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Alcohol-free Beer
無酒精啤酒
For the 10,000 years or so it has been around, beer has been relied upon both to refresh and intoxicate. Today's brewers think it could thrive by focusing exclusively on the refreshing. Alcohol-free beer is the booze industry's latest great hope as sales of the full-strength stuff have stagnated. If Heineken and other brewing giants have their way, tipplers will be knocking back pints from breakfast on.
在大約1萬年的歷史中，人們一直依賴啤酒來提神和沉醉。如今的釀酒商認為，只要專注于提神這一部分，它就能蓬勃發展。無酒精啤酒是酒業最新的巨大希望，因為烈性酒的銷售已經處于停滯狀態。如果喜力和其他釀酒巨頭能夠如愿以償，那么酒鬼們將從早餐就開始暢飲啤酒。
Beers with no (or little) alcohol have been sold for decades. But even their pedlars admitted they tasted flat. They were aimed at those who craved a proper beer but couldn't indulge: the pregnant, religious or designated drivers. Multinational brewers saw them as "distressed purchases" and sold them under separate brands far removed from flagship marques.
不含(或幾乎不含)酒精的啤酒已經賣了幾十年了。但就連小販也承認那些酒味道平平。他們的目標人群是那些非常想喝上一杯但又沒辦法在酒精中放縱的人：孕婦、宗教人士或排了班的司機?？鐕【粕虒⑵湟暈椤傲畠r貨”，并將其與旗艦產品區分開來，以獨立的品牌銷售。
No longer. Even before the pandemic shut the world's bars, beer-drinking was on the slide, in part owing to health-conscious millennials bingeing less often. Booze barons concerned about losing sales to soft drinks invested in ways of making alcohol-free beer taste better. This has started to pay off. Though nobody sober would confuse an alcohol-free brew with the real thing, it is now a credible draught. The product is good enough for mega-brands, from Japan's Asahi to America's Budweiser (part of AB InBev, the world's biggest brewer), to offer a "0.0" variant.
時過境遷。甚至在疫情讓世界各地的酒吧關門之前，喝啤酒的人數就在下滑，部分原因是有健康意識的千禧一代不再那么頻繁地飲酒狂歡。酒業大公司們擔心被軟飲料搶走銷售額，于是投資研發味道更好的無酒精啤酒。這一舉措已經開始有了回報。雖然沒人哪個清醒的人會將無酒精啤酒與真正的啤酒混淆，但它現在也能解一時之渴了。從日本的朝日啤酒到美國的百威啤酒(世界上最大的啤酒釀造商百威英博的一部分)，這種產品足以為無酒精啤酒提供多樣性。
Part of the brewers' interest stems from boozeless beer's frothy margins. Making the stuff is actually more expensive than making a straight-up Stella. The process usually involves taking a finished alcoholic beer and stripping away the booze (brands guard their methods closely). The expense is, however, more than compensated for by the savings on alcohol excise duties that are no longer owed. It helps that consumers appear to be willing to pay roughly the same price whether a beer contains alcohol or not.
釀酒商的興趣部分源于無酒精啤酒的泡沫利潤。生產這種酒實際上比生產純絲戴拉酒更貴。這個過程通常是把已經制作好的含酒精啤酒里的酒精脫去(各啤酒品牌嚴格保密自己的生產方法)。然而，省下來的酒類產品消費稅足以彌補這一部分支出，并且還有盈余。無論啤酒是否含酒精，消費者似乎都愿意支付大致相同的價格，這一點很有幫助。
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