I like Kirin beer and when I saw an alcohol-free version of it in the Uwajimaja grocery store that carries products from Asia, I thought .. hmm, let me try it. It’s no Moose Drool, but drinkable. Kirin says it’s made from ‘an unprecedented new recipe containing barley malt and hops just like regular beer’. It has only 37 calories in the 11.3 oz (334ml) bottle that it comes in. I read on-line that earlier methods of making alcohol-free beer involved evaporating the alcohol from it, but tended to leave it with an ‘industrial’ taste.
There’s definitely a market for alcohol-free beers (pregnant women, beer-lovers on medication) .. but the market probably excludes college students out to getting their throats wet with the real stuff while they play beer pong!