welcome back to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I am Pat, I work in the spirits department here at Binny's. Joining me today is our resident crank, Roger Adamson. Oh, thanks for that, bro. I will be a little cranky today, because we're talking about NA beer and spirits and all that jazz. Roger doesn't understand the point of this, so yeah. Chris is here with us, too. Hey, Chris. Hey, how's it going? It's Chris. I do wine and never drink non-alcoholic anything, so here we go. You know, just because it's not for you doesn't mean it doesn't have an audience. Oh, you're right. You're right. And hey, Alicia. Alicia's here, too. I'm here. Equally uninspired by the category. Equally thrilled to be here. Come on, get excited. You can drink all of this you want and still drive home. That's right. All right. Who else is here? Greg's here. I'm here. I'm here. Man, nobody's excited about this except me, huh? Maybe because I have some non-alcoholic Campari to talk about. I don't want to talk about how I need to drink less, but this is actually applicable a little bit. But that's the thing. These things aren't necessarily just about drinking less. Sometimes it's just a short-term healthier decision someone's going to make. We always associate non-alcoholic beers with people whose probably their favorite video game growing up was Mavis beacon Teaches Typing. More accurately though, people just need a break from the booze sometimes. And fruit juice doesn't always cut it. Especially, I think, with COVID, we've seen people drinking during the week more, and there's definitely been an effort to say maybe I should pump the breaks a little bit and give dry January or dry-ish January a try. But you should still buy some from us though in the month of January. Yeah. I did read that just over 50% of Americans who consume alcohol have tried or are trying to reduce their alcohol intake. That's interesting. Or at least have said that. I think hams put out pretty great promotion. They're like, yeah, when you default on your New Year's resolution to drink less or abstain from drinking, here's a 30-pack of hams and five pounds of bacon. Yeah. And that is what I'm talking about. Yeah. Listen, what world are we in where I don't get to bring up hams first? What the hell is this, Roger? I beat you to the punch, baby. All right, listen. Mother. As much as you guys are dumping on the category, when I went there to stand in front of it and look at it in preparation for this, there are more products in that section than ever before. Some of them actually look kind of compelling. We're seeing major beer brands, actual wine producers coming out with any alternatives instead of the tried and true brands that have been there for 25 years and new companies coming up with actually flavorful, exciting products instead of nothing. Yeah, I have to agree that it's a kinder, gentler form of temperance. It's better than prohibition. Let's put it that way. Yeah. Like you said, Greg, there are some good options there. There's some flavorful options finally. Hopefully, we're going to find some of them today. There's been some innovation for sure. Unfortunately, most of it is proprietary and it's still kind of shrouded in mystery. But we're definitely going to taste through some today that I think are noticeably better than what's been available in the past. Okay. So just real quick to run through them. A lot of non-alcoholic wines, spirits, and beers, well, not spirits, but a lot of alcoholic wines and beers are actually created traditionally and then the alcohol is removed. There's a couple of different ways. If anybody knows, I'm guessing Chris knows, the ways to remove alcohol from wines and beers, right? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Yeah, I know a few things about it. Usually, I remove alcohol from my glass by just pounding it down. That's my favorite way. But yeah, the traditional methods are reverse osmosis, the spinning cone, and in certain cases, just literally boiling off the alcohol, which is the crudest and least desirable probably, which is why I think we're in an era where things are tasting Sounds a lot to me like you're talking about Odools. No, never. I was going to say those sound like carnival rides. Yes, the spinning cone was my favorite. Yeah, five tickets for that one. Yeah, that's the one where you're plastered to the wall. Eww, how many kids have thrown up in the spinning cone? So when am I the on point guy in a podcast recording? Because none of us have had a drink. All right, that's going to be a problem, yeah. So the fear with centrifugal stripping or filtration or reverse osmosis is that you're really stripping out flavors at the same time and making something that's not so good, right? So like Roger was saying, a lot of the producers, it's a little unclear. I actually talked to a rep from a producer who shared a fair amount about the production of theirs, and I will talk about it in my segment. I mentioned to our wine buyer, Barb, that we're doing a non-alcoholic podcast episode, and she literally at that moment had a sample of a new product on her desk that she was considering bringing in. She's like, you definitely should check this one out. I haven't tasted it. I hope it's good. I talked to our rep from the brand, and I told them that if it's not good, I'm going to be brutally honest about that fact on the podcast. So hopefully, it's good enough to cover. But the producer that I'm covering here is, it's called Gruvi, and that irritates me already because the spelling is G-R-U with an umlaut V-I. Nope. Nope. Move on. Okay. So on our show. Metal. Yeah. Yeah. The pink flower motif on this bottle, is definitely heavy metal right here. That bottle definitely says Gruvi. Yeah. They produce wines and also beers, and we'll dive into that more. Right now, just the wines are available at most Binny's locations. A couple of stores have the beer, but we'll see if that gets a major rollout later. So I won't talk too much about them. But the wine, the most striking thing, when you first see this on the shelf, is the fact that it's in this four-pack carrier, and it's in 275 milliliter bottles. It's set right next to the tonic water, so it's almost looks like another fruity