuds? Check out what we had to say about each near beer, starting with our least favorite from the blind tasting.
Hoegaarden Non-Alcoholic Wheat Beer – 20th $1.67 per 330mL can 0.0% alc./vol. Ingredients: water, barley, malt, wheat, sugar syrup, citric acid, coriander seeds, orange peel, hops Either you’ll love or you’ll hate this beer, and for us, we mostly hated it. One taster loved it though and said it was creamy, full, spicy, soapy, floral. Most comments were pure hatred though and people were shocked by the taste of corian- der and orange. We thought it was too sweet and floral tasting and the smell was strong. One judge said it reminded them of a fluoride treat - ment at the dentist and another simply called it a silly beer.
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JUNE 2021 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • JUNE 2021
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