To most of us, the pleasant buzz that comes with the consumption of a couple of pints is just as important to the beer drinking experience as the appearance, aroma, mouthfeel and flavour of what’s in the glass in front of us. But there are times when someone, for either personal or practical reasons, wants a beer without the booze. And in those situations, the only option is a non-alcoholic beer.

The problem is that for anyone who has a taste for anything outside of the beer mainstream, their near-beer options are pretty limited. There are plenty of different non-alcoholic beers out there, from domestic products like Molson Exel and Labatt Nordic, to a multitude of imported versions that are often available at ethnic groceries and restaurants. But with very few exceptions, they all tend to be based on the pale lager style - which makes sense, given that pale lagers account for something like 90% of the real beer market.

Being neither a teetotaler nor a driver, there is never any real reason for me to drink de-alcoholized beer, but as a RateBeer addict, I grab one occasionally to tick off a rating. And to be fair, they haven’t all been disasters: Gerstel Brau from Germany’s Eichbaum Brauereien is actually comparable in quality to many of the mid-range Euro-lagers at the LCBO, and Cheers Preta from Portugal is a surprisingly decent attempt at a non-alcoholic dark lager. But generally, I’d take a soda or iced tea before choosing a alcohol-free beer if I needed to have a booze-free outing.

There are plenty of people who feel differently, though, and at this past weekend’s Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association trade show at the Direct Energy Centre, a couple of breweries were on hand to hawk their non-alcoholic options to the thousands of restaurant and bar owners and staff who were on hand. I tried an offering from each of them, and found them to be at opposite ends of the enjoyment spectrum, at least to my palate.

The better of the two was O’Doul’s Amber from Anheuser-Busch which the rep described as their attempt to replicate popular red beers such as Rickard’s and Keith’s. Not exactly the highest aspirations, perhaps, but they’ve done a pretty good job of it. Everything about it - appearance, aroma and flavour - are spot on, with the use of caramel malts giving the taste an authentic character. There’s also none of the cloying, sticky sweetness that’s common in many near beers.

The same can’t be said of Labatt Blue De-Alcoholized Pilsener, a brand new product that marks the first time a Canadian brewery has extended one of their core brands into the non-alcoholic market. Unfortunately, it’s even less of a “pilsener” than the real Blue, with an extremely unpleasant corn syrup character in both the aroma and flavour, and not even a faint hint of hops in the finish to balance the sweetness, making it a completely unrefreshing beverage. It’s brews like this one that give non-alcoholic beers such a bad reputation, while O’Doul’s Amber, despite not being up to craft beer standards, proves that lack of alcohol in a beer doesn’t have to mean a lack of quality.