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I wish there were better non-alcoholic drinks that aren't sweet or hot. There's only so many mocktails or teas I can drink.

One of the best part of pubs/bars is sitting down for a session and chatting for a couple of hours. A cold beer is still refreshing the second or third time around in a way that a sweet or hot drink isn't.

I can occasionally get lucky with a decent non-alcoholic beer in a bar, though it tends to be more miss than hit.

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Ice water with a lime. Available everywhere, meets your needs and looks like a vodka drink so people who REALLY want you to be drinking something harder if they are, assume you are.

My go-to when skipping alcohol is sparkling water with a lime. Super refreshing, and people just assume it's a vodka soda/tonic.

I’d be interested in a non alcoholic stout that rivalled Guinness. Bonus points if it’s not a calorie bomb so I can drink a few. Highly improbable, I know— but I’d love it.

As a German, I feel like I need to recommend "Malzbier" [0], which is a quite sweet malt beverage, but its varies by brand. I can't tell you if the English language Wikipedia article [1] represents a broader class of drinks, though.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malzbier [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malta_(soft_drink)

Looks like there’s a variety sold here in Canada. I’ll keep my eyes open around the city to see if I can give it a try.

Sounds like it’s sweeter and maybe closer to an English malt beer than an Irish stout, but it sounds like it might be close

It's hard enough to find a good non-alcoholic beer without limiting it to stouts, so I'd try blending your favorite non-alcoholic beer with an infusion of roasted barley. Guinness is fairly light as stouts go, so I think this might work.

There was a non-alcoholic drink made in Nigeria, Maltina, that was made at a brewery as a non-alcoholic stout. I have not tried it, but it was quite popular and it looks like it has some distribution in Canada and the US.

Italy has a roasted barley drink called "Orzo". It tastes very strongly of barley, and is delicious iced with milk and sugar (or hot).

Tastes nothing like beer, but if you are just in it for the barley taste, it has a very powerful and delicious flavor.

Inferial Stout from the Norwegian brewery Nøgne Ø is the only non-alcoholic stout I've tried. It's not Guinness, but certainly not bad for a non-alcoholic beer.

Otherwise I'm generally of the opinion that Mikkeller make the best (or at least most interesting) non-alcoholic beers

Try flavored seltzer (like la Croix). That's what we do as our beer substitute. It's cold, fizzy, and refreshing with no sugar.

This is a great idea. In addition, consider flavouring to your taste by just mixing with soda.

I had an obsession with sprite/7-up one summer. The diet variety tasted awful and the regular not only was so high in calories, it was too sweet for me. I ended up with a 60/40 mix of club soda/sprite. It gives it a wonderful lightness while maintaining that great fizziness. It became my summer patio reading drink.

We drink those at home. You're right in that they're refreshing, I think I'd find them too boring to drink a two or three $4 glasses at a bar though.

At a bar I would expect to get plain seltzer served with real fruit instead of a couple drops of "natural flavor" made in a lab.

Most bars don’t charge for club soda.

soda water with a lime. just tip for the bartenders time.

Let me introduce you to homemade nut milks. Buy a nut bag, blend up some pistachios, water, and cardamom, filter, and enjoy.

Adding spices such as tumeric, pepper, cinnamon and/or vanilla can also be really nice.

> I wish there were better non-alcoholic drinks that aren't sweet or hot. There's only so many mocktails or teas I can drink.

You should check out Seedlip; it is a “non-alcoholic distilled spirit”, similar to gin. Mix with tonic water, cheers!

Depending on how strict you are being about non-alcoholic club soda and bitters is a good option. There are tons of bitters types out there that make good choices and even dives tend to keep agnostura on hand.

lemon, lime and bitters is a staple here for the 'designated driver' that doesn't drink Coke.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon,_lime_and_bitters

There are a few styles of hop Seltzer or hop juice that are supposed to taste like a beer, but with zero alcohol. They are available at Whole Foods - I don't remember the brand name, though.

Lagunitas has a hopped seltzer that is excellent. Doesn’t taste like beer though.

There's a few good new NA craft breweries. My favorites are Wellbeing Brewing Co, Athletic Brewing Co, and Surreal Brewing Co.

not sure where you live but atm, in the UK, the range of non-alcoholic beers is superb. Off the top of my head:

* Brew-dog Nanny State

* Erdinger blue

* big drop pale ale

* big drop stout

* Franziskaner 0.5

* adnams ghost ship

are all available in my local Tesco and all pretty great.

Almost every bar now has the usual alcohol free becks/heineken - but i must admit, like their lagers, they are pretty grim drinks, but i am finding that more and more are stocking nanny state or erdinger

Erdinger alcohol-free is the best non-alcoholic beer I've tasted. I think wheat-beer works better than plain barley-beer, because it avoids the thin and watery mouth-feel so many non-alcoholic beers have. Nanny State is disappointing IMO, with lots of hops and not much else, although it might be useful for blending.