Sober Boozers Club
The Sober Boozers Club Podcast is brought to you by Ben Gibbs - Alcoholic. Since 2022 Ben has been sourcing and enjoying the best alcohol free beer the world has to offer and has been documenting these beverages during his sobriety journey. Ben has worked alongside craft breweries, bottle shops and sober activists to raise awareness of Grey Area Drinking and to help spread the word on the growing market that is AF/NA beverages, becoming the face of the Alcohol Free Beer Club and featuring on many podcasts, as well as securing a number of features on BBC Radio. In 2024 Ben became the first alcoholic in active recovery to win a British Guild Of Beer Writers award for commentary on beer. This podcast features experts from the Beer world, as well as Alcohol Free breweries and sober activists as we explore the world of Alcohol Free beer and sobriety.
Sober Boozers Club
Crafting Connections: Beer Beyond Alcohol With The Daft About Craft Podcast
What happens when a sober beer enthusiast sits down with two craft beer podcasters? A fascinating exploration of beer culture that bridges the divide between traditional and alcohol-free brewing worlds.
In this candid conversation, Ben welcomes Dave and Dave (yes, both of them!) from the Daft About Craft podcast to discuss their parallel journeys through the beer landscape. While the Daves share their evolution from casual lager drinkers to craft beer aficionados, Ben opens up about how the same craft beer explosion during lockdown revealed his struggles with alcohol. The contrast between these experiences creates a powerful narrative about our different relationships with the same beloved beverage.
The heart of the episode examines the remarkable quality revolution in alcohol-free beer. Gone are the days of subpar options like Kaliber and Bavaria – today's craft breweries are producing alcohol-free versions that stand proudly alongside their full-strength counterparts. As Ben puts it with striking clarity: "If you like beer and you don't like alcohol-free beer, then it's not beer that you like, it's alcohol that you like."
Most ridiculous is Ben's story about becoming emotional over pouring the perfect alcohol-free pilsner – a moment that encapsulated his journey and the profound connection many feel to beer culture beyond its intoxicating effects. This episode challenges preconceptions about why we drink and celebrates how craft beer brings people together across the ABV spectrum.
Whether you're a dedicated craft beer enthusiast, sober curious, or somewhere in between, this conversation offers fresh perspectives on community, quality, and the future of brewing. Listen now and join us as we look toward a world where beer is celebrated for its craft rather than its alcohol content.
To find out more about the Daft About Craft Podcast, head over to your favourite podcasting platform (i'd do it straight after this episode)
To find out more about the wonderful world of alcohol free beer and to check in with me head to www.instagram.com/sober_boozers_club
This episode is not brought to you by any sponsors because nobody wants to sponsor me.
This iswinning Sober Boozers Club podcast. That is the first and last time I'm going to say that I promise you For season two, episode one. I'm talking to two guys called Dave who collectively form the Daft About Craft podcast, which is a podcast centering around the world of craft beer. I appeared on their podcast not too long ago and had a darn good time, so I thought we'd do it all over again. How are we both, gentlemen? We're very well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not too bad. Not too bad, thank you.
Speaker 1:I sense you're lying, dave B, but we won't go into that too much. This has for the context. We've been trying to arrange this for maybe a month, I'd say, and then just a string of ailments has fallen upon you and it's been a treacherous time. But we're here now and that's what we like. So thank you both for coming on to do this. I really wanted to get you on for episode one, which is why this podcast is so late in coming out, because we did an episode together on your podcast and I had a bloody good time, so it's really nice to have you guys here.
Speaker 3:It's quite strange being at the opposite end of everything this time and we're in the hot seat. It's weird, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Just joining without having any prep or necessarily knowing what the questions are going to be, whereas usually, yeah we're setting the setting the tone, rather than being on the receiving end we're at your mostly this time yeah, I deliberately don't plan anything, which is like a really bad way to do things.
Speaker 1:But you know, so far so good. I suppose, until we get to that inevitable episode where it's just me and someone going, I've got nothing to say here.
Speaker 3:To be honest, I don't think it's such a bad thing. We have a few things mapped out, but not much, and when it comes to interviews, I never give people a list of questions or anything, and neither do you, dave. We like to just make it up, because you never know where that conversation is going to go to yeah, yeah, I much prefer it like that.
Speaker 1:It's kind of nothing is off the table. I like that. I like to. I need something in my life that feels dangerous. God knows I've got rid of everything else. But speaking of interviewing techniques, how did this all start for you two, have you? Have you always been into beer and then just decided, right, let's, let's get into this, or how long have you been around the world of beer?
Speaker 2:go on, dave, you start this one I was probably, when you get to sort of 18, 19, I you know drank the same beers. Everyone would drink to start with, like your fosters, your stella, things like that. But then I think it's probably speaks to my personality. I always wanted to find different beers and at that point, going back 20 years, it was sort of european stuff. There wasn't necessarily craft around at that point, so it was more european you know your german, your belgian beers and started to explore those a bit and then after that sort of hot on the heels I suppose, but then it felt like after a little while, then craft beer came along and I was put onto that by a friend and never looked back really and that was probably probably 10, 12 years ago, I suppose yeah, it's a similar sort of story with me.
Speaker 3:Obviously, when you're at I was gonna say school not maybe school, but college university you get into beers and you drink the usual stuff. And I've got some older friends and they were drinking this sort of cask, ale stuff and I had a bit of that and I thought it's all right. It's all right. But then one day somebody introduced me to was. It was a hell's. It was a lager from cloud water and I tasted this and it was like this light bulb moment and everything else that had gone before it was utter dross. You know, this was a whole new world here and this beer was fantastic and ever since then there was no looking back.
Speaker 3:I've hooked line and Sinka just all into craft beer and I love it. You know, we both love it, don't we? And we're always looking for the next best thing or something different, something new. But we found out during lockdown that we both like beer. We work together. We didn't know that each other liked beer, but we found this out during lockdown. We were on a Zoom call one day. They've noticed some beer books behind me on a bookshelf and we got talking and then then he said I'd love to do a craft beer podcast. I said, wow, I like the sound of my own voice quite a lot and I'm a bit of a frustrated wannabe. Local radio dj, let's do a podcast. And uh, we started a podcast and that was nearly five years ago now and we're still here.