soda that we have. But it's not, it's a non-alcoholic wine. I think it's kind of interesting because I haven't seen single serve NA. I don't think I like the format of canned wine. That's not really compelling to me. I haven't had a great one, is the problem. But a single serve non-alcoholic wine kind of makes sense because if it's about socializing and being in a group or dining, but you don't, you're just drinking yourself, you don't need to drink seven glasses of non-alcoholic wine, right? Nor would you want to with most of the product on the market. Fair enough. So anyway, it's actually like an approach to non-alcoholic wine that seems like they have an actual consumer in mind and not just a kid. I mean, one reason you might want that is that a lot of these are geared toward people who are going to be in social settings where other people are drinking. So having a single serve makes a lot of sense. You don't need to open a whole bottle just for you, where everybody else is drinking a regular wine or beer. And it's important to remember, at least on the wine side, that the shelf life is still pretty much the same as a wine would be. It's not just because the alcohol is removed doesn't mean you can just keep it around for two weeks. Right. So I think that this is kind of interesting also. I was talking to the rep and I asked, which came first, the wine or the beer? And he said, actually, we launched both at the exact same time. And I said, oh, well, what's the mindset? Like a brewery coming out with a beer, they have a mindset of beer making. These guys are actually food scientists and they didn't remove the alcohol because there was never any alcohol in these products to begin with. They actually list the nutrition facts and ingredients on the labels, which is a food requirement. So a lot of non-alcoholic products need it, but they're saying it's just for transparency. But this is kind of interesting and I've always wondered if this could work. So I guess we'll see. A lot of times Chris will talk about literally the esters or the flavonoids that are in, you know, a wine or a beer and why the reason that that beer smells like that wine is because they literally have the same protein chains in them and they have those flavors. They start with the flavors. You know, they don't start with the production, they actually start with the flavors. So the wine is grape juice plus sparkling water plus acidity plus flavors that include those kinds of esters. So yeah, interesting take. Yeah, it's fascinating. It sounds like they just use like gas chromatography and broke down beer and then just tried to recreate it at the molecular level. Well, that's just the wine. With the beer, I asked him what's the production method on the beer. Okay. They have four different beers and he said they may actually produce the four different beers differently so that they can get closer stylistically to what they're what they're shooting for. So that's interesting too. You know, it's not just that they're using their tried and true beer making technique, but they're approaching it scientifically. Could sound scary. I mean, we're in this industry where there's a little bit of like magic and fairy dust sprinkled on top of science. It's like art plus science. So that scares a lot of people, but it's really a component of what we sell to. Yeah. It's kind of a fascinating juxtaposition with the current movement toward organic and more natural products across the board. Here we're looking at highly manipulated things, things that are manipulated at least beyond what the original product would be in some way. This one is just built from the ground up. It's not brewed or fermented. It's just put together like a recipe, which is pretty interesting. But it seems antithetical to the zeitgeist at the moment to some extent, don't you think? Yeah. Yeah. It's devoid of all the care and craftsmanship in a fine Closet Hauler NA. Wow. Yeah. Bro, this kind of reminds me of that effort to make the hyper age spirits. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. Totally. Hocus pocus. We put it in this chamber and we're able to fool you into thinking that this 10-year-old whiskey is- We took vodka and caramel cotherin and microwaved it till it tasted like whiskey. Well, okay. So you can rag on production techniques all you want, but it's interesting to see people trying new things, even though that pressure cooker whiskey wasn't so good. But if it turns out okay, you know? Yeah. Well, let's hear how it tastes. All right. Moment of truth. I'm going to try the Gruvi. What's that umlaut do to a U? Does that actually have an effect on it? I think you're saying it just like Gru. All right. So it says it's Gruvi Dry secco. That's what it's called, Gruvi Dry secco. So it's a riff on prosecco. I guess it's worth pointing out the bottle is 275 milliliters, and there are 50 calories in here, so that is pretty low in calories. And I am pouring. Now, are most of those calories coming from sugar? It's got to be from the fruit juices, and they have zero added sugars based on the nutrition information on the back. Interesting. All right, Dry secco. Give it the nose. It smells a little grapey and a little spicy, which is actually more than you can say for some proseccos, but it does smell kind of simple. OK. It definitely has acidity, and it's not blaring acidity, but it has more cut than soda. That said, sweet and round. The bubbles are pretty fine. There's no mousse. You know, there's no mousse right now. So I'd say it's more even soda has bubbles that persist for a while. Now, if you were to compare this to say something that we've been selling for decades, like sparkling cider or grape juice that is meant to be for kids or an alternative to champagne, would you prefer one over the other? It's funny that you ask that, because I think this is definitely better than like the Martinelli's that I've had or the Ariel's that I've had in the past. But it's not where you would want it to be if you were a prosecco drinker. But I have a metaphor here, bear with me. I'm a pescatarian, I'm a vegetarian. I don't eat meat, but I really like meat. I choose not to eat meat, but I really like meat, which means I'm super into the amazing progress the