NEW YORK. Increased awareness over the hazards inherent in alcohol consumption and operating heavy machinery has led to a surge in the amount of non-alcoholic beers on the market. We're thankful for this trend, and we'll be sampling these periodically and reporting back on this page. While stuck for four-and-a-half hours at JFK airport yesterday (making a total of 12+ hours of airline delays for me in one 24-hour period, but who's counting), I thought I'd start the tastings. The restaurant offered St. Pauli N.A. in bottles (we've yet to see a non-alcoholic brew on tap, but we're looking). The company claims it's the #1 imported N.A. beer in the U.S. It sports an alcohol content of 0.5%, so it's not for everyone. There is no aroma to speak of, but the color is golden and pleasant. The head is somewhat flat but real enough. The taste is quite good, but very light. The finish is a pretty strong caramel. Not bad, but maybe a little too strong. Overall, quite drinkable, and recommended. Another interesting mention is that the St. Pauli girl on the bottle a) has let her hair down, b) wears a thinner red choker, c) has gotten a little younger, and d) carries smaller mugs. The significance of all this in unknown. Moving along, half a world away, on the same day, we tested Radegast Birell, brought to us by the same folks as Pilsner Urquell. This beer is probably the biggest Czech n.a. beer. A tad less alcohol: 0.49%. It's named after a slavic god of hospitality and crops. The color is very light. But the head on this beer is for real. It's gorgeous, frothy, and white. We wish the taste was as bold. Alas, it's whisper-light. We'd call the taste "beer-like." It's got almost no finish and little mouth-feel. That's not to say that it might have it's place in the pantheon of drinks, but it's just not beer.

NEW YORK-PRAGUE. We're fascinated by the brewing process. A bigger mystery to us, however, was how n.a. beers are brewed. It turns out that there are several techniques to 'get the lead out' of beer. First, we've seen a suggestion to use high heat to remove the alcohol from regular beer, but we'd assume this would hurt taste. Second, you can freeze regular beer and pour off the alcohol. Most brewers use filtering (dialysis or reverse osmosis) to filter out the alcohol. Biologically, you might interrupt the fermentation by quick pasteurization, once the desired alcohol level is reached. Fifth, you can, apparently, use certain strains of yeast that ferment only simple sugars. Finally, the yeast might be filtered out early to prevent full fermentation. A serious, technical explanation of this process can be found here, posted by home-brewer Nicholas Franke, who tried some methods. N.a. beers might be good to drink for the health benefits. Here's an explanation. And some athletes swear by the drink, including at least one ironman triathlete.

Prague. With the Czech Republic being the home of the pilsner beer, it's not too surprising that they've been experimenting with non-alcoholic beers. We've been impressed at the number you can find here. Today, we found a couple of imported n.a. beers to try (interestingly enough, at a hospital convenient store). First, one we'd never seen before: Oranjeboom ("orange tree"), from a Dutch brewery, which originated back as far as 1671 in one form or another, and is now owned by InBev. This has the lowest alcohol of anything we've seen: 0.1%. They call it a "non-alcoholic malt beverage." The word "beer" appears nowhere on the label. Excitement rose as it poured: beautiful, rich, golden color, and frothy head. The look of this n.a. beer would fool anybody. As expected, no aroma to speak of. The taste? Hard to place. It has hints of caramel and...orange, believe it or not. The faintest of beer taste lingering in there somewhere. It's a chimera on the tongue, very hard to place. But, good mouth feel and very refreshing and drinkable. We'll definitely pick this one up again for a taste. Next, we picked up a big name: Clausthaler "Extra Herb". This is probably the granddaddy of n.a. brews, dating back to 1979! Ok: it pours well, with a tall head, and the color is really light. It's got the aroma of a light beer. And the taste and mouthfeel? Light beer. Maybe we picked up really fresh bottles but, man, we'd be hard pressed to distinguish this from a real, light American beer. It's got a tiny tangy finish that might give it away, but a blindfold taste-test might fool us. If you like light American beers, this is a great alternative for you. The company says it uses a special yeast in a patented process that doesn't produce as much fermentable sugar (maltose), rather than the other methods of n.a production. They even offer 5 other varieties of n.a. beers!