Speaker 2:I think it's really boring, but it's one of the happiest accidents that you love the editing side of things and are really into all that, because so many podcasts, I think, survive or die by actually, how well they're put together. And obviously in COVID, everyone had a go at it, didn't they? Pretty much Everyone tried doing a podcast, and I ever. And obviously in covid everyone had a go at it, didn't they? Pretty much everyone tried doing a podcast. And I remember when we were getting started we were listening to some other people's and it was just like well, you know, the sound quality is not good, it's just essentially your way of recording, having a few beers with your mates, which is nothing wrong with, but probably other people don't need to hear that. So we sort of went for more of a. I think we've always said it's more of a magazine style, isn't it?
Speaker 3:that's what we've sort of gone for yeah, we like to have different features rather than just, you know, get the two of us together and get slowly tanked up, that's.
Speaker 3:That's nice for the people involved, but I'm never sure your listeners want to hear that. So we try to have different features and we record them all at different times so you can never actually tell if we are inebriated and then we beat them all together. Although saying that, going back to our first episode in lockdown, we did used to do it in one hit because we had more time then yeah, we were starting at like we'd start about eight, eight ish, wouldn't we?
Speaker 2:we wouldn't finish till two in the morning. Oh yeah, we'd be sitting there for hours, we'd finish, we'd finish and then be like, well, I haven't got to get up for anything tomorrow apart from work, and that probably doesn't start for a few hours. Should we get another beer from the garage? Should we get another beer from the garage?
Speaker 1:happy days we did stop recording. But yeah, lockdown was. Lockdown was wild when you think back to it. Like I can remember just midday cracking open a can of pills and just being like yep, this is fine, this is great, like I, I bloody loved it.
Speaker 2:Anything was also anything, when the weather was absolutely incredible, which lent itself to it, didn't it? All of some people sat in their gardens in you know well, it's, it was this time five years ago, wasn't it? Yeah, and, and the weather was absolutely stunning. I remember sitting in the garden a lot during lockdowns a lot of people did and I think it, for me, also accelerated was it the start of the podcast, but accelerated my beer buying habits, because we quickly found out that all the brewers could obviously still keep chucking stuff out in cans, and dave and I were just like it was ridiculous, really, wasn't it, dave? Like you weren't spending your money on anything else. So it was like every day it felt like there'd be an order turning up from somewhere I don't remember, on one occasion, I think, there was about five deliveries turned up.
Speaker 3:You know, ups would roll up in the van and there'd be a beer delivery, then apc, then the royal mail, then you know every, or hermes, or whatever it was called. Then you know one after the other. I mean, the neighbors must have thought we were just become alcoholics overnight which is quite interesting of that one obviously all of this segues quite nicely into your story and what you do yeah, well, mine, my alcoholism, really it was.
Speaker 1:You know it was similar to yours. Um, not your alcoholism, of course, it was my, my story. I should say, god, we're not. This isn't an intervention. I promise my story is similar to yours in terms of lockdown. I got really into craft beer during lockdown because I had people in who were staying in the house with me but were really into craft beer and all of a sudden it was like what's this? 11 nitro stout? I really like that and I'm gonna drink a lot of those because I was used to drinking lager. And that's when my issue really became apparent and it was like, oh okay, this level of drunk is horrific, like bad. This is when the nasty things happen. So, yeah, lockdown really accelerated that for me and then, obviously, post lockdown, the world opened up again.
Speaker 3:I'd go out and just try to drink like I used to drink when I was just drinking, like sessionable lagers so what do you think it is, then, that made you go sort of all in and want more and more and more, whereas I think, somehow we managed well, I think, we drew the line and said you know is enough, enough is enough. It's so strange, isn't it, how you took it.
Speaker 1:Your road went different to ours yeah, like I've spent years trying to figure out what alcoholism is, just in my own brain, without doing any proper research into it, to be honest. But I've spent years thinking right. I wish I'd have known what drink it was that made me an alcoholic. You know what? At what point could I have reversed it? And I've kind of just come to accept that. You know, being an alcoholic it's just. It was always within me. It's always something that I had the potential to fall into.
Speaker 1:I look at how, when I was a child, I got really addicted to Trib or extra strong mints, like I'd get for a pack of them a day at one point, or I'd have little compulsions and I'd obsess over things and I'd get really into it. So I think when you give me a substance like alcohol, that is incredible, I love it, it's great. You know, ethanol is fabulous. Two pints deep is just the best. And if I'm miserable at the time which I was like, utterly miserable that becomes a bit of a release and then a bad habit starts to form and I think it was kind of it was always going to happen at some point in my life. It's just the cards that were on the table were presented in a way that was like right now go time.
Speaker 3:Lockdown was almost the catalyst for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, definitely. Because I see like I hear you guys talking about your ordering of beers during lockdown and my first question was in my head was how do you begin to moderate that if you've got beer just arriving by the day, like I can't understand how someone you know, didn't drink it all in one night, because I know I would have done.
Speaker 3:How do we know that this is a? I don't know the answer to this, and maybe you do, I don't. How do we know, or anybody else know, that we're not alcoholics? You know we love a drink, don't we, dave? We love a drink. I'm drinking a beer now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not because I'm ill, but I've always had it in my head, probably right from the start, because I've always had it in the back of my mind well, not always in the back of my mind, but I've had it in the back of my mind from time to time, thinking cool, you're drinking a bit too much, you should probably ease up. And the test has always been in my head, rightly or wrongly, like if I don't have any today, do I miss it and is it? You know, am I getting to a point of a day and I'm like, oh my god, I really need a beer, just like I need an excuse to have a beer. And as long as I can sort of do that, I I figure I'm okay because I can always say no, I don't want to drink today and it's not a problem.
