Best Beer of all time? (Beck's Alcohol-Free Beer)

Member Name: tolhurst

Product:	Beck's Alcohol-Free Beer
Date:	28/05/09 (1627 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No alcohol. No hangover.

Disadvantages: Price. Packaging.

I heard from a pub landlady in Nottinghamshire once that the Beck's brewery hadn't released an alcohol-free beer for years because they wanted to get it absolutely right. Until one night, when they invited a large number of Bremen students for a free beer party. The students drank and drank, and got drunker and drunker, and knocked back free beer after free beer saying "You are my bescht Freund" or whatever you say in German when you're drunk.

The next day, the students didn't have the hangovers they had been expecting. Because it had been Beck's Alcohol-Free... The story goes, they hadn't noticed at all.

I can find no corroboration but this product really is that good. Tastes great, the beer you CAN drink between meals without ruining your sense of balance. Tastes like real beer, even out of the sideboard (unlike Clausthaler that tastes like sugary washing-up water if it isn't cold - umm, probably).

It isn't calorie-free, of course, (so keep water, and decaffeinated tea, handy) but now there's no reason to drink beer with alcohol in it.

It's now sold as Beck's Blue. Ironically, "blue" means "drunk" in German slang...

As for the price, it does generally cost about £3.54 (more in Waitrose) but is a product that comes out on special offer in Sainsbury's or Tesco's every so often at about £2.84, so I stock up then. Most recently it was £2.55 in Sainsbury's. Wheelbarrow time. (I bought 16 x 6).

Curiously enough, it counts as an alcoholic product at Sainsbury's so you can be asked if you are over 21. On the cardboard tray it comes on, it says "Please enjoy Beck's Blue responsibly". So no evenings dressing up as a ferret and repeatedly striking a colander with a herring, then...

Summary: Have a great-tasting beer and don't get drunk!