Last November, I was on the jury for the thirteenth edition of the Brussels Beer Challenge, one of the most prestigious international beer competitions in the world in terms of the number of beers entered, their origin and the composition of the jury itself. I confess that I am a happy regular at the competition, but this year’s event had some surprises in store for me. As a rule, at competitions, beers are tasted according to category or style: pilsners and stouts, but also Italian pilsners and oatmeal or chocolate stouts. The place of production doesn’t matter; what counts is belonging to the category. There is of course also a category reserved for non-alcoholic beers where, as you can easily guess, it is not so much the style that counts as the alcohol content. Usually, there were about ten samples, but this year I was faced with an initial batch of 27 0.0% vol beers and, the next day, about fifteen beers ranging from 0.1% vol to 0.5% vol. And mine was not the only jury table to be confronted with what, considering the numbers in the past, seemed like a real explosion in the segment of beers generically understood as alcohol-free. If nothing else, at least it was a clear sign that numerous small breweries had also entered the “playing field” of beers generically understood as non-alcoholic, given their historical participation in the Brussels Beer Challenge.

Seeing such a large number of these beers reminded me of how many articles and surveys, over the past year, have discussed the trend for non-alcoholic beers. I’ll mention a couple off the top of my head: “The non-alcoholic beer boom: a third of Italian consumers prefer it to traditional beer” (Gambero Rosso, May 2024); “Drinking alcohol-free beer is becoming less and less unusual” (Il Post, September 2025). These articles, however, refer to market research such as that by Global Insight Services, which speaks of a global market for alcohol-free beer worth 21.6 billion dollars, set to grow to 36.4 billion by 2034. With an annual growth rate of around 5.5%. In short, articles, market research and surveys all seem to point in the same direction: non-alcoholic beer is the next big thing.

And yet… And yet Assobirra’s latest Annual Report noted that the “Low-Non-Alcoholic” beer segment has grown in 8 years from 2.03% in 2016 to 2.11% in 2024, while the so-called “Special” beer segment, in the same period, has grown from 8.38% to 13.57%. Numerous bar owners report that, yes, non-alcoholic beer is in demand but rarely reordered. In some ways, it’s like listening to the weather forecasts of recent years that tell you that the ambient temperature is X degrees but the perceived temperature is Y. And I have the feeling that the trend in non-alcoholic beers is more a perception, and in many ways even a induced perception, rather than a real, tangible fact. I don’t have a crystal ball, but experience has taught me, over the years, that certain market trends don’t originate from the bottom, that is, from consumers, but rather from the top, that is, from the leading companies in the market. Or from a momentary infatuation with a certain type of beverage like kombucha or hard seltzer, both of which, at least in the Italian market, are unable to break out of a very narrow consumer niche. All of these options or strategies are perfectly legitimate in some cases, of course, but the fact is, in my opinion and specifically referring to non-alcoholic beers, that ours is not a country with heavy alcohol consumption—of beer, or even wine, for that matter—but we are a country with heavy mineral water consumption (first in Europe and second in the world behind Mexico in 2024 according to CSA Research). Furthermore, worrying phenomena in other countries, such as binge drinking, fortunately do not appear to be a widespread problem in our parts. Add to this that beer typically has a moderate alcohol content, around 5% ABV for classic lagers, and there’s a category called “session” beer, where the ABV is even lower. Finally, but in this case my opinion is largely subjective, most of the non-alcoholic beers tasted at the Brussels Beer Challenge were much more like soda and flavored drinks than anything you might imagine beer to be. Consequently, they have some serious competition to contend with. So my final question isn’t so much whether the non-alcoholic beer trend is destined to grow and last—we’ll talk about that again in 2034, perhaps—but whether it makes sense for so many breweries to invest time and resources in it.