Speaker 1:That's sort of my method yeah, for me, I think it's like if alcohol is having a negative impact on your life and yet you continue to consume it. I think that's when it becomes an issue, like when you're kind of. You can be gray area drinking for a while, so with with myself, and yet you continue to consume it. I think that's when it becomes an issue. You can be grey area drinking for a while, so with myself. I could go a few days without it. I didn't feel like I needed it. All the time I didn't wake up and think, oh, can I get a beer in? For me it would be. I couldn't go for a pint. I could never go for a pint, because what's the point? Why would anyone have a pint? I need at least five always. Why am I? And and then if someone says, oh no, I don't fancy five, and it's like, well, you've mentioned going for a beer now, so I'm gonna do that on my own. Because that that seed is there now and I knew that my drinking was affecting people around me and yet I continued doing it. It was at that point where it's like this substance is having a negative impact on my life and on other people's lives.
Speaker 1:Alcoholism is a problem with drinking. When drinking becomes a problem, that's when it's alcoholism. That's kind of where I draw the line. There's probably a medical like. Well, there definitely is. If you're drinking a certain amount of units in a week, then it's alcoholism. But I'm concerned with that. But also I smash about seven alcohol-free beers a night. So I'm not the guy to talk to about healthy living. I'm about like okay, how does this affect you and your relationships with yourself and with others?
Speaker 3:So if you sort of chain drink a load of alcohol-free beers, is there any negative side to that?
Speaker 1:acid reflux I have noticed recently with sours. Obviously some of them are like you've got a lot of sugar in some of it yeah so that's not ideal, but other than that, like it's, you know, I mean don't replace it with water, that's probably not wise, but in terms of like an abv, like it's scientifically impossible for a 0.5 to do anything to you so do you?
Speaker 3:when you're, when you're drinking an alcohol-free beer, do you? Do you get the same buzz that you used to get from a beer with alcohol?
Speaker 1:it's I think for me that's. It's kind of like you get like the social buzz of drinking a beer and I think in a certain setting, like in a social setting, you definitely do get that with alcohol free, or I definitely do. I think a lot of that is is placebo. Like you, your brain, when you drink beer it expects to feel good. It expects that dopamine release which happens when when you consume ethanol so even just the weight of a pint in your hand, you're anticipating pleasure and it's like, oh, this is nice. And over time that does fade a little bit. Like I don't get the kind of two pint buzz anymore with alcohol free beer.
Speaker 1:But early on I can remember my first pint of lucky saint on tap and I was walking back to my car after I had like four pints. I was walking back to my car and my legs felt a bit jelly. I was like this is weird, like am I okay to do this? It's like, yeah, of course you are. Like it's fine, like you're definitely fine to do this, but it's, the brain is a very powerful thing and I think placebo is, is a massive part of it, which which is, I think, what's so important about alcohol-free beer. It's just like it's the placebo.
Speaker 3:It's interesting, actually, because there's more and more lower ABV beers around these days, a lot of table beers, that sort of stuff. Me and Dave have got into these quite a lot, haven't we? We really enjoy one. But you know, some of these are as low as sort of 1.82%, but I don't feel as if I have one of those. I don't feel like it's not a real beer. It's still a beer. So presumably if it's a 0.5, it's still a beer to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I mean, when you see how it's made, like I've been lucky enough to go to a few breweries and see, like the process of it and it's like, actually this it's made in exactly the same way, like it's it's still brewed, it's still got all the ingredients. You're just doing something with, like with the alcohol, but you're removing the alcohol and there's various methods to do that. There is a form of alcohol free beer that this is like. This is where we get into like gray area, where you skip fermentation completely. Yeah, and that to me is like, oh okay, is this beer? Can I call this a beer? And to me, maybe not. But you know, once fermentation has begun, you've got water, hops, yeast, what they do. Like that's beer, like.
Speaker 1:Interestingly, I've been looking into the history of alcohol-free beer recently. Um, just being a bit of a loser, and it's like you go back to like the very start of beer, like ancient egyptians and there's obviously we don't know how this stuff was made because the recipe predates written language, but there's this report suggesting that a lot of it would have been alcohol free, or at least like one percent, two percent, and that's like what this is mad like. It's got a lot of history to it. When you go into prohibition, when 0.5 became the legal percentage of abv, that could be in a alcohol-free drink, um, which is wild. But that's the standard that we still just have and we kind of sit with it. It's worked in prohibition america, so let's just let's just keep with that and it's. It's got a really like rich history. The problem is, a lot of it was just not very good until now. So we talk lockdown and suddenly it felt like the rise of alcohol-free beer.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Certainly when I got sober, like a year after lockdown, 2022, I think, god, that's bad of me. Yeah, it was 2022 when I got sober and since then it's just been like what this is? All of these amazing liquids and you guys I mean, you do a beer podcast, a full fat beer, shall we call it podcast? And for you guys to reach out to me and invite me to come on and chat about it. It's moments like that that make you go right, okay, this is incredible, this is good.
Speaker 3:As much as we might like talking about an eight percent double ipa, we'll happily talk about a 0.5 alcohol-free beer, because essentially they're all beers.
Speaker 2:They are, and I think as well you say this, 2022 is when you started to find that there was this sort of rush of alcohol-free beer. Now you would probably would be looking for it a bit more at that point than dave and I would. I would say, as you say, we do a full fat beer show, but it feels like probably in the last, certainly 2024 and maybe the second half of 2023 to delight. If you're not looking for it, you don't have a choice. It's being put in front of you now, like now alcohol-free beer is, is everywhere and like that's the thing that all the breweries have to carry as part of their core range. Pretty much they're going to have an alcohol-free offering or a low alcohol offering.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like 2024, like the second half of 2024, is like the period of time in which UK craft breweries absolutely nailed hazy pails and hazy IPAs. I don't think there's anything more to be done in that category now. I've had some Cloudwater ones recently and Northern Bone and Daya, and we Can Be Friends and it's all just like right. It's bad news for me because I'm running out of things to say about them. It's just like this is really good.
Speaker 3:And so is this when do you go next, then? Where does the alcohol-free world go next?