food science has made in the last couple of years, in terms of fake meat. It's getting good. The some of the brands that have just come out in the last two years or so, are amazingly better than some that have existed before. That said, when I throw a Beyond Burger Bratwurst on the grill, and give it to my father-in-law, he still wrinkles up his nose. It depends on what you're comparing it to, and it depends on who you're giving it to, who your audience is, right? Yeah. I guess we should have been recording before you came in, Greg, because we had an extensive discussion on meat substitutes. We should have recorded it, I guess. Are you serious? Yeah. No, we did. We did. Oh. And it was good. Because of the same metaphor, or you guys are just talking about Beyond Burger? That's it, right? It's a good metaphor for this, right? It is. It's interesting that there are so many movements in food like this, but we were talking about the relative benefit of fake meat as far as the environment and everything goes, and the relative benefit of crafting something like that, which is Oh, you mean like a non-alcoholic versus an alcoholic product. Yeah, it's not really about environmentalism, but it is about some level of wellness, I guess. Sure. Or enjoyment of a pregnant person or whatever. So, okay, one other, I'm going to do the Bubbly Rosé here. It's a groovy Bubbly Rosé, 60 calories, also no added sugar. The sugars must be from the fruit juice. It's just got to be. They have to. Grape juice. Then what makes this rosé? Pop the top. Oh, it's a twist off and I'm using a key. So is this essentially grape juice or fruit juice with sparkling water? Yeah. Spring water is the first ingredient. White grape juice is the second ingredient. Natural. Well, white grape juice concentrate. Natural flavor and then acids and then natural color and flavors. And then it says carbon dioxide, so they must be pressurizing it after the fact too. Okay. There you go. Oh, this smells better. This smells like rose petal. There's still a great penis and like a little bit of spearmint. Okay. So that's like actually a level of complexity that you don't get from fruit juice and you don't get from traditional non-alcoholic sparklers. And honestly, there's some cheap sparklers that you don't get that kind of complexity from too. Yeah. I mean, you would think that they would be able to introduce various terpenes and things into these blended drinks to get that rose petal. This was good. This one's actually good. It's definitely a little sweeter. I guess it wears that 10 extra calories on its sleeve. Yeah, like a little bit of perfume. There's a tiny bit of like a Welch's grape. And it's probably the power of suggestion that I'm seeing pink in my glass and thinking strawberries. But I think it's there. Notes of Ambergris. I don't know what what Porpoise Hork tastes like. So. Porpoise Hork. I like that. Futurama reference. Yeah. I understood that reference. So I guess two other things about this brand before before we move on to somebody else. I asked if they were going to do still wines. And they said that it's actually really hard. When you have bubbles in something, you can kind of hide behind that in terms of mouth feel, acidity, tannic grip. And with still wines, it's a lot harder to get some of those qualities. Yeah. Carbon dioxide is adding some of that acidity itself. And making something from scratch like that is harder than dealcoholizing an actual wine. So, yeah, I don't think their production methods are suited for that very well. So, here's the other thing about this. If you have a sparkling wine based cocktail or if you wanted to invent a mocktail, I think that these could bring a dimension to it that is different than like the good tonic waters that we've been trying. And it's definitely different from just straight up fruit juice or cheap soda water. It's definitely going to give it an extra level of complexity. Not reaching for it every day of the week, but it's good and I don't even know the price. It's $11.99 for a four pack. So a wine that I want to show today is actually very different from Gruvi. And they are making wine fully and then taking out the alcohol. And this is the Geeson Brothers in Marlborough, New Zealand. Many of you might recognize the producer. We carry a lot of their still alcoholic wines. They're making Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Chardonnay, among others, and have been very successful and are very talented. They moved to New Zealand in the early 80s, so kind of in the infancy of New Zealand's rise of wine-making and hospitality and so forth. So they are making this Sauvignon Blanc. They picked the grapes a little bit earlier to retain some of that acidity and then remove the alcohol by a spinning cone, which I'll let scientist Chris expand on. But this is right now the only New Zealand wine right now that is NA. And I'm sure that's going to change soon. Because the Kiwis are far more practical than us. But I'm going to taste it now. No surprise the bottle has a screw cap, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. I'm interested in this one. I almost got a bottle for myself to try it too, because I'm interested to see if it tastes like New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. So it's not, you know, something I'm going to order, but it definitely... I also might say that I'm not a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc drinker, typically. So there is that. But it hasn't lost its Sauvignon Blanc identity, which is impressive. It still has that green herbaceous flavor that a lot of people like and that pungency, but lots of tropical fruit, kind of this mango, papaya, pineapple, and it kind of tastes like it's a juice of those fruits that's been left out a little bit. And you really, you notice the absence of alcohol just in the structure of the wine. Is that alcohol or is that acidity? Well, both give structure, but the alcohol, especially giving weight, this is much lighter on the palate. There is some acidity to it, so that's pretty refreshing, and they're making it in a pretty dry style. So it's crisp and refreshing if you like kind of that tropical fruit nature. And yeah, it's all right. Honestly, compared to what's out