The Spinoff takes on another batch of booze-free beers, and is delighted to discover the field has come on in leaps and bounds. Here are 11 newish offerings, reviewed and ranked. 

March 7, 2020 was a different era. When we published our first non-alcoholic beer rankings, there had been just a handful of Covid cases in Aotearoa and lockdowns were still a foreign concept. Also, to be honest, the beers we tasted were pretty bad.

Two years on, the world has been ravaged by a global pandemic. But on the upside, the quality of booze-free brews available in this country has markedly improved. No, I’m not suggesting these two things are related.

Anyway, back in March 2020, just one New Zealand beer featured in our lineup of 11, and it came second to last, scoring a shoddy 1.9/10. This time around, Kiwi brews took out the top four spots in another 11-strong lineup, suggesting not only that New Zealand brewers have caught on to the international trend for boozeless beer, but that they’ve got quite the knack for what’s a notoriously difficult process. And with sales of low- and no-alcohol beer up 1,116% in the past five years, according to an industry study, they’d be foolish not to tap into the growing market. 

The criteria for being included in this year’s tasting were not having been part of the first tasting, which essentially means they weren’t around, or at least not widely available, back then. We ditched the strict 0% requirement, tasting beers up to 0.5% (which is the legal requirement for labelling a beverage “non-intoxicating” or words to that effect).

Some of the beers we tasted were supplied, others we bought from local supermarkets. A word of warning: if you’re struggling to get hold of any of these beers, particularly the winner, it’s because demand has been through the roof and the brewers are struggling to keep up. Shop around or try again a few days later and pray for replenished stock. (On that note, if you’re wondering why Mac’s Stunt Double, which we’ve heard good things about, wasn’t included in this tasting, it’s because it’s out of stock everywhere). 

This year’s tasting panel comprised Spinoffers Sam Brooks, Alex Casey, Duncan Greive, Calum Henderson, Stewart Sowman-Lund and me, Alice Neville. Assisted ably by tasting convenor Katy Goldring, The Spinoff’s office manager, we tried each beer blind and in random order. 

A word of warning before we delve into the results: if you’ve never tried alcohol-free beer before, don’t expect it to live up to the boozy kind (especially if you’re used to drinking high-quality, hop-forward stuff). We scored these in terms of what they are – alcohol-free beers – rather than comparing them to our fave regular brews. To be honest, even our very high-scoring winner would pale in comparison if tasted directly after a pint of your favourite hoppy number, so keep that in mind when you’re drinking them.

– Alice Neville

11. Krombacher Pils Alkoholfrei

6 x 330ml,  $12 from Countdown

Score: 3.66/10

We were not fans of this German offering, which gave off bad homebrew vibes. Stewart Sowman-Lund found the nose “meaty” and on tasting the beer, detected rotting flesh.

Sam Brooks was kinder, comparing it to “bad apple juice”.

On first sip, Duncan Greive clutched his stomach and groaned, but on further reflection said “I find it acceptable”. Nobody else did. 

10. Bavaria 0.0% Wit

6 x 330ml, $9 from New World

Score: 4.08/10

Following 2020’s tasting, readers got in touch to extol the virtues of non-alcoholic wheat beer, but this Dutch offering didn’t live up to the hype. “That’s bad. I don’t like it,” said Alice Neville, equating the beer to soap. 

Alex Casey opted to compare it to a Kmart candle, before deciding it was more like “when Fanta made the spider range and they were kind of milky and vanilla-y and disgusting”. 

“If Phoenix wanted to come out with an all-natural V then this would be a prototype that did not get commissioned,” was Duncan’s very specific analogy. Calum Henderson was the sole fan, saying you needed to think of it not as a beer, but rather as a “tasty beverage” you picked up at a Korean supermarket.

9. Coopers Ultra Light

6 x 375ml, $12 from New World

Score: 4.25/10

The overwhelming feeling we got from this Aussie battler was “swampy”. 

“It’s the last beer you have at a pub that makes you realise you should’ve gone home,” said Calum. Duncan (“like when you’re on jugs of Speight’s for ages and ages”) and Alex (“it reminds me of Shadows”) had similar thoughts. 