Speaker 1:I'm joking, that would be. This is my little recurring joke because apparently that would be pretty scientifically impossible to get a cask alcohol-free beer because of oxygen, or I'm not clever enough to know. Alcohol free beer because of oxygen, or I'm not clever enough to know. But on a serious note, I think we need to start cracking like milds and bitters and like english ales and things like that. We we've seen proper job, which is fantastic.
Speaker 3:I've heard a few people say I know you said how good it was when you talked to us before and, and I think other people say that yeah.
Speaker 1:That beer for me was. I didn't think it was going to be that good. I'll be honest, I saw it and it was at the Guild Awards evening, the first time I'd ever seen it. I hadn't even heard that it was coming, which is terrible of me, because I'm normally quite on the ball with things like that. But I think I'd kind of given up on breweries like that because I'd been waiting for so long and it just hadn't happened.
Speaker 3:It must be really refreshing and sort of validating for you to see these massive beers that everybody knows like proper jobs suddenly having alcohol-free versions. It must like you when they. When there's no alcohol-free option of a certain beer, you must feel sort of excluded from the club almost. But when they do a 0% or a 0.5% version, all of a sudden the doors are open to you now drinking it yeah, like it's.
Speaker 1:When you see beers like that, you go. I can be like thornbridge and jaipur. That was like like. Jaipur was probably the first. It was jaipur, sierra nevada first two craft beers that I I drank and over the first two beers that I drank that made me go. I like beer. I don't just, like you know, budweiser or grosh like that. They were my coming-of-age beers. So to see Jaipur, that was like this is amazing. And then there was another, a Cloudwater Juice Forsyth that came in January this year and that was amazing. The kind of what we're dealing with now is that these beers come and then they're limited edition, small batch brews and then they go away. I think having more core range beers, if breweries can replicate their signature brews imagine a steady, rolling alcohol free, like it would be that's that's the world I want to live in. I think it's going to be very difficult because you guys mentioned well, you guys mentioned track and sonoma.
Speaker 1:Sonoma, what's the bloody name of? It yeah, that's fine, but they they released that alcohol free and it didn't tend to get that good, kind of okay, a good reception from a lot of beer people. I'd never tried the full-alcohol version so I had nothing to compare it to. But I think the people that are drinking both are going to make those comparisons and more often than not there's going to be a bit of a difference. But yeah, I mean, did you try the alcohol-free or what did you make of it?
Speaker 3:comparatively. It's an interesting question because we don't drink a lot of alcohol-free stuff. This issue came up just recently because we bought Cloudwater's 10th birthday beers, didn't we, dave? Let's talk about on the podcast, and they did six beers, right? Five beers, full-fat alcohol beers, if you want, and an alcohol-free version version. Now I bought the alcohol free one as well, because I wanted the full. Geeky me wanted the full collection of six. Obviously, dave didn't get the alcohol free one, did you? But there was a reason for this, dave, so tell everybody about why.
Speaker 2:So my theory, rightly or wrongly on it was, I think I remember seeing whatever the price of the box was for five and then what the price of the box was for the six, and I didn't feel that the alcohol free beer offered good enough value to justify me spending the money on it. And the other part of me thought if I get it, am I actually going to drink it? And probably the likelihood would be no, so I'm essentially paying for something that I won't drink, so I left it alone. But I think the cost was the driving factor. When we did our interview, I had Beaks beer and I don't quite know how much I paid for it because it was part of a job lot. However, I don't think it was that much at all and when I had it I didn't feel like I was having you know a cheap beer or sort of something rushed. It felt like it was worth the price tag I'd paid for it.
Speaker 2:And that's not to say the Cloudwaters wouldn't have been the same, because craft beer is by its nature pretty expensive. It doesn't take much to suddenly be, you know, 50, 60 pound in on an order I'm very much always trying to look for I really want this. I'm not just going to order it for the sake of it In lockdown, it was ordering for the sake of it. Now I don't drink as much as I used to, so I want to make sure what I'm getting I really enjoy. So that was my sort of driving factor for it.
Speaker 3:But it sparks a bit of a debate about whether there is value to be. Where is the value in alcohol-free beer monetary-wise? If you pay £3 a can or £5 a can or £6 a can, do you get a different quality product for your different amount of money? If you spend a tenner on a can of six pounds a can, do you get a different quality product for you for your different amount of money? If you spend a tenner on a can of full fat beer, you expect it to be like a premium product. But if you spend a tenner on an alcohol free can of beer, what extra do you get for spending more?
Speaker 1:yeah, I suppose it. It's like it depends on where you're buying from. So like, if you're buying independent, you're gonna pay an pay, an independent price, which is you know, that's just. I think we've been conditioned to expect that. It's like. If you buy a like, although it's not independent, but you buy like a Fentimans Cola or you buy a Pepsi, you know you kind of. You look at the two and it's like, okay, this is bespoke and this is mass produced. Look at the two and it's like, okay, this is bespoke and this is mass produced. But then it's what? What value do we kind of put to alcohol? So like, if I'm paying a tenner for a beer, I want it to be like I want to be able to drink one of them and it's done the job. If I'm paying, like, would I pay 10 pounds? I mean, I would pay 10 pounds for an alcohol-free beer, just to say I've done it you know, would I?
Speaker 1:expect anyone else to?
Speaker 3:probably not if mashgang did some special small batch release and it was 12 quid a can you'd be. Even though it's 12 pounds, you would be all over it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd probably go up to 25 for a single can, but that is that's part of like the collectability of it. For me, like you're saying, dave, about you're spending money on the things that you want and you're being very considerate with your, with your choices, I think for me the difference in me going and like I've I've got really into european beers lately and once, once every few months, I'll do a big order from um, a company called onp5 or under no point of thief. They're based in the netherlands. They do fantastic alcohol-free, exclusive beers from all over europe. Once every three months I'll I'll go spend a couple hundred pounds over there and get all of these incredible beers that I then have to go and do my research into because the cans are all in dutch or in in czech, and for me that's kind of the collectability of it and it's it's the collectability of it and it's the experience of it. I think you pay for the experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that translates still very much to what Dave and I do. You know, we've got fingers crossed. In the future we're going to have a chat to someone from America, which is a little bit unusual, and they've got a load of their beers. We've obviously sent some pallets over because they're available on the bottle shops and we were talking about it. Now Dave isn't as worried about them as a brewery. Like you've not had them before. You said you'd sort of pick up a couple. I'm a big fan and I'm sort of weighing up well, yeah, I could get a load, and do I just bite the bullet and think, rather than getting maybe 15 beers for 60, 70 quid, I'm gonna get seven, probably seven or eight.
