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Discover, Sip, Repeat: Your Adventure Begins Here
It is January and you are heavy with the weight of over-indulgence, too many mince pies and maybe one too many tipples. The New Year is a great time to try something new, so why not explore the world of low and no alcohol drinks.
The past few years has seen a massive increase in the quality of alcohol-free drinks, before you were relegated to a diabetes inducing concoction of fruit juices and syrup in a ‘mocktail’, the standard Becks Blue or your regular boring soft drinks.
Throughout January our blogs will focus on some of the best alcohol free options, exploring great producers, plus some fantastic cocktails you can try at home.
First up, our Spotlight On series continues with the award-winning brewery, Big Drop.
Big Drop began its life in October 2016 with lawyer Rob Fink and designer friend James Kindred. They decided to develop an alcohol free option due to lifestyle changes and becoming fathers, and at the time there were not many options available.
They drafted in the help of experimental brewer Johnny Clayton to help with the brewing of alcohol free beers. In doing so they perfected a method of brewing the beer without the use of other artificial methods of removing alcohol. What you get left with is a fully fermented beer with an abv of 0.5%.
Some of our customers ask about that small percentage of alcohol, but just remember that a glass of apple juice can contain up to 0.66% abv and even a burger bun at 1.28%. Steadydrinker.com states “For instance, a pint of 0.5% beer contains about 0.28 units or 2.2g of alcohol. The average person’s body will process this in around 16 minutes (compared to almost 3 hours for a pint of 5% beer).”
To create their beers they have utilised a different range of grains in the brewing process. As well as the traditional barley they also use rye, wheat and oats; with twenty varieties of each grain being used they have developed a range of full and complex flavoured beers.
The brewery has gone on to win multiple awards for their beers, in fact they are now the UK’s most awarded brewery of all time! Recently they have won ‘Worlds Best’ for their Paradiso Citra IPA and Galactic Milk Stout.
As you can imagine the range of beers are all beautifully brewed and full of flavour, you really can’t go wrong with any of their range. But, here are a selection of our favourites that will be hitting the shelves soon!
If you like your beers full of citrus flavours then Paradiso is the perfect choice. It was originally introduced as a limited edition but it became so popular that it has now become one of the core range. Hopped with Chinook, Cascade, Simcoe, Citra and Columbus, it gives the beer a real hit of citrus forward flavours. It could be one of our favourite beers and is also one of the ‘Worlds Best’!
Your friends have come round for taco Tuesdays and you are looking forward to some refreshing beverages to pair. Obviously you can turn to the classic refreshing lager, but if you are looking to be transported to the warmth of Mexico while remaining sober then this beer is the perfect option. It has those classic spicy flavours that work perfectly with a wedge of lime!
This beer is double dry hopped, which means they have used double the amount of hops, this IPA is an explosion of flavour. They use a blend of US hop varieties, Azacca, Chinook, Mosaic and Motueka, and it offers deep pineapple and stone fruit flavours with balanced citrus notes. It is a very refreshing beer and a sip will leave you excited for spring!
If you like your dark elixir rich and decadent then this is the beer for you! The team at Big Drop have used lactose in this beer to give it a subtle sweetness (lactose doesn’t ferment). They also use cocoa nibs to give a big hit of chocolate which works beautifully with the coffee elements from the dark malts. This is one of the ‘Worlds Best’ for a reason!