Alex, somewhat perplexingly, also thought the beer tasted like uncooked spaghetti, but said she would drink it if you gave it to her. “It’s fine,” Sam concurred. “I would drink this but I would not pay for it.”

8. Krombacher Weizen Alkoholfrei

6 x 330ml,  $12 from Countdown

Score: 4.33

This fared better than the pils (see 11), but the tasters weren’t exactly fans. The nose confused us, with Duncan comparing it to “deodorant for preteens” and also “my sensory memory of my English grandma’s bathroom but not her toilet”, something he found “oddly comforting”.

The taste was overwhelmingly sweet, with Alice saying it made her feel queasy. “I’m at a beer fest and I’m like ‘oh damn I picked a bad one’,” was Calum’s assessment.

For all that, the tasters commended the beer for at least being something. “It tastes really bad but also it’s my favourite so far because at least it’s tried. It’s not trying to disappear,” said Duncan. “But I never ever want to drink it again.”

7. Bavaria 0.0% IPA

6 x 330ml, $10 from New World

Score: 4.5/10

If you want evidence of how far the booze-free beer market has come in the past couple of years, look no further than the fact that last year’s winner – which was hidden in among the new beers in this blind tasting – could muster only seventh place in a field of 11. Last time we scored it 7.5/10; this time a lowly 4.5. 

The nose was pine or, more specifically, “Christmas range Ecoya”, reckoned Stewart. “I had a lot of hope from the pine nose that it would be a hoppy number,” said Calum, but that hope was dashed on tasting. It gave him “Australian vibes, not in a good way”.

Alice found it bitter, “but not a pleasant bitter”, while Alex said “it takes me back to a bad place”, comparing the beer to “when I made a mistake at Golden Dawn* and got a fancy one”. Duncan, ever the supporter of giving it a go, said “at least it’s trying to be something”, but concluded that the “aftertaste is rank”.

*RIP

6. Speight’s Summit 0.0% Lager 

12 x 330ml, RRP$22 

Score: 5.08/10

Prescient southern man Calum detected “Speight’s Gold Medal on the nose” and said “I really like the colour”. “I’d drink this if there was horse racing on TV,” he added. Alice said it had flavour and body, giving off “classic NZ draught” vibes. 

Duncan was less impressed, saying, “I just can’t smell anything, I can’t taste anything. All of these beers have Covid. I’m really struggling to generate an emotional or sensory response to whatever the fuck this is.”

5. Heaps Normal Quiet XPA

4 x 335ml, $18-$20 from Glengarry, New World and various online stores

Score: 5.1/10

With its quirky name and appealing label, this Australian offering had real crafty vibes – and a price tag to match. Keeping with the on-trend feel, it poured hazy, though Alice felt it was more “cloudy”.

Only Alex detected the beer’s highfalutin aspirations, saying “I think it’s fancy”, but not finding that a positive. “It tastes like vile. I hate it.”

The other tasters got a sense of nostalgia. “I feel like all New Zealand beers used to taste like this 25 years ago,” said Duncan. “It’s like if Export tried to make a zero-alcohol hazy.” Alice agreed, detecting “dirty pipes” – the downfall of many a tap beer.

Calum felt that aspect was part of its charm, however. “I feel like I’m drinking this from a jug in a bowling club and the keg’s been there for a while,” he said. “It has a sense of fun to me as I associate it with binge drinking. Like a $2 jug beer.”

4. Steinlager Zero 

12 x 330ml, RRP$22

Score: 5.66/10 

“I’m getting stadium from this one,” said Calum, and Alice agreed. “It’s Mac’s Gold, Tui or Export Gold. But it’s fine. It’s not a lot.” 

“I could be convinced that this is beer and I would like it,” said Sam. “I feel it, not taste it.” Alex thought it would be “nice with chips”.

3. Bach Brewing All Day Non-Alcoholic IPA

6 x 330ml, $20 from New World and various liquor stores

6.91/10

It was a decent jump in scores up to the top three, with all tasters fairly complimentary of this number from Auckland brewery Bach. The aroma was particularly impressive. “Great nose,” said Duncan. “It’s almost too fruity.” Alex simply said: “It smells like a hardout beer.”

“It’s nice and dry,” added Alice. “It doesn’t have the sweetness and cloyingness of some alcohol-free beers.”

