How about differentiation between non-alcoholic beer styles?

Saw that Untappd has started differentiation between styles also with NA. They are of course more general, could be helpful though: lager, pale ale, IPA, sour, stout/porter, wheat beer, shandy/radler, other. I think the main style needs to still be NA, non-alcoholic defines the style the most, but how about splitting them up in substyles like these also on here?

 

Another road to take would obviously be to just integrate the different NA beers into the existing styles, and quit the NA / low alcohol style.

 

One possibilty would be to include the beer style in the NA beer names, if keeping only one overall NA style. I have just started to add the style in my review notes, so I know what style I've been drinking . Feels a bit like a "do it yourself" solution though.

If integrating the NA beers into the existing styles you should be able to find them through some kind of search, agreed.

 

Interesting. The World Beer Awards already has nine categories of no/low alcohol: dark, flavoured, IPA, lager, pale, sour&wild, speciality, stout&porter and wheat. They are up to 2.5% ABV, looks <0.5 ABV dominates heavily, going all the way.

https://www.worldbeerawards.com/win...-no--low-alcohol-33479-world-beer-awards-2021

 

Also checked RateBeer, their low/no alcohol is divided only into pale, dark, wheat and then radler/shandy. Would say a bit too few categories, if going for it.

 

Good points. I do think though that bottom fermented and top fermented with their main taste characters still is "holy", leading to a lager category. The overlapping of course is always there, but doesn't take away the whole usefulness of the categorisation / style division. And not having an IPA category/style nowadays, well...

 

Maybe it's allowed if there is the combination NA-IPA? Untappd is "getting away" with it. Does support own substyles for NA though, not just integrating them among all beers.

NA has this: in a way it's totally different not having buzz potential, on the other hand I think taste gradually can't be easily distinguished from beer with alcohol, warranting proper style division. Naturally taking into account the limited market, not dividing into 100+ styles . The absolute main ones could do as a good compromise.

 

Untappd is a beer rating site, no own beers ad far as I know. Ok, so it's necessary to use "code language" on the bottles / cans and probably on the brewers' websites for the products below 0.5 ABV. The TTB Bootcamp doesn't seem to prohibit using for example the terms "NA lager" and "NA stout" on beer rating and discussion sites, like ours, or else on the internet?

 

About alcohol. It's an interesting ingredient in that it's main effect kicks in in half an hour, while tastes linger off in a minute. I think it is disputed whether you can taste alcohol at all around 5% ABV. At 10% maybe. So <0.5% ABV could very well fit into most of the regular beer styles, and the stronger ones could have some ingredient that reminds of alcohol. Should be much more doable than for example with NA whisky, more like with NA wine.