Word: beerful
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...when construction workers Francisco Alonso and Ramón López wander into a bar in Cadaqués, northeastern Spain, for their morning aperitif. But the prospect of a full day's work ahead has no influence on their choice of refreshment: a nonalcoholic beer called Free Damm. "Normally I'd be drinking regular beer," says López, 54, breaking into a gaptoothed smile. "But I just had four teeth pulled, and I'm on antibiotics." Alonso, 49, has a simpler reason for picking a booze-free brew: "Me, I just like the taste...
...alone. While regular beer sales are slumping in Western Europe - down almost 2% between 2003 and 2008 - nonalcoholic beer is quickly gaining popularity. According to research firm Euromonitor International, Europeans drank more than 138 million gallons (525 million liters) of the stuff in 2008. That's just a drop in Europe's 15 billion-gallon (56 billion liter) beer market, but it's growing fast. In the five years to 2008, sales in Europe climbed 50%, and are now worth $2.5 billion a year. And it's not just Europeans who are guzzling nonalcoholic beer - defined as containing less than...
Boozeless beer isn't a new idea. During Prohibition in the 1920s and '30s, American breweries pumped out "near beers": malt beverages with little or no alcohol. And in the 1980s and '90s, brewers including Guinness and Anheuser-Busch attempted to revitalize stagnant beer sectors in Europe, Australia and the U.S. with low-strength lagers. But their products often flopped because of one big problem. "They frankly didn't taste like beer," says Anand Gandesha, head of marketing at Britain's Cobra Beer...
Improved production methods are now helping win back drinkers. Traditionally, brewers made nonalcoholic beer by evaporating or filtering out alcohol from the real thing. Jeff Evans, author of the Good Bottled Beer Guide, says this process often resulted in beers with a distinct "industrial accent." Today, producers like Cobra - sales of its nonalcoholic brand Cobra Zero rose 21% in the U.K. in the year to March - lightly ferment their beer mix, creating only a tiny amount of alcohol. "Beers brewed this way tend to be sweeter and a little fuller-bodied," says Evans, "because nothing has been stripped...
...beer • much ado about...