This is not your father’s near beer. The world of craft beer has recently been turning its attention to how to make zero or low alcohol beer actually taste good. And it might be working, sorta.

For years those not wanting the buzz in their beer had few options, all coming from the corporate brewers. The 0.5% alcohol beer segment – near beer – was dominated by insipid, sweet, boring yellow fizz that masqueraded as real beer but wasn’t. Often plagued by odd off-flavours and overall rather boring, it wasn’t a serious option for someone who enjoyed the taste of beer.

That might be changing. I have noticed that Alberta breweries are increasingly turning their attention to lower alcohol beer and, in some cases, no alcohol beer. They are trying to apply craft brewing techniques to this formerly niche market. It caught my attention enough to make it the subject of my most recent CBC RadioActive column, which you can listen to here.

Of course, lower alcohol beer – so-called session beer – have been around for a long time. Berliner Weisse, English Mild and other low alcohol offerings have been around for generations. What is different, I think, are two things. One, recent years have seen a spate of big beer – double and triple IPAs (I still wonder what the third “I” stands for), imperial stouts and other high alcohol sippers peppering brewery line-ups. Putting a 3% alcohol beer alongside as a balance is a conscious choice by breweries, I believe.

Second, it is not just about the traditional low alcohol styles. Blindman Brewing, for example, recently put out a “super-session” ISA at 3% alcohol. Similarly Situation Brewing had a Grisette that clocked in around 3%. Others have done similar things. This trend, I think, is about trying to offer a safer, healthier option without losing “beer” flavour that craft beer drinkers are looking for.

But the big change is the effort by at least a couple of Alberta breweries to produce a no-alcohol beer that avoids the traps of the near beer of yore. Village Brewing has recently released their Village Local Non-Alcoholic Pale Ale. And Calgary actually has a brewery dedicated to no alcohol beer exclusively. Partake Brewing has a range of near beer, including a Pale Ale, an IPA, a Stout and a Blonde Ale, all with a guaranteed alcohol below 0.3%.

All of the no-alcohol beer can be found in select liquor stores, but given their “near” status, you can find them in other non-boozy retail outlets.

I sampled the Village and a couple of the Partake in preparation of my CBC column. To be honest, they still don’t quite meet the mark of an alcohol-laden beer, but they are a big step up from the near beer of old. The Village had a pleasant malt base, surprisingly rounded, but the hops had a rough bitterness and a strange grassy flavour. The Partake beer I tried all had an unfermented sweetness to them and a sharp, astringent linger that I attribute to transformation of the hops due to the processes used to remove alcohol.

I won’t go into the processes of de-alcoholizing a beer here (although I do touch on it briefly in the CBC piece), but will say that they do have the unintended side effects of either stripping flavour or altering flavour compounds.

For my CBC column we went with a sampling of Red Hart Brewing’s English Mild, which is a thoroughly pleasant low alcohol experience.

The low/no alcohol craft beer trend is not going away. Consumers are increasingly health and safety conscious, meaning they will continue to look for ways to enjoy a beer with friends without the negative alcohol side effects. Which means there will be increasing number of low alcohol and no alcohol options.

I am actually quite confident we will continue to see improvements in no alcohol craft beer offerings. I equate it to the gluten free beer segment. A decade or so ago, the options were unpalatable (to put it politely). Today you can easily be fooled into thinking it is a regular beer. That is the, eventual, future of zero alcohol beer, as more craft brewers put their creative minds and technical know how to the problem.

And that can’t be anything other than a good thing.