The flavour didn’t exactly linger, however. “It’s got this big fragrant fruity thing on the nose and then you sip it and it’s like ‘where did it go?’” said Stewart.

“I really like this,” concluded Sam. “If you served this to me and told me it was a 5%, I wouldn’t be sceptical.”

2. Sawmill Bare Beer No Alcohol Pale Ale

6 x 330ml, $15-16 from New World and various liquor stores

Score: 7.5/10 

This one from Matakana-based Sawmill had a pleasing effervescent nature, which Sam equated to “a dry Lindauer”.

Duncan praised the “nice tart quality”, while Calum felt it tasted like “there’s craftsmanship involved”. “Very light but quite pleasant,” added Alice.

“Very refreshing,” said Alex. “I think this is a good one.” In undeniably high praise, Calum said he’d go back for a second.

1. Garage Project Tiny No Regrets Hazy IPA

6 x 330ml, $19 from New World and various other places when it’s not sold out

Score: 9.6/10

Tiny was the clear winner, with our tasters positively spewing forth superlatives upon tasting this beer. “I really like this one,” said Sam. “I feel like the dream of no-alcohol beer has finally been realised,” added Calum.

“It’s a class of its own,” thought Stewart. “It’s what all non-alcoholic beers should be aspiring to.”

Alice said the popularisation of hazy beers had done wonders for the non-alcoholic field, as brewers no longer had to attempt to replicate bitter IPAs (a Sisyphean task when it comes to boozeless beers) to achieve a “craft” feel.

“It’s to die for,” concluded Alex.

Sammy Akuthota grew up in his parents’ South Indian restaurants. More than two decades later he’s become a key pillar in the original Satya operation – and he’s putting his own spin on things.

Auckland suburb Sandringham is famous for its South Asian influence. The art deco buildings lining the village centre are filled with halal butchers, spice shops, grocers, regional Indian restaurants and a Sri Lankan bakery. Most hours of the day, the village bustles with people. You’d be forgiven for not realising that what looks like a walkway between a restaurant and a grocer called Smart Food Bazaar is in fact the entrance to popular bar and restaurant Satya Chai Lounge. The most noticeable signage above the entrance says “Satya spice, chai and organic shop”. 

As you walk down the corridor to enter, beer cans tied to the ceiling hover overhead. It’s an unassuming place, serving Indian street food menu, craft beers and cocktails. Regulars call the it “Sammy’s” after the owner, Sammy Akuthota.

Sammy opened Chai Lounge under relatively cheeky conditions. In 2016, in secret, while his parents – who own the restaurant next door – were overseas, Sammy transformed what he saw as an underutilised space behind the restaurant into Chai Lounge. With an initial budget of just $800, he furnished the shop with recycled materials. Ceilings and walls were draped with coffee sacks, old beer crates became seating and borrowed plants filled the spaces left over. 

Sammy grew up scrubbing dishes, garnishing plates and waiting tables in Satya, an Auckland restaurant institution. Other than a stint as a bicycle mechanic when he was 16, Sammy has stuck with hospitality. It’s an industry he adores. His decision to open Chai Lounge is a reflection of Sammy’s undivided love for the restaurant industry.

His parents founded their first restaurant more than 20 years ago. Now in his 30s, Sammy has remained a key figure in the family operation, which has grown to include three Satya outlets around the city, in Sandringham, Great North Road and Grafton, and two Satya Chai Lounges, in Sandringham and on Karangahape Road.

Sammy, his younger brother and parents were all born in India, in the south-eastern state Andhra Pradesh. The family moved to New Zealand in February 1996, “more or less by accident”, his father Swamy Akuthota says. 

Swamy says they couldn’t have launched Satya without the support of the community. Back then, the landlords of their home in Auckland suburb Mt Roskill were from Gujarat in the north of India. The two families would exchange food; the landlords were fans of the Akuthotas’ dosa. Word of their delicious masala dosa, filled with spiced potato and onion mash and served with sambar and coconut chutney, spread around the temple that both families attended. So much so that the family was visited by a delegation from the temple asking if they’d sell dosas to visitors coming to pray at Navaratri, a Hindu festival that takes place over 10 days in November. 

