As beer sales fall, young Germans develop taste for alcohol-free lager

I drink about 2-3 times more non-alcoholic beer than alcoholic beer. It's nice to still enjoy a cold beer with my dinner without ruining my sleep on a week day

Hmm, so this is starting to cross the Atlantic. Interesting.

I like both alcoholic beer and non-alcoholic beer, but if it’s 0% it needs to taste like its own thing. I’ve had 0% beer where you can tell they’re trying to taste like there’s still alcohol in it and it’s never that great. If you can’t have alcohol I get it, but for me, it turns me off from the beer.

Corona Sunbrew is an example of a 0% beer that doesn’t have that fake alcohol taste to it. I’m moving away from lagers a bit now to expand my tastes so I don’t drink Sunbrew anymore but my wife drinks it and I’ll have a sip from time to time and it’s actually good. It doesn’t taste like it’s trying to fake being an alcoholic drink. It’s not the perfect beer or anything but it tastes like 0% beer without tasting like a cheap knockoff.

German alcohol-free beers contain exactly the same ingredients as regular beer minus alcohol, most of them are just regular beers treated with vaccum destillation and/or filtration. IMO the alcohol is practically tasteless at that ABV anyway.
How should it taste like alcohol?? Aroma?
Alcohol free beer is fermented malt and hop and stuff, if it has a lot of hop it works
- I’ve found many 0% drinks to try and add the warm/burning feeling that you get from alcohol and it never works well.

Beer is one of the few alcoholic beverages where the taste difference to non-alcoholic is really small, many would even say non-existent (at least for the ones that are regularly sold in German supermarkets).

Yesterday I even used non-alcoholic pilsener in an alcoholic cocktail, there was just no reason to use alcoholic pilsener instead.

I really don’t think that alcohol free beer and normal beer taste similar at all, and I really like both kinds of beer 😀
- Then you have had shit non-alcoholic beer so far. Bitburger 0.0% tastes bad. But Radeberger alkoholfrei, Nittenauer Lola Coffee Porter alkoholfrei, Härle Export non-alc, Uiltje Bird of Prey, Wolfscraft Bio alkoholfrei, Störtebecker Frei-Bier all are good non-alcoholic beers.
Here in Belgium more and more of the stronger beer brewers are experimenting with creating non-alcoholic versions and it's pretty great.
Obviously the taste is different, but often still very decent.
As compared to what? Non-alcoholic wine? Is that even a thing? And I don't mean grape juice obviously.
I find the taste difference to be pretty strong and would rather have no beer at all 🤷 Which is also fine ofc.
- There are non-alcoholic Rieslings that taste like actual wine. I have done enough tastings to know that.
- I've bought alcohol free wine in Canada and Japan. They were ok, but it makes me want to drink the real thing even more so I stay away from it. And I think my body still reacts to the tiny bit left in it because I can feel my face get warm and red (I have that crappy Asian genes that doesn't process alcohol).
- I’ve yet to try an alcohol free wine I’ve liked, a lot more alcohol to replace than beer, I guess. Also don’t see the point with wine. Alcohol free beer is nice as a fizzy beverage that isn’t sugary.
- In Germany, alcohol-free wine is very common, and even smaller supermarkets sell alcohol-free gin and rum (specifically Captain Morgan Spiced). Whether those are any good really depends on what kinds of drinks you make with them, IME they usually suck when drunk neat, but e.g. alcohol-free wine is fine in an Aperol Spritz.
  I have never tasted a difference between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beer of the same brand, though I'm not a big beer drinker so the nuances might be lost on me. But I don't really like wine, either, and that difference is extremely obvious to me.
- In Sweden, alco-free wine definitely is a thing. I've also already seen it in a German supermarket. But, as I don't like wine, I didn't try it.
- I second that the taste difference is pretty big, at least for most I've tried.
- Champagne / sparkling wine is a common one with non alcoholic versions
I like having my gin and tonic with a healthy dose of lemon juice and pulp, but I discovered it's just as nice without the gin so these days I often just have tonic and lemon. Obviously it's still a different experience so it's not like I'd never have a g&t again
- Espresso Tonic is my favorite “cocktail”, it’s just tonic and a shot of espresso. Terrible for those that don’t like bitterness though.
- I discovered last week alcohol free gin. Didn’t even know that was a thing

Your occasional reminder that alcohol is poison and will literally kill you. This is good news.

Additional reminder that there are more alcohole deaths anually than there are of all other drugs (legal and illegal) combined!
Just another reminder that everything kills you and you have to die of something.
I stopped drinking it because it's poison

As an aspiring alcoholic, I find this message offensive bordering on hate speech toward my race, creed and religion.

It's just nice. I don't drink alcohol but I like everything else about beer so I'm glad it's an option. There's also a social factor to it. Drinking soda while everyone else has a beer just doesn't feel right for some occasions.

Though if I go out, people complain that I don't drink alcohol and act like dicks about it. So I started vaping weed or snorting stuff and act angry that the others aren't having some to and be like: "See how I feel?"
- So I started vaping weed
  That's what I do too for social gatherings where others drink but I don't think I've ever had to convince my friends to join 😅

Yasss being alcohol free is the best.

As long as they don’t ever try to get rid of the alcohol versions, cool.