I noticed a huge influx of these this past year. I was a grocer actually stocking the product a couple of years ago, so I know this is somewhat recent. It was really good timing for my wife, though, while she was pregnant this year.
The prices on the non alcoholic craft cocktails in a can though… yeesh.
That’s interesting, I hadn’t thought of that. I guess we’re seeing a bit of that with smoking vs vaping, but I’d need to look at the rates more to see if that actually was like a pendulum
I’m gen x and have no issue drinking 6 beer alone (alone as the only one drinking in the home) once or twice a month, while I do my own thing or interact with the family.
Personally I had all the sobriety I could stand by the time I had my first drink. I will sober up when I die like I will catch up on my sleep. Edit: It appears that me living my life the way I want is not loved by all.
People aren’t downvoting you because they disagree with your lifestyle, but your comment is like going into a thread about veganism and saying “fuck yall I’m gonna eat a cheese burger every day until I die”. A valid personal decision, but not really relavent to the conversation unless you just wanted everyone to know you’re different
I know, right? “I don’t really care if people know I’m different or not so I’m going to post loudly and proudly how different I am and then whine that people are downvoting me for not being able to read a room and understand concepts like ‘appropriate spaces’ and such.”
Because posting your difference shows not caring. And whining when people express distaste is not caring.
Has a large proportion of Gen Zers quit drinking entirely? If so, then along with social media facilitating cathartic sharing, and wage stagnation destroying lifestyle expectations, that would add another layer helping to explain the apparently larger percentage of Gen Zers than with previous generations that are (publicly) having trouble putting up with certain kinds of BS at the workplace.
Learned a new term today: “sober curious.” I quit drinking 5 years ago, and never looked back. I wouldn’t mind some more variety for non-alcoholic drinks, especially those without sugar. Can’t have pop too often because it’s just sugar. Kombucha reminds me of beer so I avoid it. Fruit juices are full of sugar too. So it’s usually down to tea, coffee or water for me.
It’s a super weird turn of phrase. I admit, as someone who doesn’t actually enjoy the flavour of alcohol nor its intoxicating effects, I’d not mind having something a little more universal that I can say to people. “I don’t really drink” both comes with a lot of unrelated baggage – they think I’m either a recovering alcoholic or a church nut – and people get really weird about it if they ever see me having a drink (probably because they think I’ve fallen off the wagon or something).
But that phrase sure as hell isn’t going to be “sober-curious”.
As long as there’s no added sugar, the fruit juices should be fine. Not all sugars are equal, and fructose is a long chain sugar so it’s more like a fuse then the dynamite (glucose).
Since things like iced coffee and unsweetened tea exists, I don’t really have a problem with options, especially since they’ve both become common enough to be canned.
That said, the term “sober curious” just sounds degrading, like you’re saying “that weirdo guy who’s actually wondering what it’s like to be sober” rather than someone who doesn’t want to be a publicly acceptable drug addict.
There are maybe two or three pleasure drinks available to me as a sugar-repelling former alcoholic, and my wife has boatloads of medical issues and cant find anything anywhere to enjoy except McDonalds unsweetened tea.
Once you try avoiding sugar, your choices are pretty limited. I drank some pop when I was just starting to quit, but I knew it was just a temporary solution. On the bright side, you save money by drinking water most of the time. If we go out I’ll sometimes order those fake cocktails, but they are so expensive.
I drank a ton of those 0 sugar flavored carbonated water when I was quitting, but I stopped after a while. Felt bad creating so much recycling. But yeah, I like them! I’ll take one when people offer or when I do feel like something other than water. I just no longer buy them on a regular basis. My home made alternative is squeezing half a lemon in a glass of water or club soda (and I’d buy the 2L bottles).
I bought a soda stream and will cycle through various things to flavor it. My two go-tos are orange juice and mango juice. And I usually just put a splash of it on top. Maybe 1/10.
I got a SodaStream and love it. I feel better about no throwing away as much plastic every time I want a drink. I love water but sometimes I need some variety and it fills that gap quite well.