Speaker 2:So we're gonna come in at eight to ten pounds, but I'm getting something different to the normal and it's that collecting bit, like you say, it's that check-in, it's getting something that not everyone else has had and and trying it and yeah, so I think that translates to alcohol free and alcohol itself yeah, I think.
Speaker 1:I think that is like where the two are quite comparable. But I think that's that's what that's awesome like when you see people there's more and more people now that are getting really into the collectability of the alcohol free stuff, and it's that's when I kind of go all right I can see that people are like I say, people are taking it seriously, which is that is as endearing as seeing. Like good beer in in a bottle shop or in a supermarket is. When full, full fat beer folks are going here's an alcohol-free beer, this is good. It's like oh nice, this is really lovely here's a question for you.
Speaker 3:You know, previously you'd wake up the next day after quite a few beers during lockdown and you might feel a bit ropey. What is it like now to wake up the next day after four, five, six alcohol-free beers and just feel fine, what does?
Speaker 1:the weirdest part is like the faux hangovers. So yesterday I felt hungover all day and it's because I stayed up until like three in the morning playing PlayStation and doing some writing and I went to bed really late and then tried to wake up early and actually I was just exhausted. But you know, like when your head feels full of sawddust, you just feel like you're really dry and horrible and there's almost anxiety that kicked in with that. Okay, because it's like, oh, this is a hangover, this is how that felt and it's like I didn't think I'd ever feel this again. But in terms of like day-to-day living it's.
Speaker 1:It's really nice just being able to wake up and feel like shit, because I always feel like shit when I wake up, but then you have a glass of water and you go, oh, this is, this isn't all day. That's nice. That's really nice. Like I can't even imagine dealing with a hangover now, like I mean, my hangover cure used to be two bottles of creek boone, like that would sort me right out. But yeah, hangovers I mean how are, how are they now? Do they? Do they still suck?
Speaker 3:I mean try to moderate the drinking so I don't get them, but I do still get them. It's usually sort of a dull headache for me, to be honest, but it can link the old. I think the older you get, the more it lingers the next day.
Speaker 1:Do you know what I used to hate, like the sneak hangovers. When you're like, I had three pints yes, that is annoying, isn't it? You feel robbed. So why has this happened? Three pints of like, let's say, heineken Literally the tamest thing. I didn't even take any drugs. I just had three pints of Heineken and I feel awful. What's this about? Didn't even take any drugs, I just had three pints of Heineken and I feel awful. What's this about? That was, yeah, I felt utterly robbed by that.
Speaker 3:Do you feel healthier in yourself for not having alcohol in your system anymore?
Speaker 1:Yes, mainly when I look at old photos of myself, like my skin is a lot better, like I had, like it wasn't like a wart, well, it kind of was like on my nose and on my lip for about a year and I just thought that was just me, I thought it was just. Oh, this is just an unfortunate skin condition I've developed. They've gone like they went. Six months after I stopped drinking I stopped smoking cigarettes as well, so no nicotine stains on my fingers. In terms of, like physical health, I notice it if I'm walking up a hill that I don't feel like I'm gonna pass out anymore. I can walk up a hill.
Speaker 1:In terms of mental clarity, yeah, like I think back to some times when I was drunk and just screaming down the end of a phone at somebody or telling all of my mates to like get the fuck off me, leave me the fuck alone, and like that still like gives me like such a horrible sense of dread because it's, it's really weird like remembering that guy and then thinking that I was that guy. Like that is the like a lot of people say drunk man's thoughts. Uh, sober man's or drunk man's words are sober man's thoughts. I, I think 90 of the time. That is complete bullshit. Because some of the stuff that I said then complete bullshit. Because some of the stuff that I said then I know it was just me trying to be as nasty as I physically could because I was so miserable and I regretted it all then. And god, I mean now do I regret it? I'm not sure because. Would I be here now if all of it hadn't have happened?
Speaker 3:so the way I see this is that you're sort of mentally also in a much better place than you were, say, five years ago. Yeah, Playing devil's advocate here. If you had a full fat beer now, what would happen?
Speaker 1:So this is how I know I'm an alcoholic, because I can 100% promise you I would be fine. You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:I'm like, yeah, it would be fine, and the fact that I'm saying that and the fact that I have, and I'm convinced I'd be fine, I could definitely have a beer, but then the fact that I'm telling you that is just like right. I am bullshitting myself, aren't I? But also, it's kind of. If alcohol free beer was still Beck's, blue and Calibre and even Lucky Saint, which is fantastic, but if it was only lucky saint, same beer forever, it would be a lot harder yeah, what you do have now is an ever-changing array of different alcohol-free beers coming out to sort of satisfy that, that collecting nature that we all have.
Speaker 1:That's the thing, and like I can have you talked about hell's beers, like I had a fantastic like augustina hells not long ago. It was like what are you doing?
Speaker 3:alcohol free like hello I thought it was amazing, yeah yeah it was.
Speaker 1:It was brilliant. So I still enjoy beer and if in fact, I enjoy being more beer more now than I did when I was drinking the alcoholic stuff. I would have loved to have gotten into beer and not been an alcoholic, because there'd be even more to try, but I'd like to think that I'd be dipping my toe in both parts of the spectrum. Now, obviously I can't because I'm an alcoholic, but um, but no, I I do think I would probably be fine. I just I know what life can be like with alcohol in it for me. I never want to risk that again so what?