there right now in wine, it's probably the best one compared to like Free and Ariel and the others, especially because of the dry nature of it. So if you like Sauvignon Blanc and want to give it a go, I think it's worthwhile for sure. And it just hit the US market several months back, and then Binny's just picked this up, I think, a couple weeks ago. Alicia, did you say it's alcohol removed? alcohol removed, yeah. So technically, they have to say that there's up to like 0.5% of alcohol. That was my follow up question. Interesting. Just like beer. Yeah. We should point out that that's the threshold for all of these beverages. Because there's trace amounts of alcohol that they just do. Exactly. And they make a point of saying that it's still safe if you're pregnant to drink. It's about the same amount of alcohol. If you were to leave orange juice in your glass overnight in your fridge, you're going to start to get a little fermentation there. Wait, that works? Like prison toilet wine works? Oh, yeah. Why wouldn't it? Have you ever had apple cider in the fridge that you forgot about, where the containers will literally swell up if it's old enough? I love apple cider. I don't forget about it. When I have it, it's an event. The other thing I'll say on this wine, which they too have to list the ingredients, and they've put the calories on the back, but it is only 10.5 calories for a five ounce pour. Wow. It's about 85 calories less than a normal glass of alcoholic Sauvignon Blanc. If you're going this route for maybe some health reasons, I think this is a really good option. Yeah. That's mostly probably from just a little residual sugar to support the fruit. But yeah, in a regular glass of wine, most of your calories in a dry wine are coming from the alcohol, so that's not that surprising. I guess we should talk a little bit about the production method. Here in the last wine, we were talking about introducing esters into a recipe. But if they're using a spinning cone, the modern techniques allow for, it's a form of vacuum distillation, and it allows for the removal of volatile components, including alcohol at various levels of pressure or temperature. Some of the volatile aromatics in wine, can be captured by these modern machines. So you capture what you want to save, and you dispose of the alcohol, and then you can blend those things that you might have lost through another technique back into the wine. So that may be one of the reasons they can preserve this essential New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc kind of profile, by returning pyrazines and esters and things like back in. So it's kind of interesting, it's highly manipulated, but it's meant to preserve the character of the actual beverage. Right. And I appreciate that they're, you know, they're starting with wine, and this is on the shelf for $12.99. And, you know, they're still going through all of the labor and time and production of a still Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough. And then carefully, yeah, taking out that alcohol. Lightbulb just went off when you said distillation. That's interesting. That that's how you pull things out. You can do it by freezing, but what does freezing do to wine? Well, freezing by heating and what is heating do to wine? Yeah. Well, that's the problem. Heating is a classic way to get rid of alcohol. And you can concentrate alcohol by freezing. And that's normally how it goes, because the ice forms and the solid matter and the alcohol don't freeze. So you can remove the water as ice. So that would be cryo-extraction or in the form of ice wine. That would be the natural process going on there. Heating is not kind to wine, I guess is the bottom line. It's no, it's not very kind to. Beer's next, right? Yes, sir. Let's do it. Yeah, get excited. Yeah. The rap duo. There it is. Are we starting with the Heineken? Oh, yeah. Gally's got to go lightest in the bunch. So the appeal, I think, in the marketing push with this brand in particular being a 0.0, was to say in a social setting when people used to go out, let's say, for their lunch and have a beer at lunch. That's part of the aim of this is like you can drink it at lunch and not feel guilty and then you obviously won't get inebriated or they kind of were playful with it. And they had people literally like drinking them at work and stuff. Yeah. I don't think I've ever felt guilty having a beer at lunch nor breakfast. So, I don't know, Chris, what do you think? This has like an apple, kind of almost like an apple cider-y quality to it that's kind of strange. Yeah. Well, let me address the positives first. So it creates a pretty decent, believable head and the color is totally appropriate for Heineken's style, I think. It's clear and bright and yellow. Does it taste skunked? It does not. It does not taste skunked. It's in a can. Well, then they f***ed up. Yeah, then it's not Heineken. What the hell? Well, this is canned, so. But yeah, the flavor profile is almost devoid of hop character. So the positives were just in appearance? Yes. That's what they ended. It looks fine. And it's kind of, it's weird. There are a couple of things about it. So despite it raising a decent head, the carbonation is quite minimal. It's got a good amount of carb, I think. Really? Yeah. Oh yeah, I guess maybe. There's some minerality here. Looks like one of those prosecco right here. To me, it tastes just kind of flat. It doesn't have good hop backbone, nor does it have an interesting malt character. It's kind of just, yeah, maybe a little apple cidery. The thing that I get the most caught up on, I think, is that I always feel that a lot of these, especially the light lager NA's, have a washed out flavor to them. They just feel like a ghost of a beer, where you're getting hints of this malt character. I feel like this is very, the perceived sweetness here, it says it's made with malted barley and not any adjuncts, but it certainly has that corn sweetness that you would have made. Well, they can add malt extract to it, though, and still say it's made with malted barley. Yeah. Either way, I'm just saying that there is a corny, appley quality to this that's a little weird. There's definitely a weird grain character on the finish. That