Alcohol free

These are beers brewed to 0.5 per cent or below, and every one of them shows its exact strength on the board beside it, so you can see what you are getting rather than take a word for it.

They are made two ways. Some are fermented with yeasts that produce very little alcohol, or stopped before fermentation has finished. Others are brewed as normal beer and the alcohol is taken out afterwards, at low temperature and under vacuum, so the flavour survives the process.

To put 0.5 per cent in proportion: a 440ml can at that strength carries about a fifth of a unit of alcohol, against roughly two and a half units in a pint of ordinary bitter.

They are kept and served exactly like the rest of the fridge, cold and in a proper glass. They are not a consolation, and the good ones stand up on their own as beer.

An alcohol-free beer can be on keg or in the cabinet, so it will not always be on this page. Wherever it is, it carries an ALCOHOL FREE sign with its exact strength, so you do not have to go looking.