Non-alcoholic Beer for Beer-and-Pretzel Games

If you were invited to a beer-and-pretzels game night, but you’re the designated driver, here are my favorite “non-alcoholic” beers to consider, though technically some of these do have up to 0.5 alcohol by volume (ABV).

For each of the last two Januarys, I set aside regular beer to drink these instead, which I tracked and rated on Untappd. These are sorted by my rating, with the global rating across all app users being the tiebreaker. (Good games need tiebreakers.) Anything I rated below 3.0, I personally won’t buy again.

Rank	Brewery	Beer Name	Type	ABV	IBU	Flavor Profile	Global Rating	My Rating
1	Bravus Brewing Company	Breakfast Dark	Porter / Stout	0.5	0	sweet, molasses, coffee, syrupy	3.39	4.5
2	Anheuser-Busch	O’Doul’s Premium	Lager	0.2	5	malty, light, sweet, dry	2.00	4.4
3	Molson Coors Canada	Coors Edge	Other	0.5	0	malty	2.40	4.3
4	Surreal Brewing Company	Pastry Porter	Porter / Stout	0.5	0	roasty, chocolate, bitter	3.20	4.2
5	Guinness	Guinness Draught 0.0	Porter / Stout	0.0	28	roasty, dark, metallic	3.13	4.2
6	Partake Brewing	Dark	Porter / Stout	0.0	0	malty, roasty, coffee, chocolate	2.88	4.2
7	Athletic Brewing Company	Upside Dawn Golden	Lager	0.5	15	clean, light, bitter, crisp	3.27	4.1
8	Heineken	Heineken 0.0	Lager	0.0	0	malty, clean, watery	2.41	4.1
9	Athletic Brewing Company	Cerveza Atletica Light Copper	Lager	0.5	15	malty, clean, refreshing	3.30	4.0
10	Radeberger Gruppe	Clausthaler Original / Premium	Lager	0.5	29	malty, sweet, dry	2.51	4.0
11	Fred Koch Brewery	Penn’s Best N.A.	Other	0.5	0	light, sweet, smooth	2.37	4.0
12	Anheuser-Busch	St. Pauli N.A.	Lager	0.5	0	malty, light, sweet, dry, smooth	2.18	4.0
13	Brauerei Beck	Beck’s Non-Alcoholic / Alkoholfrei / Blue	Lager	0.3	12	malty, sweet	2.34	3.0
14	Bravus Brewing Company	Oatmeal Dark	Porter / Stout	0.5	0	malty, roasty, metallic	2.74	2.8
15	Athletic Brewing Company	All Out Extra Dark	Porter / Stout	0.5	10	thin, coffee, metallic	3.37	2.5
16	Grüvi	Grüvi Stout	Porter / Stout	0.4	0	roasty, smoky, dry, flat	2.87	2.3

As to what beer-and-pretzel games to play, I stopped rating games on Board Game Geek; it’s too hard to judge a game after just one play, and there’s a lot of games I don’t get the chance to play more than once. That said, I think beer-and-pretzel games, by definition, are lighter and shorter and therefore hit the table often. So here are my most played light games that I think fit the category:

Qty	Game
283	Civscape
105	BANG!
54	Star Fluxx
50	One Night Ultimate Werewolf: Daybreak
41	Fluxx
38	Family Fluxx
38	Secret Hitler
33	Chrononauts
31	Coup
27	One Night Ultimate Werewolf
27	Microbrewers
25	Nature Fluxx
23	King of Tokyo
23	Time Breaker
20	Poker
17	Martian Fluxx
15	Pirate Fluxx
15	Wings of War: Famous Aces
13	Firefly Fluxx
13	Light Speed
13	Port Royal
12	The Battle for Hill 218
12	Early American Chrononauts
12	LCR
11	Jump Drive
11	Monty Python Fluxx
11	Wiz-War (Eighth Edition)
10	Doctor Who Fluxx
10	Oz Fluxx

For me, it seems, the prototypical beer-and-pretzel game is a “take that” card game or a secret-identity game. BANG! may be the perfect beer-and-pretzel game: take that, secret identities, and a beer card!

While not true a beer-and-pretzel game, Microbrewers, by Greater Than Games, makes my list, because of its beer theme. Formerly known as Brew Crafters: Travel Card Game, it’s my personal favorite game to take to a brewpub. It’s an elegant engine building game about creating the best microbrewer. It’s discontinued, but still available. Since it has a small deck, I encourage you to buy yourself two copies so that you don’t have to shuffle as often, and so that you can play with four players without needing to play as teams.

See these BGG pages for some other discussions:

• What are your favorite “Beer & Pretzel” games?
• Best Beer & Pretzels games
• Best beer and pretzels wargames?

And join the discussion on Dice.camp.

Cheers!