[chrysoprace]

I've found that nowadays I largely like it for the taste (which often surprises non-beer drinkers) and so I'm quite pleased that non-alcoholic options are becoming more widespread.

My main wish is for non-alcoholic craft beer to become much more widespread and cheaper. In Australia alcohol is taxed at a ludicrous rate, but non-alcoholic drinks are not, however they often attract the same price - which is disappointing.

[boyter]

Id be ok with that if wine had the same taste. No alcohol free wine tastes even close, and none of them are good in their own right.

Some of the non-alcoholic beers are pretty good though and I am happy to drink them.

[nunez]

i cannot wait for an actually drinkable NA wine of any vintage. the last one i had was horrible.

same with the NA whiskey i had.

phony negroni, however, is pretty solid.

[esafak]

One thing that annoys me is that non-alcoholic beer is subject to age checks in the US. I assume it's because the programmers didn't create a separate group for them, so they ring up with the rest of the liquor, triggering a check? Maybe there's a good reason ('coz that's not one).

[mk89]

Most likely because even non-alcoholic beer still contains like 0.5% of alcohol.

Unless it's a "0.0%" alcohol-free beer, and even then it might still contain a bit...

[zdragnar]

I bought hops-flavored sparkling water from a grocery store's beer cooler on a lark and, despite my attempt to explain the logic to the poor cashier, we both bent to the whims of the computer system and scanned my ID to complete the purchase.

There are other drinks that have trace amounts of alcohol, such as kombucha which is regulated to stay under the 0.5% threshold. Fruit juices will also likely contain upwards of the same amount, depending on how much they're processed.

[reverius42]

I think orange juice can be up to 0.5% alcohol, and they don't check ID for that.

[intrasight]

Weird since kombucha has 0.5% and they don't age check that.

[chrysoprace]

Probably just a legacy thing. Might as well have a vanilla cake trigger an age check for all the good it'll do.