Speaker 3:what do your sort of friends and family think of you drinking alcohol free beers? Do they sort of think what's going on here? He's got a problem with alcohol, but he's still drinking all these beers. Are they suspicious of it? What does?
Speaker 1:everybody think the only person that ever put me off it or that ever tried to say, no, this is bad, this is bad for you, was an ex-partner of mine. That was inevitably the person that I was with last before I got sober and that all ended in fire. But she was really against alcohol-free beer, which I kind of I'd had it in my head for maybe six months before I stopped drinking that alcohol-free beer was going to be what I'd use, but I just wasn't ready. I hated it. I'll be honest, even Freedom, which I buy quite regularly now, lucky Stank, didn't quite cut it, but that was, you know, the last six months. It was like, I think, when I was trying to kind of get off booze, that's when it really like sunk its claws in. That's when my addiction went no, you're here, you're coming with me now. Like it was like a gradual creeping in and then it was suddenly like no, now it's really bad for the last three months, three, three, six months. But yeah, she was. She was the only person that has ever been negative about it.
Speaker 1:Early days, my, my mom wasn't sure if I should be drinking 0.5 beers because she didn't know about the apv, all of this business. You see 0.5. You think it's got alcohol in it. Um, in fact I thought that it was. Um, it's ridiculous. I thought that it was helping my withdrawal.
Speaker 1:A 0.5% beer because of the alcohol, which is complete bollocks now, but again placebo. Well, mentally it was, wasn't it? Yeah, massively, and it's mad how I'd stop shaking after one. But I mean, a lot of that is sugar and all of this business as well is sugar and all of this, all of this business as well. But my friends as a whole are very supportive and they're very, they're very into it, into what I'm doing, and they like that. If I happen to order like a palette of beers, they normally get some and they're quite into that and they you know it's weird to see their drinking habits change as well, because they weren't ever really big drinkers. But you know, we we'd enjoy ourselves. But now quite often they'll order an alcohol free and I don't know if that's just there's still something in the back of their brain that's saying, oh, it's bad for me to drink around then, or if it's genuinely they're saying now, now we've stepped into this world, this stuff's quite good to drink actually and I'm to have that because I like it.
Speaker 3:I think there's no doubt whatsoever that the quality has improved massively, like you said, dave, in the last 12 to 18 months hugely. You can have an alcohol-free beer now from one of the craft breweries that we feature on the podcast and you don't even know it's alcohol-free. It tastes like proper beer.
Speaker 1:You don't even know it's alcohol-free. It tastes like proper beer. What was on that? What do you think for you guys was the first alcohol-free beer that you had? That made you go oh okay, that's not bad, was the one in particular, or was it just? Did it just kind of over time go? I can't remember the last time I had a bad alcohol-free beer. Was it more of that?
Speaker 2:sort of thing I wouldn't have had probably enough of them to sort of be able to say bad, good, Although that might change because you mentioned earlier on about acid reflux and I've been suffering with that over the last few weeks, which I think, hopefully, is related to just me being constantly ill at the moment. But anyway, the first alcohol-free beer I really remember being okay and probably now if I had it again I wouldn't be as impressed was Adnams.
Speaker 2:Ghost Ship okay, I had a lot of people were saying, oh, this is really good. And I remember I was. What was I doing? Oh, that's right, I was playing darts and I was driver that night and I had it then and I thought, okay, this isn't actually that bad, but it was still. I remember having a couple of bottles of it.
Speaker 3:I could start to feel the sugar content in it yeah, a bit of malt, bit of, uh, the old synthetic caramel pet peeve with drinks like that, it's like this is fake sugar yeah, as for I am really not sure of the answer to that question, but what I do know is that more and more I mentioned before we've had table beers and I had one recently that was branded a micro-pale, which was 1.8% Okay and which is pretty much. You know it's nearly alcohol-free, isn't it? Like much alcohol is a ripe banana or whatever. But I drink beers like that and think, yeah, this is good, I'll really enjoy this.
Speaker 3:The fact that it is very little alcohol really doesn't matter, and I've mentioned this quite a lot on our podcast. You know I don't drink. My motivation for drinking is because I want to have a nice beer, not I want to get absolutely smashed and feel terrible the next day. In fact, I don't want to do any of those things. I just want some nice beers on a night time and go to bed and wake up feeling good, you know yeah, it's big, it's become like almost an accidental.
Speaker 1:Slogan of mine is is that if you like beer and you don't like alcohol, free beer, then it's not beer that you like, it's alcohol that you like yeah, that's a good point I said it on on just on a random episode on the first season of the podcast and the amount of people that came back said yeah, that really resonated.
Speaker 1:It was like oh okay, well, and it just, but it just makes because the flavor now is is, it's just there. Yeah, I mean you can say if you don't like, you know, if you like beer but you don't like heineken, zero percent, then you're absolutely right, you know that's. That's a fair comment. Like I, I will defend alcohol-free beer. Like I will die on that hill with the flag waving high, but I won't defend all of it. Some of it to this day is is dreadful much the same as it is within.
Speaker 2:You know alcohol, beer you know for every good beer there is an average beer, there is a bad beer. That is just the nature of the industry does caliber and that sort of stuff still exist.
Speaker 3:Is that still around?
Speaker 1:these days. I've tried to find caliber and no, you can't get it anymore what was the other one?
Speaker 1:around that sort of time there was caliber and I was feeling it began with the bavaria oh, bavaria, yeah, bavaria still exists, and you might bavaria exists and it'savaria yeah, bavaria still exists, and you might Bavaria exists and it's in like the Heineken kind of category Okay, also Klosterla, okay, germany, that is, they've got a few different brews and some of them are okay, but they were like I think around the 70s, those kind of breweries started doing stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I sort of remember them from my sort of childhood, early mid 80s Not that I was drinking them, you know sort of seeing the family members.