How does this compare with recent trends of non alcoholic drinks coming out with alcoholic versions of their flagships? I’ve seen Mountain Dew and Arizona Tea drinks with alcohol in them at the ABC, which is really strange to me.
Yes, those are state-run stores, not private chains. South Carolina is so Puritan about them that they dont even have signs; only a red dot. Really psychotic conservatism.
That’s only true in some states. In Florida ABC liquors is a private company just like any other private liquor store. Many of our grocery stores sell liquor. The convenience store near my house sells liquor.
I think ABC liquors just decided to bank on the name recognition of state run ABCs in puritan states.
Is non-alcoholic beer reallly more expensive than the regular? In Europe they’re on par in most places. In Northern Europe (Norway, Denmark) it’s even significantly cheaper due to taxes.
The process? Distillation method, sure. Limited fermentation, fermentation free, and dilution are quite similar to their alcoholised counterparts.
The ingredient/supply costs for non-alcoholic beer is more expensive; which is mostly a volume thing, but their is a portion of that related to precision required for a near-beer not required for a normal beer.
My initial assumption was that it’s because it’s newer, so they need to make up that r&d cost (edit: I get why this is silly now). Once there is a lot more competition for it, the prices should come down. Similar to how some plant based meats / milks or gluten-free products became more accessible once general people started buying them instead of a tiny group that could be exploited more easily.
I’m just hoping for fewer drunk driving accidents and reduced health issues
Tea (and just the camellia sinensis part of this is already a bewildering variety of flavour, aroma, and mouthfeel profiles!)
Coffee (almost as much variety in flavour, aroma, and mouthfeels)
Tisanes (a.k.a. “herbal tea”, and since practically any dried herb or flower can be made into a tisane for infusion, the variety here is absolutely off the charts!)
Rooibus
…
Like seriously, dude. If you think you’ve had even a tiny fraction of traditional non-alcoholic drinks you’ve been had. *
R&D cost lol, there’s no such thing. That’s what companies want you to believe so they can upsell medicine and technology.
This is just another market rife for capitalism to ensnare. Some guy crunched the numbers and found that x% don’t drink at events. So to recoup that lost revenue, they made this. The drinks, the ads, the news articles that cover it. All planted to drive up their bottom line.
Because that’s how businesses work. They find an angle and swoop in and start setting up payment systems to see what people will begrudgingly pay for.
I was equating them, probably incorrectly, to things like plant based meat companies that did have to consider margins till they could scale up.
But yes I guess a major conglomerate doesn’t have that constraint, and it’s probably not that hard to make something that tastes like X beer without alcohol
Non-alcoholic beer is older than most of the people in this thread commenting¹. There’s no more “R&D cost” involved in making it. If they’re charging more for the non-alcoholic than the alcoholic, it’s just straight-up greed.
¹ Source: I was drinking this shit when I was 12—45 years ago, in other words—and even then it was old news!
I like coffee, tea, beer, wine. They’re all pretty bitter. Non-alcoholic substitutes like soda and juice are typically sweet. That’s the appeal for me, having a bitter non-alcoholic drink, like a ‘near beer’. I’m not strongly into this trend, but I understand an angle to it when I try to cut back my beer consumption
Most of the products hitting the shelf are non alcoholic RTD though, not beer or wine. Some vodka seltzer brands are even coming out with their own brand of seltzer and it’s going to cost about the same as the vodka version.
If the companies making these drinks had the pricing in line with other nonalcoholic drinks it would make more sense, but the prices are the same if not higher than actual alcohol.
Near-beers are great, but its hard to find a good one. Guinness finally has an NA stout, and NA IPAs are nice. The Germanic pilsner ones are awful (Becks, St Pauli, Heiniken)
The price is kind of wild but my partner who is a ‘functional’ alcoholic stopped drinking in January of this year and has switched to non-alcoholic beers. There’s some that are pretty wildly expensive but a lot are actually still a lot cheaper than regular beer. It’s a good outlet for those who mostly drink out of habit.
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