I have a complicated relationship with non-alcoholic beers. Here are the issues:
- Alcohol is bad for you. Consuming it, even if you don’t abuse it, raises the risk that a variety of not great things might happen to you, like cancer. I think we all know this, and Minneapolis faves Modist Brewing Co. in the North Loop even have “We make flavored poison” as their Untappd description in acknowledgment of it.
- Alcohol is quite tasty.
So I think it’s objectively great that people are making beers without alcohol. I’m one of those “I drink it for the taste” people. If presented with two beers identical in flavor, one with alcohol and one without, I’d choose the one without alcohol 99% of the time.
Sadly, therein lies the complication: Non-alcoholic beers do not taste the same as regular beer.
While many modern advances have improved the quality of non-alcoholic beers, most of them remain quite bad. It’s the vegan cheese problem, just wearing a different hat. The current science allows us to get somewhat close with certain styles (Guinness 0 is a favorite from the broader market), but you’re basically always going to be able to taste the difference, and the difference is usually… disappointment.
This is a big part of why I haven’t written about non-alcoholic beers since January of 2024. “If you don’t have something nice to say” and whatnot. But, two years on, with a lot more options from local breweries to choose from, I figured it was time to try again. With that in mind, I tried 17 near beers near here, and I’m happy to report that I have a new list of my five favorite Minnesota NA beers.
BlackStack Brewing: Nopes
“NA Pilsner” / N/A ABV / ?? IBU
Words cannot express how delighted I was to find out that St. Paul's BlackStack went and made a non-alcoholic beer (let alone an NA version of Slopes, which I covered in my pilsner column back in July). I figured that if anyone could crack the nut on NA beer, the mad scientists at BlackStack would be the ones. And, while I wouldn’t call it a major breakthrough, I think they’ve definitely moved the field forward a bit.
Nopes’s aroma is clean with a corn note. Its flavor is mildly bitter earthy hops. A lot of non-alcoholic pilsners and light lagers don’t get the balance right, far overshooting the amount of hops appropriate once the alcohol is removed. But BlackStack did a pretty good job here.
In line with my 2024 column, I wish that they had named this beer something else, because a clear comparison to an existing beer or an existing style is just inviting disappointment. But if you’re looking for something that’s pilsner-esque without being a pilsner, Nopes has your back.
Surly Brewing Co.: Outlook Good Oatmeal Brown
“Non-Alcoholic Brown Ale” / 0% ABV / ?? IBU
Yes, Surly is making NA beers now. Yes, I probably should have known about this sooner, since they appear to have been doing it since at least last May. But at the risk of repeating this too often: I am not a “Surly Gurly.” (See my comments in the election-edition of Doin’ Beers for more.) Still, I was pretty hopeful the brewery's Outlook Good series of NA beers would be, well, good—especially given the Minneapolis brewery's rather vast resources compared to many other Minnesota breweries—and I wasn’t disappointed. Surly makes a pretty decent NA beer despite their failure to have a union.
Outlook Good Oatmeal Brown (that name could be shorter, guys) smells like oats and toasty caramel malt, and something adjacent to toffee (toffee requires more sugar character than there is here, but it’s in that vein). Its flavor is more toasted notes and what I perceive as black tea. It doesn’t really have much in the way of bitterness, and has more body than I expected, perhaps related to the oats. Body in an NA beer is hard to come by, so that’s a major success.
I mentioned this back in my 2024 edition of Doin’ Near Beers, but a lot of NA beers made with darker malts read as having a “black tea” flavor to me. With a little bit of time to think about it, and more NA beers under my belt, this actually makes a lot of sense; beer is basically fermented barley tea, so when you take out the alcohol, you’re left with… barley tea. I don’t know why it took me so long to puzzle that out, but there it is.