I don't particularly like. It's kind of, I mean, I don't want to say cardboard-y, but because I don't think it's oxidized like that. There's a strange, raw, husky, grainy finish to it that's weird. Sounds great. It's a shame I don't have one. I had us try this for a couple of reasons. One is that we're selling boatloads of it, so there's that. Also just wanted, I felt it would be a good foil to, it's not that far off from what we're used to with a lot of NA beers in the past. So now let's move to what is really making the news and the big splash and sales figures that we were pretty shocked by are the new cut of craft inspired NA's. So the company that I think is really leading the charge with this is Athletic Brewing Company. And as we hinted it to before, this kind of thing is very proprietary, very labor intensive. So we don't necessarily have a peak behind the curtain that we can share with you. But that having been said, I've tasted through all the NA's that pretty much exist. And I think athletics are the standout. Like, holy cow, there's something different about these. Yeah, I'm curious to hear about these, Roger. People have been asking for Athletic Brewing for several years now, and they didn't have distribution in Illinois until like just recently, right? Yeah, new to our market. And we have two beers from them. And what's funny is that one of them is a collaboration. So, I mean, that goes to show you right there. Like a brewery is reaching out to Athletic saying, we know that your your N.A.s are different and a cut above. Like we're willing to put our name, attach our name to it. And it's not just a nobody brewery. It's one of my favorite breweries, Boulevard Brewing. Yeah. Farewell, craft beer industry. We hardly knew thee. Put a fork in it. It's done. Craft beer is done. That's what they said about hazy IPAs. That's what they said about session IPAs. That's what they said about IPAs. Can I just share that Chris still looks very disturbed from that first beer? I did find it disturbing, particularly the finish just, I don't know. We tried that one last year. It was not as, I don't think it was that bad. I'd have to go back and listen to the tape. So move on. Let's try these. So Chris, I would suggest trying the, try the Flying Start first. So Flying Start is a collab between Boulevard and Athletic. It's a non-alcoholic IPA. This is, contains less than 0.5% alcohol. So we're not at zero zero, but this has the look of a modern IPA. There's a little bit of haze to it. Now granted a huge part of IPAs is the aroma. I mean, that is a major component of, of how something tastes is how it smells. And everything nowadays is about dry hopping, which, which is all about aroma. And the aroma here is, is a little vegetal, a little bit on the kind of chivey, herbaceous side. My guess would be that it's, you know, from extensive dry hopping as opposed to, you know, using hops in the, in the boil or late edition hops. Yeah, definitely. There, there's definitely a hop presence in the nose. And it's definitely green and herbaceous. It's not super fruity. Again, the, the appearance is, is totally acceptable. It's, it's slightly hazy and it does raise a decent and decently retained head. So flavor wise, I mean, this tastes, this tastes a lot like a, a normal IPA. It has structure. It has body. There's, there's pronounced hop bitterness to it. It has a nice citrus quality to it. There's pronounced lemon notes. I mean, this is not a bad, a bad beer at all. I mean, I, I, I was very impressed with this. Yeah. I would agree compared to the Heineken, which was totally neutral on the nose and very strange tasting. This has all the characteristics of a classic IPA, including, yeah, definitely a good hop kick on the finish. I do find that the lack of alcohol certainly changes the body. This is not necessarily watery, but you can definitely notice that there's something slightly missing here. But the flavor profile over all is pretty good. So the other offering that we have, this is straight up from Athletic, and this is our best seller from Athletic thus far. It's their IPA, their traditional. It's called Run Wild. And an added bonus to this, it's not low carb. There's like a normal amount of carbs in these, but calorie wise, you're only looking at 70 calories in this. Yeah. Which is pretty nice and low. A little darker in color, they're definitely using some kind of darker malt in this, which expresses it in both the nose and the palate. Yeah, I think calorically, that's a good trade-off. I mean, if you're looking at a light beer, still most of your calories is coming from alcohol. But this allows them to retain that kind of malty body by having maybe some more residual sugar in here. It has to be, right? Yeah. How else could it have that kind of body that you're describing? Right. Without a bunch of residual sugar. So yeah, it's not much lower in calories than a light beer, but you're taking away the alcohol, so it's clearly being replaced by something. That mouth feel, I think, is being helped out a lot by that. Yeah, for sure. That reminds me of the latest trend in low-cal craft where we saw a lot of session IPAs kind of morph into these low-calorie IPAs. A lot of them struggled from a nearly complete lack of mouth feel and body because they had to deal with the calories included in the alcohol, so they just couldn't have any kind of residual sugar whatsoever. Most of them were enzymatically fermented down to like zero gravity. So this has still some of that structure, which is nice. Hop flavor wise, again, we're not we're kind of missing out on the latest trend where everything tastes like fruit juice. These hops I would describe as more old school, citrusy, piney. This one, I think in particular more like pine resin, little bit of herbaceous kind of basil kind of notes. Yeah, agreed. If you wanted a non-alcoholic, hazy IPA, could you just pour yourself a glass of Tropicana? Yeah, for sure. Hello, Greg. So that's hilarious, Greg, that you brought that up because I was talking to someone the other day that was saying like they bought a smoothie seltzer and their comment was like, I'd rather just go have tromba juice. I quit. I'm finding a new industry to work in. Yeah, what is that? I quit. And