Speaker 1:Calibre, I would love to get a bottle. I'd love to just have a bottle of it just for myself. I mean, I wouldn't drink it because I don't know how all that stuff was made and I don't know about like re-fermentation, like it could be that a bottle of Caliber now is like 21%, that would be. I mean, that would be a really funny way to relapse, wouldn't it, on a really old bottle of Caliber Like that would be, a story yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's just, it's weird, because Calibre like brewed by Guinness and you look at Guinness now and it's like that's the drink for everybody.
Speaker 3:What Guinness asks. The whole Guinness thing has gone completely mental in recent months, in fact, hasn't it? I was in a farm shop last weekend, right, and they'd got Guinness cheesecake. They'd got Guinness cheesecake, they've got Guinness sausages. Everything is Guinness mad at the moment, I suppose St Patrick's Day and whatever, but generally it's. The guinness bandwagon is is fully, fully flowing, isn't it?
Speaker 1:everybody's talking about guinness I think I mean this podcast.
Speaker 1:I think I've mentioned guinness on pretty much every episode because, as we mentioned at the start, although this is the first episode to go out, we've been uh it's we've been very poorly collectively, so it's one of the last to record and every time I've gone in I've said to myself don't talk about guinness again. But it's hard, kind of you kind of have to. And I think we want, as a country and as a people, I think we want to feel a little bit of like tradition again, and I don't mean that in like a oh, I voted brexit out means I'm a ham hock sort of way. I mean I think we want to feel like a little bit of connection to history and just feel like okay again. And I think brands like Guinness that you know and you love and you trust it kind of represents that. I think people are really like latching on to that, which is why I say I think, like some english ales and some milds and things, I'd love to see those crop up and also the whole guinness zero thing.
Speaker 3:You know, if you're standing in a pub with a pint of guinness zero next to somebody with a pint of guinness, nobody knows who's got what. You're all in the same club.
Speaker 1:You're drinking guinness you know, the worst thing that I think breweries have done is release themed alcohol-free glasses.
Speaker 3:Glasses, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like I'm a bit backwards here, like although I am Mr Alcohol-Free and like that's kind of what I base my whole life on, I want my alcohol-free beer in just a normal beer glass.
Speaker 3:You don't want to advertise it to everybody.
Speaker 1:I don't want the blue label glass that says Zero on it. It's great that they're putting a lot of money into it and they want to promote it and they want to talk about it and they want to normalise it.
Speaker 3:I love that, but in a pub, the minute you give an alcoholic, a Guinness Zero in a Guinness Zero glass, you're branding that person an alcoholic effectively, aren't you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where's my badge?
Speaker 3:Look at him badge, look at him look at him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like just where's the spotlight? I'll go and stand under that, shall I? So, yeah, I mean that's a tiny thing, like it's. It's still better than the coca-cola glasses that I've been served like drinks in, and I've had some horrific glassware in pubs. So you know that's me being very particular, but still I don't like it. It's one thing I don't like about the progress.
Speaker 3:Do you collect glassware in the same way that you collect beers?
Speaker 1:I started to and then I quickly had to rein it in Because I stopped myself from like a set of beer glasses that was like almost 300 pounds for like six, and that's when I went no, no, no, no, no, like this is stupid, you've got nice glasses.
Speaker 1:There's lots of charity shops that do like some nice, nice glasses as well. Um, but I think I just it's very easy for me to get really carried away with the world of beer now because it's a world that I didn't ever think I'd be allowed in or I'd be around like I. I genuinely I got emotional the other day, like a genuine tear left my eye because I poured up the most perfect pilsner in like one of the nice, thin, like european glasses and I've got the head absolutely spot on and it just looked incredible like the glass was clean. There was nothing clinging to the side of it and I just held it, looked at it and I felt a single tear leave my eye and I was like what? This is pathetic, but it's just magic and I think it does go further than the liquid. For me, it is what does beer represent to you? And beer to me represents what it always has done. It's just, I can still do it, which is just fantastic.
Speaker 3:I don't know about you, dave, but I think it's amazing that you can not only talk so openly about your experiences, but also you know you've, you've, you've experienced the lows of an alcohol beer and you pick yourself up, and now you're. For me, you're like one of the spokespeople for alcohol-free beers in this country.
Speaker 1:You really are. I will take that and run with it. That's like yeah, that's high praise.
Speaker 3:Dave, what do you think I'll make?
Speaker 2:It was a selfish one actually. I just thought what Ben was saying there about how there's so much and you get into it and you find out more and more. It's sort of what we've ended up doing, because our podcast was starting out, like you know, we wanted to drink beer and talk about it because we like talking about it. But I think increasingly now you listen to an episode and I'd like to think we talk more to the people than we do the beer and, like we find out what the people who've brewed the beer, what their story is and you've had a nine times out of ten
Speaker 2:it's fascinating how people have ended up deciding they want to do this. Like we had a period for a while where it was where we started a brewery in lockdown and actually we're probably moving past that a bit now and it's people sort of almost wanting to give back to the community or sort of they've always had this sort of dream and then they've just thought let's go with it, or they want to do something sustainable for the environment and things like that and it's just it sort of to your point. It just shows how much there is to it than just the drink in your glass.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's not just that liquid, is it? There's so much more to it yeah, it's, it's.
Speaker 1:You're right, there is so much to that, like that liquid that ends up in your glass and then getting drunk, and it's like the people in beer and the history of beer and the traditions around it, and like the coming together of people for beer, like that is a. It's such a universal language, like the coming together of people over beer. I can't think of much in the world that is that community-focused.
Speaker 3:It is interesting how you say you got emotional over pouring that glass of beer, because I completely get that. I really do. It can be quite emotional sometimes the connections you make to people as well. In this industry I've met so many people that I would never have met otherwise, and some of them have become really good friends, you know, and it's, it's a very inclusive industry.
Speaker 1:You know, I think it's when you went for me in that I looked at it and what entered my brain and nifty was this is perfection. Like this liquid in this glass is perfection. And then I thought, like it was like life flashing before your eyes kind of moment. This is ridiculous, isn't it? By the way, we're just talking about a fucking glass like right here, it was here, like it was. It was basically just this did you take?