Wandering Leaf Brewing Co.: Nyx Tangerine Sour
“Non-alcoholic Tangerine Sour” / <.5% ABV / ?? IBU
Bauhaus’s “Nah” Pink Guava Sour was my go-to non-alcoholic sour recommendation last time around (and their newer Citrus Berry Sour is good, too), but my favorite sour this time was Wandering Leaf’s Nyx Tangerine Sour. I consider this incredibly impressive because St. Paul's Wandering Leaf is a much smaller operation than Bauhaus over in Minneapolis, and the fact that they released any packaged NA beers is kind of wild to me. NA beer is an expensive and finicky endeavor! A+ to Wandering Leaf for giving it a go.
I’m not a “sour person” day-to-day (though I am sometimes a sour person), but sours are perhaps the style best suited to NA renditions due to the fact that their primary flavor notes do not come from alcohol, and the sourness is often strong enough to mask its removal—to the extent that you could practically pass them off as normal sours.
Nyx Tangerine Sour is like that. Somewhat predictably, but not disagreeably, it smells like tangerines and a hint of sour “funk.” Similarly, it tastes like tart tangerines and all the usual funky notes I associate with lactobacillus fermentation. It is exactly what it says it is on the tin, and I cannot fault it for that.
ABV Beverage: Czech After Dark
“Tmavé (Czech Dark)” / .05% ABV / ?? IBU
“Who the hell is ABV Beverage?” I hear some of you asking, “I’ve never heard of them.” Well, that’s probably because ABV Beverage isn’t actually a brewery in the traditional sense. Instead, it’s the “production” side of ABV Technology in Saint Paul, a “dealcoholization” service and equipment provider, and I do believe almost every brewery in Minnesota has been relying on it to produce their non-alcoholic beers. My understanding, based on what I’ve found in my research, is that they contract with local breweries to produce beers that they then dealcoholize and sell under their own brand. Win/win for everyone, I’d say.
The ABV Beverage brand is new—launched in 2025—and I haven’t seen it popping up in many places yet, but the NA bottle shop Marigold off Nicollet in the Lyndale neighborhood recently started stocking their stuff.
Longtime readers know I’m a sucker for Czech dark lagers. It’s a bit of a problem, honestly, because every time I see one on a shelf, I buy it. This hasn’t been an issue when sourcing local NA beers, though, because no one has been bold enough to do such a niche style—until now.
I managed to track down six of ABV Beverage’s 12 different NA beers, and while some of their more adventurous endeavors fell short, Czech After Dark stood out as my favorite. Its aroma is light roast and bread crusts, and its flavor is black tea-like with a bit of Czech hop funk. It’s very easy to drink and well-balanced. It doesn’t taste like a Czech dark lager exactly, but maybe a bit like the ghost of one—in a “I’m fine with being haunted” sort of way.
Fair State Brewing: HyperCold Lager
“Non-alcoholic Lager Style” / <.5% ABV / ?? IBU
When it comes to NA beers with a more defined hop presence, things are a little dicey. To be honest, most of them come out way too bitter, the hops end up vegetal and “overcooked,” and I inevitably pour them down the sink after a couple sips. Some of the “better” hoppy NA beers I tried this go-round were essentially just hop water with more body, which is something, for sure, but not quite a “hoppy beer.”
And, that’s what sets Fair State’s HyperCold Lager apart from most of the others: It has a very defined hop presence, and it actually works. The only other NA beer I tried that I could say that about is Surly’s Outlook Good Hoppy Pale—but I refuse to give them two spots on this list, so the tie goes to Fair State/Rancher’s Beverage.
HyperCold Lager has a nice cracker aroma with a bit of herbal and floral hop notes. Flavor-wise, it’s mostly herbal hops with a very slight hint of citrus on the barest background of cracker malt tea. It reminds me a bit of Fair State Pils, which is high praise as far as an NA beer goes. Is it nearly as good as Fair State Pils? No. But, it’s nearly beer, so I’ll take it. If you’re looking for more of a traditional west-coast IPA or pale ale hop profile, Surly’s Hoppy Pale is more along those lines.