I mean, there's a real truth to that. Like the fascination with that these beers have to taste like juice, now they have to basically be like a smoothie, at what point do you just go, I would rather just go buy a nice smoothie. Like it doesn't get any fresher than that. Drop a shot of vodka in it. Yeah. I mean, if we're getting to the point where we want that, but we also don't want alcohol, like yes, that might be your perfect convergence of, there are plenty of delicious things you can drink that just don't have alcohol in them to begin with, and Wait till they make a non-alcoholic, not your father's root beer. Yeah. So the last beer that we have here, I feel like we've been really emphasizing, you know, that what's been kind of neat about these is the body character to them. And I think this IPA from Laganitis, IPNA, see what they did there? This is even more impressive than the athletic ones. I think they absolutely nailed the mouthfeel on this. I have to admit, I almost grabbed one of these for myself. But instead, you're stuck with the sweet sparkling rosé. Sweetish. Color wise, this pours a pretty handsome amber. I mean, this looks like a nice like old school IPA. Like it has some definite malt in there that's- Yeah, again, the appearance is solid. It has much greater clarity than the last two and fine persistent bubbles. You know, it's funny, I hadn't ever- This is why it really matters to have things comparatively right one after the other. The athletic ones are pretty comparable on body wise. I remember having this on its own and thinking, holy cow, for an NA beer, this is a lot of body. But it's the athletic is there too. Flavor wise, I don't know, man, this flavor is, I hate to say chive again, but boy is it chive-y. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I thought every single IPA Laganese made tasted like the exact same. Exact same. So does this just taste like Laganese IPA? Why I love them, but yeah. No, so that's what's funny is that they really wear on their sleeve that this was a labor of love, took over a year, and that it uses an absurd amount of hops. So they're like, yes, they're using the same types of hops they use in their normal IPA, IPAs with alcohol, but something's different here. This is heavily dry hopped, right? Yeah. I agree with your chive assessment. It's weird to me because I'm very attuned to sulfur compounds and anything in the alum category, garlic, onion, chive, a lot of their aromas are sulfur compounds. So when I smell a beer that has a strong chive accent going on, my brain immediately goes to natural sulfur compounds because I'm used to thinking about that in wine too. I totally agree with you for 100 percent on that because I always equate sulfur with well water, and this reminds me of well water. Yeah. So yeah, sulfur is there for sure. Is it a little bit possible that a brewery whose average alcohol is like 7.8, that maybe the alcohol in that beer is actually a pretty important flavor component too? Yeah. You would think. It is pretty funny coming from a brewery where they would consider a 7.9 percent alcohol beer to be a normal IPA. Session? Yeah. Right. The session is like six. Hey, Roger, where do chives rank for you in Baked Potato Fixins? I would say that there's several crucial components that rank before chive. Chive is quite literally the sprinkles on top, right? It really ties it together, but without- It's the gilding of the lily. It's the dude's rug of baked potatoes? Yeah. You need that bacon, you need that cheddar, you need that sour cream. That's doing all the heavy lifting. Butter and sour cream are the two essential. Sour cream for sure. All right. Enough potato talk, sorry. Well, one thing I would say about these, and I don't know how deeply we can dig into this, but the Heineken is definitely made using a spinning cone, I think, or reverse osmosis, but all of these beers are shrouded in complete mystery as to the process. To some extent, the websites hint at natural brewing of the beer without de-alcoholizing them. So do you know how that might work? No. So I got a clue here, the Gruvi guy. Yeah. We were discussing this before we came on, and my only theories are that when you're making an all malt beer, you have to have certain enzymatic rests at certain temperatures to free up your fermentable sugars, convert them from starches. So I was wondering if maybe they skipped certain rests or did them very briefly. So you still created a wort without a lot of fermentable sugar, and then there's a big thing in yeast these days, cultured yeast, particularly for high alcohol wines or areas where the grapes get particularly white, ripe, that you can choose a yeast that does not efficiently convert sugar to alcohol. It makes other things like glycerol and stuff like that, which would also be beneficial for that mouthfeel because glycerol is like a non-fermentable sugar that is syrup-like and gives you a round, Yeah, commonly I add it to a lot of different distilled spirits to get the body. So these are the only theories that I could come up with to brew something naturally with such a low alcohol, but because they refuse to divulge, we have no idea if they're removing some alcohol or just brewing it to under 0.5%. Well, it sounds like Greg held the Gruvi guy's feet to the fire on some trade secrets. Yeah, he gave me some trade secrets. One of them is stuck fermentation. They use that fermentation to their advantage. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Interesting. So you're just stuck fermentation is just a yeast that refuses to work off the sugar. Or you've choked it with so many unfermentable sugars that it can't actually do its job and it just dies. Yeah, you kill the yeast off early on in the usual lifespan. