Near beer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the beverage. For the UK term for bogus bars operating to swindle customers, see Near beer (scam).
Near beer was originally a term for malt beverages containing little or no alcohol (one half of one percent or less by volume), which were mass-marketed during Prohibition in the United States. Near beer could not legally be labelled as "beer" and was officially classified as cereal beverage. The public, however, almost universally called them "near beer."
The most popular "near beer" was Bevo, brewed by the Anheuser-Busch company. The Pabst company brewed "Pablo", Miller brewed "Vivo", and Schlitz brewed "Famo". Other brands of near beer included "Chrismo", "Barlo", "Becco", "Bone Dry", "Bravo", "Cero", "Golden Glow", "Gozo", "Graino", "Hoppy", "Kippo", "Lux-O", "Mannah", "Milo", "Mother's Malt", "Mulo", "Ona", "Quizz", "Singo", "Tang", "Tivoline", and "Yip". Many local and regional breweries stayed in business by marketing their own near-beers. By 1921 production of near beer had reached over 300 million US gallons (1 billion L) a year (360 L/s).
A popular illegal practice was to add alcohol to near beer. The resulting beverage was known as spiked beer or needle beer, so called because a needle was used to inject alcohol through the cork of the bottle or keg.
Food critic and writer Waverley Root described the common American near beer as "such a wishy-washy, thin, ill-tasting, discouraging sort of slop that it might have been dreamed up by a Puritan Machiavelli with the intent of disgusting drinkers with genuine beer forever". Some historians of beer attribute the U.S. taste for beers that are lighter and thinner than beers which are common in Europe to the generation who became accustomed to near beer.
Today the term "near beer" has been revived by some people to refer to modern versions of non-alcoholic beer. The term is also sometimes used derisively to refer to beer deliberately brewed with lower alcohol content. For example, in some jurisdictions (Minnesota and Utah, for example), beer sold in some establishments must be less than 3.2% ABW (4% ABV). This style of reduced alcohol beer is also referred to as 3.2 beer (Minnesota has a full-service alcohol license, permitting sales of beers up to the normal alcohol level, but 3.2 licenses are easier to obtain).