Speaker 1:did you take a picture of it? I did and it looked shit. It looked it just like it did not like do it justice at all, but in all, but you will always have that moment I'll always have that moment and no one will take that away from me. And it was real and no one could tell me otherwise, but it was just in that second or in in that split second. It was like I'm here now because of alcohol-free beer. Yeah, it was like fuck like, yeah, it's.
Speaker 3:It's worth saying as well that since we spoke on an episode of our podcast, we've come back to you and said we want you to come on future episodes every every couple of months, every three months, whatever, and just give a little lowdown on the alcohol-free scene, because we feel is it's a part of the industry that is really important and there's not that many people shining a light on it.
Speaker 1:So we want to do that and you'll be coming on those episodes to tell people about what's going on yeah again, when you when you asked me that that was one of those like run downstairs and tell, tell my girlfriend like, oh, they've asked me to do this. This is, this is amazing, because every time somebody asks me, every time somebody asks me to do something with an alcohol-free beer, it's like that's really cool. Yeah, of course, that's fantastic. But every time somebody that is primarily in the full-alcohol world asks me to come and have a chat about what I'm doing and what's on my side of the fence, that means so much more of the fence. That means so much more because it's that is.
Speaker 1:It's what I wanted when I started to do this was to show people, not that they should be drinking alcohol-free beer exclusively, but just to show people what existed. It's like, oh, here's this, would you like to try it? Because it's here and and you can, you can have it whenever you want. So to have even achieved that, be asked to come and have a little chat with you guys every now and again, that's like right job done.
Speaker 2:I think increasingly you're going to see the lines are going to blur more and more. I think it's only moving one way. There's not suddenly going to be some I think I said this when we chatted before there's not going to be some pushback and all of a sudden it's going to be eight percent or nothing like this is here to stay. Now you know we've there's enough articles saying that the generation coming through drinking, starting to drink at the moment, aren't interested in drinking with the same habits that the generations have gone before now. That's not to say that the ones coming up behind them in 10, 15 years time are going to follow suit and it could go back a bit, I suppose. I think certainly alcohol free is here now and it's just hopefully it like much like craft beer. It should just continue to get better and better yeah, that was kind of I was gonna.
Speaker 1:I was gonna kind of let you go by. Asking this question is where would you both like to see alcohol free be ahead in the next couple of years? As you know, drinkers of both liquids, like full fat and possibly alcohol free. What would you like to see happen? Or what would like turn your head now? Enough to make you go right? That's a big deal for all.
Speaker 3:We've talked about alcohol free beers. I think there probably is still a bit of a stigma attached to them at the moment. I think it's becoming less and less as time goes on, and I would like to see that disappear completely. So that you know, if I go to the bar and I'm ordering an alcohol-free beer and the guy next to me is ordering a tipper, he doesn't think I'm there's something wrong with me, for yeah, yeah, you're ordering the alcohol-free beer.
Speaker 2:You know, I'd like there to be no disparity between different, because it's all beer, it's all the same liquid I think I'd like to to be no disparity between different, because it's all beer, it's all the same liquid not torn, but will genuinely weigh up. What do I fancy drinking, not just naturally gravitating towards the alcohol beer rather than the alcohol free. You know I might have an alcohol free towards the end, when I feel I've had enough alcohol. I want it to become front and center of my habits, potentially. So I sort of think I know if I have this it's going to be just as good as having the alcohol beer. It doesn't matter if there's no alcohol in it, just enjoy the taste type thing. Like that's where I'd like to see it get to yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 1:It's getting it to a point where alcohol-free beer becomes like an option rather than a choice that has to be made. So, like you say at the bar, people will assume like, oh, are you driving or are you on medication or are you an alcoholic, and, as you say, like towards the end of the night you don't want alcohol anymore. So you'll, you'll kind of not reluctantly go for an alcohol-free beer, but it's there out of convenience rather than out of no, I'm going to choose that because it's good.
Speaker 3:I think we will get there over time and also as far as our podcast goes. You know, it would be lovely a couple of years down the line maybe that alcohol-free beers get talked about on the different sections of our podcast because they're good beers, not because they're alcohol-free beers, not because they exist, not because they're there, but because they are genuinely good beers that we can talk about and that we want to champion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like if it was putty comes out and you get the alcohol-free putty and you go cool, yeah, this year's alcohol free putty is really good alcohol free chubbles from cloud water.
Speaker 1:Imagine that, just maybe it'll happen yeah, it's a world that I want to see well, because otherwise I can't have anything. But you know, for the wider world I'd like to see it because I think, if the last three years or anything to go by and I always say the last three years because I don't have a voice before then, because I wasn't involved at all, quite the opposite but if the next three years or anything like the last three years, then I mean, who knows, maybe alcohol free on cask is a possibility, but I think certainly getting some of these real highbrow beers coming to market I think is a possibility and I'll look forward to chatting to you guys about them when they do, and thank you both so much for for coming to do this.
Speaker 1:I think it's been. It's been worth the wait for me just to just to hear your lovely voices again to be honest sorry you had to wait so long yeah, thank you for having us on and for any future kind of ramblings that we may, we might, make. It will, of course, be on a on the daft about craft podcast kind of every, every, whenever we feel like it to be honest, but it's um when you've got, when you've got something to say, you can come on and say it every day.
Speaker 3:Then what have you done? What have you done, dave, and dave that's got something to say, you can come on and say it Shit every day.
Speaker 1:Then what have you done? What have you done, dave and Dave that's so great to say because I said at the start my dad's name's Dave, so it's just nice to speak to a Dave. It makes me feel safe. Thank you, chaps, and I'll catch you very soon. Thank you for listening to the Sober Boozers Club podcast. My name is Ben Gibbs gibbs. You can find me on all of the socials at sober boozers club. For more information on the daves um, head over to daft about craft podcast on spotify itunes. Wherever you get your podcasts from, they're really excellent commentators on craft beer. I really enjoy talking to them and I hope you enjoyed listening to them. For now, you guys, take care and I'll see you soon.