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Chris, would you agree that compared to what people had access to before, these are worth trying if you're curious about the category, like these athletic beers in particular? Or if you're one of those guys that exercises. Right. Is this the new fake meat compared to the old fake meat? I agree. These are light years beyond what the traditional NA beers are in flavor profile, and in particular, the retention of hop character through whatever means they're using. I mean, part of the problem historically is just boiling off alcohol, and the hop character is very volatile, so you lose it pretty quickly in that process. All right. So, spirits, the last time we talked about this stuff, we had two brands, which we still have, Seedlip and Ritual. And since we talked about them last year, they have each added a flavor. We now have a Tequila Alternative from Ritual, and we have another flavor of Seedlip. Weird. Tequila Alternative is weird. It's interesting. So remember when we had Seedlip last year, we kind of, across the whole room, we kind of poo-pooed it. It was as $40 flavored water. I thought it was the best flavored water I'd ever had. Yeah, but it was still $40 flavored water. $40 flavored water. Well, they've come down a little bit in price, but they are selling a ton. And so they have this new flavor called Seedlip Spice 94. And it's got this adorable garden fox on there. And it's still a distilled non-alcoholic spirit, and it says, barks, spices, and citrus peels. And it is definitely heavy on the bark and the wood-forward kind of baking spice. So another wacky take on a gin. Kind of. I'm trying the Seedlip with some Fever Tree Mediterranean Tonic, which is a damn tasty tonic. Oh, yeah. Yes. I kind of did a traditional gin and tonic ratio. I'm not using ice or anything. I don't have that up here right now. So this is just really one part of the Seedlip to three parts of tonic. And it tastes like a spicy gin and tonic. Cool. That's really what it's at, right? Yeah. It's in the mixing. It's not like you're just taking these things to the face. Yeah. I mean, you're not taking this stuff to the dome. And it holds up to that Mediterranean tonic because it is a quite flavorful tonic. Yeah. Well, Seedlips are very flavorful. Our critique last year was that they were very thin. And that's where I couldn't really get past them as a true spirits alternative because they were lacking the body. And that's where I think Ritual does a really good job. Well, maybe the key here is to mix them. I mean, you don't want to drink these. Oh, you have to mix them. You can't. Like trying these neat is a pointless endeavor. It's not what they're designed to do. I mean, and the brands will tell you that much too. When we first met with Ritual, the guy was like, you can try them, but I'm going to tell you you're going to not like them and you're going to be kind of weirded out because they're just not meant to do that. Pat, if we were recording in person, I would make you pour a shot of that in my alcohol free Rosé prosecco here. I bet it'd be pretty good. I bet it'd be pretty good. When we talked about this last time we did an NA podcast, I think it's worth repeating that when you have such quality tonics available like we do in a brand like Fever Tree, spend that extra money and give those a try. Because I know some people- Yeah, spend an extra two bucks. They kind of think it's water, but they're really making phenomenal tonic water and you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't try it out. Totally. I've said it before, I'll say it again. It's the most meaningful $2 you can spend in our stores. Totally agree. Especially when you're buying a $40 or $30 non-alcoholic spirit, you need that support and they are fantastic. Or a regular spirit. But yeah, totally agree. All right. So the Ritual Non-Alk Tequila Alternative, it has like we had mentioned earlier, that kind of glycerol added where it's something added, where it's got this chewy mouth feel to it and they add the capsicum in there, so it's got the simulated heat of alcohol. I think this is pretty good, but it has to be mixed. If I was going to make a paloma or margarita or something, I think this makes a decent one. Actually, Joe from the Whiskey Hotline ended up taking our first sample bottle home, and he did drink it like that way, and he just made non-alk palomas and stuff, and he enjoyed it quite a bit. So if you're into alcohol-free tequila for health reasons, don't get it and then just drink a bunch of squirt, because you're just going to drink a bunch of sugar. All right. So those are kind of the two newest flavors from the two established brands, but we actually have two new brands that we were just presented with recently that are going to be on the shelf soon. And I tasted through all of their stuff, and I'm just going to kind of quickly tease what I thought were the best tasting ones. So there's this Australian brand called Lyre's, L-Y-R-E apostrophe S, and they have this big range of flavors. They have six different things. They have a malt whisky, a rum, a gin, and those were all kind of disappointing. But that's coming from a spirits drinker, where again they were just like totally devoid of body. They say they're spirits, actual non-alcoholic spirits. I'm not sure their methodology here or what. I don't know pricing yet. I just have the samples. But what I tasted from theirs that I really liked is they have an Italian Orange, which is really that Campari Aperol. They have an Aperitif Rosso, so a sweet vermouth, and an Aperitif Dry, so a dry vermouth. And all three of these, and I know you can be cynical because of my love of vermouth and amari, but these I thought were outstanding. They tasted like their alternatives and they had a very, very mildly, viniest body like that that you would get from a vermouth. They weren't just straight water. And I was really impressed with these. The other brand coming in is called Dōs, and that's D-H-O-S. And the O has that line across the top. What do you call that line across the top of an O? Anybody? I don't know. So this Dōs brand, they have a gin, of course. I don't know why everyone defaults. Maybe gin's the easiest thing to try to pass off because you're going to mix it anyway. And the non-elk gin was, you know, whatever. It was more like the seed lip style where it was real watery. But they have a bittersweet like Italian Aperitivo, which was really excellent. I really like this. And, you know, if I was making a cocktail and you put that in there instead of an Italian Red Bitter, I might not know. And the other thing they have is a Triple Sec. And the Triple Sec was actually kind of interesting. And I was