It takes a lot of prompting to get me to try any non-alcoholic beer. Choice has never been greater, but by and large they just don't taste like real beer. That goes especially for the lager and pale ale versions, which seem to make up the bulk of the segment. Anyway, I've heard good things about today's pair, enough to make me go out and buy them. Both are from trustworthy US stalwart Sierra Nevada.First up is Trail Pass Golden, which is indeed golden, and west-coast clear. The aroma is lightly lemony, although I also get a hint of the excess sweetness which usually plagues non-alcoholic beer. Sure enough, the flavour is highly sugary, suggesting a diluted orange cordial rather than a beer. In its favour it doesn't have the clanging metallic off-flavour that's another common problem with these, but that's not much comfort. I guess they're going for the lager market with this, and if non-alcoholic lager is something you drink regularly, then here's an inoffensive, clean-tasting, thirst-quenching example. As a beer substitute, however, it misses the mark significantly.
It being Sierra Nevada, I thought Trail Pass IPA would be amber coloured, but it turned out to be a very pale yellow, and slightly murky too. The aroma is much sweeter than the previous one, that light lemon zest becoming full-on fruit-chew candy. Strangely, there's not much of anything in the flavour this time. It's certainly not overly sweet, and has quite a pleasant dry cracker-like malt base. The hops, again, are orangey, tasting a bit dull and artificial, with none of the intensity that a proper American IPA ought to have. There's also a twang of that metallic aspirin effect, meaning it's not really much different to most other alcohol-free IPAs, which is unfortunate. I wouldn't trade a real beer for this one either.And so my scepticism continues. If Sierra Nevada can't make a convincing non-alcoholic pale beer, I'm not sure anyone else will.