It’s Saturday night in the middle of September. The evenings are still long enough to enjoy a pint in a beer garden and that’s exactly how we started our evening. Despite the return of students to the streets of Cardiff, we were not on the hunt for a rowdy night out. We were on the lookout for only the finest alcohol-free beers that the finest establishments had to offer.
Last summer we were lucky enough to have been doing the very same thing. Six people who met over Twitter joined up in search for alcohol-free beer on tap in Cardiff. We were not (too) disappointed. In 2021, we managed to find three beers on draught, and had only just missed out on another that had recently been polished off. 2022 was not the same. Alcohol-free and low alcohol beverages appear to have been growing steadily for a while, and even more so during the pandemic. It’s been fantastic to see so many breweries raising the game and a few of them even bringing that game to the pub, so that we can enjoy a pint of a cold refreshing beer dim alcohol. We were hoping that the success of last year’s soiree might mean more treats on offer this year.
Let’s begin where we started. Brewhouse & Kitchen at Sophia Gardens. The Brewhouse & Kitchen bars all, as far as I’m aware, have Big Drop’s Paradiso Citra available on draught. This is a great beer, refreshing, full of flavour and no judgement - Brewhouse serve all their beers in the same pint glasses. You can just enjoy your pint the same as everyone else. They also stock a number of other options in bottles, as well as a couple of botanical alcohol-free spirits.
Brewdog has a huge range of beers, most of which available on tap, but sadly only one of these come in the form of Nanny State – their first alcohol-free beer. Despite another offering in a pint glass, this is rather disappointing. Brewdog have a number of different alcohol-free beers and given that this is their own bar, it wouldn’t feel too unreasonable to expect a few more of them to be available.
Head of Steam Cardiff has more than 25 different beers and three ciders available on tap and boasts over 40 different bottles or cans to choose from. Sadly though, our search from draught alcohol-free beer had come to an end. Despite this they do have six alcohol-free beers on offer. Four of these are from Drop Bear Beer Co., who are hoping to become Wales’ first alcohol-free brewery.
Despite being able to enjoy a couple of pints of Cwlb Tropica Non Alc last summer, it was no longer available. We were able to get a wonderfully refreshing cold can of the stuff, but it wasn’t quite the same. It didn’t seem to be present on the night but usually they have Speakeasy (a beer made in collaboration with So Let’s Talk) available in cans as well. There were a few positives from the evening. One being that there was an alcohol-free beer available in each venue we visited.
Unfortunately, the two brewery backed bars only had the one option, despite having alcoholic beers from other breweries on tap. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a draught option everywhere, but it’s not out of the question to think that there might be at least more than one alcohol-free beer option, right?
So, whilst the alcohol-free beer industry is still growing, so is the need for pubs and bars to consider their non-alcoholic ranges. There are more and more great beers making their way to a pint glass near you, but I’d love to see this as the norm. We’re a way off that, but hopefully with conscious drinking habits becoming more commonplace we will continue to see the changes in Wales and the rest of the UK.