looking at the ingredient list here because it's got all the nutrition value and stuff because again, these are foods and not spirits. They use Monk Fruit Sweetener. So, Roger, do you know what a Monk Fruit looks like? It does, Roger, what a Monk Fruit looks like. It's the sweetener of the future. Monk Fruit was actually what they were using in the low-cal IPA from Dogfish Hat, Slightly Mighty. Oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah, that's right. That was the sweetener, right? Yeah. There's not really much to say about their appearance. It's just kind of like a hard kiwi. Plus, they live an ascetic lifestyle, so they're not very interesting. All right. So notable for this dōs brand is they also use the capsicum extract to give it a little bit of heat. They actually use real ingredients. I'm looking at the ingredients for the bittersweet aperitivo, I guess we'll call it. There is cinchona extract, there's gentian extract, there's menthol in there, there's quinine, there's grapefruit oil extract, there's actual bittering ingredients here that provide some kind of complexity to the bitterness and not just like we threw Well, the interesting thing about how these are made, I think, and I don't know how any of these particular brands are made, but two ways to introduce these flavors, these products, and in particular, you mentioned why does everybody make gin, but you can either just steep aromatics and things, or you can actually distill almost like a reverse gin distillation, where you have alcoholic liquid that has extracted flavors and aromas from things, and then you distill it and you actually are Interesting, but you think they would have more body if that was the case. You would, but then you'd have to probably mix that with water and whatever else. And, you know, just like an absinthe or something like chartreuse, where there's steeping after the fact too. So you could employ both of those techniques, I would think. To get flavors and aromas out of here. But yeah, there might be actual alcohol involved to begin with, with these, rather than just being built like some of the other things. But I think there are probably methods to just build them like the Gruvi too. I think that's more of like what the ritual is, where it's all simulation. So I have a question for you. As we talked about before, like, there's lots of different reasons why people approach this category. So let's say you're not completely abstaining from alcohol, but you want to reduce your alcohol consumption. How would you compare if you were to make yourself a wine spritzer by using a wine you enjoy, and just adding a little bit of it to soda water or seltzer water, as opposed to going this route and trying- Down wine versus, I mean, that's viable too. As long as you have a soda that is actually good, and it's going to add something and not just reduce the flavor. This has flavor added, so you're not watering it down, and it does have that refreshing burst of acidity at the finish, because they put it there, but it actually gives you a little bit of a perception that you've got something more potent than a Okay. I just think that the low-alk option is there, and that people could explore that. When we did our last podcast on this, I think I was really beaten that drum with spirits in particular, how there are certain spirits that are really strongly flavored. I mean, if you like, for example, a dark and stormy, you can make a dark and stormy with a table, a tea spoon. Just reverse it. Yeah. You can make a table, put a table spoon of dark rum in there or a tea spoon even. I mean, you're going to get the flavor. You could put dashes of cocktail bitters in a drink. I mean, yes, there are alcohol in those, but if your goal is to reduce alcohol consumption, there's options there that I think might be akin to what they're trying to do when they engineer these completely NA things. Okay, dude, wouldn't a reverse Dark & Stormy just be like a glass of rum with a floater of ginger beer? Yes, it would. Fun little experiment here. I took the Seedlip Spice 94 or whatever it is, and I took the Dose Aperitivo and the Lyre's Sweet Vermouth, and I made myself a little non-alcoholic Negroni here. Sounds great. And I will finish this. This is good. This is tasty. You can put some of that Triple Sec in there. Yo, come on. What kind of Negroni is this? A Stanley Tucci special? Okay. You also could put some actual gin in there and have a much lower alcohol Negroni than your usual Negroni. Or I could just go to my basement and drink some hams. Okay. Had to do it. You could make a Negroni and then put a bunch of seltzer in it and be better served. That's true. That's true. You could make your Campari with seltzer and have a very low alcohol cocktail that's quite refreshing. Yeah. An Americano. You could do an Americano for sure. All kinds of options. But once again, this section in our stores is actually expanding, and I think it's because there's interest out there, and I think that people are using all kinds of new techniques to make new and interesting products that we never saw four years ago. We never saw some of these. Totally. Yeah. Pretty cool. Makes it a little bit easier if you're trying to have a baby, or a dry January, or if you want to... You know, some people aren't vegetarians every day of the week, but they do a meatless Monday, you know? Maybe you're just trying to dial it back a little bit. Whatever you got. Maybe you don't have a Tesla to drive you home. Hey, so I think this has been fun. I think even Roger had fun. I did have fun. Yeah, this is eye-opening. We actually have some tasty non-alcoholic alternatives this year. Wine, I guess, to be determined. Yeah, it was fine. We'll give the Geese and Sauvignon Blanc a passing score relative to others on the shelf. And it's definitely Sauvignon Blanc. Hey, that's what matters most, is that when people taste these things, they're reminded of what they're, of the actual category standards, you know? So I think that's really cool about these. This has been fun. I'm going to enjoy the rest of my non-alcoholic Negroni here. So I guess we'll wrap this up. Until next week, I'm Pat. I'm Greg. I'm Alicia. I'm Roger. And I'm Chris. I had 0.0% fun. Keep tasting.