Viewpoint: Booze-free beer is too expensive

So here's a thing. Staying sober by going for non-alcoholic beer in the pub is simply not cost effective, writes Brian Byrne. Indeed, it's bad enough to drive you back to drinking the hard stuff.

This is nothing new. I remember back in the day when the first of the then quite terrible beers without booze came on the market, they were charged at the same price as an alcoholic equivalent. The excuse then was that Revenue charged the same excise duty on both, because the non-alcoholic versions 'had once contained alcohol'.

I don't know whether that was true or not. But it certainly doesn't apply today. Beers with less than 1.2pc alcohol attract no excise duty in this state. For a typical 4.5pc beer, the excise duty plus the VAT subsequently charged on it comes to around 72c on a pint, or about €1.24 per litre. We don't drink beer by the litre here, but my coming calculations are more easily understood if we use that measure.

We buy a typical draught lager in our local at around €7.83 a litre. If we drink bottles instead, it's a lot more expensive, working out at €13.10 a litre (I really don't get why people will buy by the bottle against draught, but that's their choice).

Now, if you want to have a beer without alcohol, say Heineken 0.0, that will typically cost you ... yep, €13.10 a litre. And there's no draught equivalent, to my knowledge, so you're stuck at that price.

But here's a rub. Remember no excise duty plus VAT on non-alcoholic beers? Well, then the cost of staying sober on bottled beer should at least be €1.24 per litre cheaper, right? Right. Except that it's not. Not in pubs, anyhow.

So maybe the brewer is charging the same for both, and the publican hasn't any choice? Since I'm a long, long time out of the pub business myself — I left The Hideout family business in 1977 — I don't know if that's so. But external evidence would suggest that it's not.

The off-sale price of bottles of Heineken 0.0 as against its normal 4.5pc alcohol equivalent is 55 percent cheaper. And I doubt that the off-licences are discounting for the sake of the health of the nation.

We're heading into Christmas parties and celebrations which will in many cases have some people wanting to stay sober who normally like their beer. It can be for self-preservation in an accelerated party environment. It may be because one is the designated driver to get family or friends home safely. It could be for a number of other reasons, not least because the capacity for taking soft drinks or fizzy water all night is very limited.

But having to pay through the nose for doing so, and even providing a substantial extra margin to the publican for the privilege, is a bit much.

Also too much, by the way, is providing the bottle of Heineken 0.0 with a pint glass three-quarters filled with ice. When I was in the business, we served half-pint bottles with a half-pint glass. The non-alcoholic stuff has problem enough being tasty without instant dilution …

Anyway, who's going to be the first pub in Kilcullen this Christmas to offer non-alcohol beer at a price that's not punitive?

(The market for non-alcoholic beers in Europe is growing rapidly, increasing by a quarter in the five years to 2015 and expected to represent 20pc of all beer sales by 2025. Heineken, Guinness, and the global owners of Budweiser are all providing low- or non-alcohol beers, as are a number of the craft beer brewers in Ireland. It's not niche any longer ... but at the moment it IS too expensive.)


Photographs use Policy — Privacy Policy