Drytryanuary – My experiment with sobriety
These are the alcohol-free beers worth drinking.
Welcome to the first Edinburgh Pub Reviews newsletter of 2025. I’ve been off for few weeks over the festive period. It already feels like ages ago, but I hope you managed to enjoy your Christmas and new year. I also hope you might have found my list of cosy Christmas pubs useful – and even managed to visit one or two yourself. It’s not too late to peruse the list at your leisure.
I chose the pubs because they particularly lend themselves to the cold winter months. And with temperatures like these, we could really do with some cosy comforts this week in Edinburgh.
It’s a difficult time of the year for pubs, for obvious reasons. Of course, we have no money to spend, post-Christmas. At least that’s what it feels like. My algorithm clearly thinks differently, as it’s not stopped trying to sell me stuff since Boxing Day. My feeds are full of ‘offers’ for various discounted products. I suspect yours are the same.
May I suggest resisting the post-Christmas sales and instead spending a fiver on a pint with a friend you didn’t get to catch up with in December? I have a hunch that will provide more value than the sale item you’ve had your eye on. And it’s cheaper.
Plus, we could really do with a little pick-me-up in these bleak winter months. Meeting up with a mate is surely one of the easiest and cheapest (legal) pick-me-ups going.
The other difficulty for pubs is that everyone decides to go sober. We’ve just got through the first week of 2025, which means 99% of all well-intentioned resolutions are probably already broken. But temporary teetotalism is easier to stick to when it’s got a name: Dry January.
Hats off to anyone who decides to curb their drinking or take a few weeks off. It’s not easy, given how ingrained drinking is to our social lives. Unfortunately, pubs are so closely associated with booze – for good reason – that many people simply avoid them during Dry Jan. Why bother going out if you can’t have a drink?
But I’m here to tell you that it can be done. Because I just went two and a half months without touching a drop of alcohol. That’s by far the longest time I’ve ever gone without a drink since my teenage years. I never thought I would find myself admitting this: I enjoyed it.
I gave up drinking on a whim in mid-October, and stayed sober through to midnight on New Years Eve. During that time I had a family wedding, stag do, birthday, the usual festive events and meet-ups around Christmas, and Christmas Day itself. I am still in a little bit of shock at how much fun I had at them while completely sober, which probably says a lot about my approach to alcohol before this ten-week experiment.
I’m not saying this in order to proudly showcase my superior self-restraint or my high-grade willpower. I’m saying that if an idiot weakling like me, someone so selfish, so lazy, can do it, then so can you. But I had a secret weapon to get me through it. Without it, I would have broken after a week.
It’s called alcohol-free beer. Have you heard of it? It’s very good these days.
Three months ago, I viewed the stuff with disdain. That’s because the last time I tried it, more than five years ago, it was garbage. But they’ve really sorted it out recently, so that many beers are not just drinkable but actively enjoyable. (Some are still shit, but then there’s lots of alcoholic beer I don’t go near either.)
Nowadays, you won’t really find a pub that doesn’t have at least one AF beer in the fridge. You may even find it on tap in some places. And it meant, for me, that I could still enjoy going to the pub. Yes, I did start to miss cask ale (and whisky, and wine) after a while, but AF beer goes a very long way towards filling that hole.
A few years ago, a movement called Tryanuary emerged as a counter to the booze-free Dry Jan. It encouraged adherents to spend the month trying out new beers, and crucially to keep going to the pub. Unfortunately, it seems to have died a death in the past couple of years.
So here is my attempt to combine the two movements. I’m calling it Drytryanuary. Go dry if you want, but use it as an opportunity to try some new AF beers. I tried 35 different beers during my two and a half months of sobriety. (A period which is emphatically now over. It’s very much a Wet January for me.)
To help you on your way, here are my lists of the best and worst AF beers I tried in the last few months of 2024. Cheers.
My top five alcohol-free beers
Jump Ship No Quarter Pacific Pils
Jump Ship is a local brewery which only makes alcohol-free beer, and it is some of the best AF beer I have tried. Their No Quarter is my favourite, packing huge amounts of juicy flavour into each can. To me, it’s more of a pale ale than a pils, but never mind - it tastes brilliant.
Jump Ship Stokers Stout
Guinness is a popular alcohol-free beer in pubs, and is a reliable choice. But if you have the opportunity to get your hands on a can of Stokers Stout, take it. It’s got a smokiness which is not too overpowering, and is much richer and deeper than Guinness 0%.
Erdinger Alkoholfrei
You’ll see this in many pubs. It’s less wheaty than regular Erdinger, but apart from that is pretty lively and very drinkable. I imagine it will be even more drinkable in the summer.
Perlenbacher 0.0%
The biggest surprise of the lot. You won’t find this in pubs, because it’s Lidl’s own brand beer. It’s fizzy and tastes of very little. But I found myself going back time and again for another six pack. Guilt-free fizz. And it costs 50p a bottle.
Adnams Ghost Ship 0.5%
Somehow, Adnams have managed to make this taste remarkably similar to the original Ghost Ship. Well done to all involved.
Five beers to steer clear AF
Doom Bar Zero
So bad it made me want to immediately down two large whiskies. Bin it.
Chouffe Alcohol-Free
One of the biggest disparities between the no-alcohol version and the real thing. Had the makers even tasted a normal Chouffe before?
Lucky Saint Lager
Not awful, but this gets marked down because of its ubiquity. Often it is the only AF beer on draft. Unfortunately, it’s not up to scratch.
Infinite Sessions IPA
This was one of the first beers I tried when I started this experiment. It made me worry that AF beer hadn’t moved on from the last time I gave it a go. What little flavour it has is not worth a sniff.
Staropramen 0.0%
I just wrote two words in the notes app on my phone. “Weird taste”.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back next week with your first proper pub review of 2025.
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Have you tried Brulo's beers? Surprisingly good and they're based in Edinburgh.
My beer-drinking boyfriend also loves the Perlenbachers, both the regular and 0.0! Rare to find something so good for such a cheap price.