Despite having no professional background in hospitality, they agreed. It wasn’t an easy task. “We were not prepared for the scale,” recalls Swamy. There were four queues on the first day, and each line was “about a quarter kilometre long”. With the help of the Navaratri committee, others in the community, and Sammy and his young brother, the family pulled through and the event was a success.

With Swamy unable to find a job in his specific field of electronic engineering, because “that industry is non-existent in New Zealand,” the family took heed of their triumphant dosa operation at the temple. “Without having any knowledge in the hospitality business, we thought we’d start something from scratch,” he says. 

The Akuthota family opened their first restaurant in a two-storey shop space on Hobson Street in central Auckland in the summer of 1999. 

The name they chose, Satya, has layers of meaning, explains Swamy. You could write pages and pages and still not get the full definition, but in short it means truth. The name was suggested by a religious leader from their temple. “As an obedient husband, I asked my wife what I should do,” says Swamy. Her mother’s name was Satya, so it fit on both sides. 

Although “it is very, very difficult to maintain those godly standards,” Swamy says, “as far as it is possible, we try to maintain the true nature of satya in our business”.

It’s a dedication to truth expressed through their food: by not using artificial ingredients or preservatives and, most importantly, maintaining the traditional principles of food from their homeland. Says Swamy: “despite thousands of years of invasion, the southern Indian cuisine relatively maintained its own truthfulness and intactness.”

When the restaurant first opened Sammy was 11 and his brother was eight. Back then, the family lived in the space above the restaurant. It was especially tough in those early days, says Swamy. It took both compromise and struggle from the entire family for Satya to establish itself.

Growing up, Sammy says the restaurant lifestyle was all he knew so he enjoyed it more than anything else. “I had a commercial kitchen to play with and I loved cooking so it was a lot of fun for me,” he says. Back then he’d help out with jobs in the kitchen, garnishing dishes or making simple entrees. When he was older he moved on to waiting tables.

His mates loved coming over because they could eat whatever they wanted, and were able to experience the buzz of working in the restaurant together – an activity they’d call “the curry mission”. 

“My friends still joke about when they used to come to stay the night,” says Sammy. “The next day they used to smell like curry, all their clothes would smell like curry, their bag would smell like curry, so we came up with the term ‘curryfication’.”

The only downside Sammy remembers is that when friends would organise to hang out on Fridays and Saturdays, he “wouldn’t really be able to kind of join them, which was always kinda crap”. 

The decision to open Chai Lounge came from wanting to put his own spin on the well-oiled machine that is the Satya brand. Sammy says he “used that as a platform where I could just kind of showcase a whole different style of Indian cuisine”. 

He was also keen to extend what he saw as a fairly narrow perception of Indian food in New Zealand – which back then at least, was limited to a meal of curry, rice, naan and a Kingfisher. “I was wanting to do something a little bit different for ages,” he says “because in a way I wanted to express what Indian food meant to me.”

The Chai Lounge concept came from an amalgamation of New Zealand’s rustic bach aesthetic and dhabas, ubiquitous roadside eateries in India serving quick meals – “these are the kinds of places that I really loved hanging out at,” says Sammy. Word soon spread through the Auckland grapevine of this new mysterious, dimly lit bar in Sandringham.

His parents’ initial scepticism grew into support when they saw how popular the combination of spicy shared plates and an array of craft beers and cocktails were with customers. Two years later, they handed over the keys to their Karangahape Road restaurant to be converted into a second Chai Lounge. The gleam of Chai Lounge’s early days hasn’t faded: it remains a fixture on lists of Auckland’s top restaurants and bars. More importantly, customers still love it. Take a peek inside either location and you’re sure to find a happy crowd of patrons, perched on beer crates and sharing plates of nibbles between sips of cocktails.

Asked if there was any other career he would want, Sammy says it would have been an Formula One driver – “but I don’t know if that was ever going to happen anyway”. 

After 23 years in an industry he was practically born into, Sammy has become an Auckland hospo figurehead, repping both restaurants his parents opened and the two started by him. Thanks to the know-how he’s amassed over those two decades, he’s naturally taken the reins of a large chunk of the Satya and Chai Lounge operations. Even so, you’ll still find him scrubbing dishes, garnishing plates and waiting tables when needed, just as he did back when he was a takeout kid.

Click here to watch the full series of Takeout Kids. Made with the support of NZ On Air.