The Non Alcoholic Beer Market
Deschutes Brewery is a popular Oregon craft brewery that brews Black Butte Non Alcoholic. The non alcoholic beer market has grown rapidly in recent years with the introduction of non alcoholic beers that taste more like regular beer. Non alcoholic beers have several health advantages over regular beers, including fewer calories, sugar, carbs and of course, alcohol. Non alcoholic means less than 0.5% alcohol, so non alcoholic beers can still have traces of alcohol.
Athletic Brewing is the current market leader in non alcoholic beers with an approximate 19% market share. More and more craft breweries like Deschutes are entering the market. Not a day goes by without some news story about the rise of non alcoholic beer and societal trends towards reducing alcohol intake.
Deschutes Brewery
Gary Fish founded Deschutes in 1988 as a small brewpub in downtown Bend, Oregon and named it after the Deschutes River. Today the brewery sells more than 225,000 barrels per year to 32 states and internationally. Deschutes has a brewery and tasting room less than a mile across town in Bend and a second pub in downtown Portland. The brewery is well known for its large variety of IPAs and Stouts and now has four styles of NA beers.
Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Non Alcoholic
Deschutes describes Black Butte Non Alcoholic as “Behold: all the delicious richness of a porter without the buzz. This malt brew tastes so similar to the original Black Butte Porter that you’ll be doing a double-take. Just right for winning trivia night, enjoying after dinner, making it to Wednesday…or really anytime. The recipient of 8 international non-alcoholic awards, including a 2024 World Beer Cup gold medal, Black Butte Non-Alcoholic is our newest classic.” It has chocolate, coffee and malty flavors, pale, wheat, caramel, Carapils and chocolate malts, and Tettnang hops.
Black Butte Non Alcoholic has 110 calories, 30 IBU, 21g carbs, 0g fat and 2g protein. It has a “Very Good” rating on Beer Advocate.
Our Review of Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Non Alcoholic
If you read our post about ProofNoMore, I bought 35 single non alcoholic beers to try. This is the second to last of those 35. If you add in some others I purchased elsewhere, I have now tried over 40 NA beers. Some have been very good, a few decent, but many bad to terrible. Many have little taste except a strange NA beer aftertaste, and several have calories and carbs close to regular beers with alcohol. Recently I have tried several German beers with alcohol that have been so good that I have been getting tired of trying new NA beers.
The Tasting
Black Butte NA is different than most NA beers I have tried, which have been mostly lager or pilsner styles or similar. Up until now, I have only tried a couple of NA porters, including Guinness 0, which was very similar to regular Guinness. Black Butte NA is one of the best NA beers I have tried. It tastes like a regular beer, has no NA beer aftertaste and the coffee & chocolate taste description is spot on. This is the first time I have a tried a new NA beer in a while and actually enjoyed it. It is better than Guinness 0 and I plan on buying it again. The only downside is the high calorie and carb count.
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Black Butte Non Alcoholic is available at Amazon at Black Butte Non Alcoholic
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For another recommendation, try Guinness 0.
For non alcoholic beer nutritional information for all NA beers we have reviewed and more, see NA Beer Nutritional Information.
