• Pyr_Pressure
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    1 year ago

    I was trying to escape beer to save money, but at $2 a can non-alcoholic is even more expensive despite seemingly less taxes needing to be paid.

    • rbn@feddit.ch
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      1 year ago

      Is non-alcoholic beer reallly more expensive than the regular? In Europe they’re on par in most places. In Northern Europe (Norway, Denmark) it’s even significantly cheaper due to taxes.

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yes, it tends to be pricier. It’s not addictive, so they need bigger margins that they can’t make up in volume.

        • ribboo@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          It’s actually a more costly process to make non alcoholic beer, than with alcohol.

          • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            The process? Distillation method, sure. Limited fermentation, fermentation free, and dilution are quite similar to their alcoholised counterparts.

            The ingredient/supply costs for non-alcoholic beer is more expensive; which is mostly a volume thing, but their is a portion of that related to precision required for a near-beer not required for a normal beer.

    • OtterOPMA
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      1 year ago

      My initial assumption was that it’s because it’s newer, so they need to make up that r&d cost (edit: I get why this is silly now). Once there is a lot more competition for it, the prices should come down. Similar to how some plant based meats / milks or gluten-free products became more accessible once general people started buying them instead of a tiny group that could be exploited more easily.

      I’m just hoping for fewer drunk driving accidents and reduced health issues

        • doublejay1999@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Let us not forget, 1 trillion types of non alcoholic drinks already exist.

          People don’t event know when they a being marketed.

            • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago
              • Water
              • Tea (and just the camellia sinensis part of this is already a bewildering variety of flavour, aroma, and mouthfeel profiles!)
              • Coffee (almost as much variety in flavour, aroma, and mouthfeels)
              • Tisanes (a.k.a. “herbal tea”, and since practically any dried herb or flower can be made into a tisane for infusion, the variety here is absolutely off the charts!)
              • Rooibus

              Like seriously, dude. If you think you’ve had even a tiny fraction of traditional non-alcoholic drinks you’ve been had. *

        • OtterOPMA
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          1 year ago

          fair, again I’m just hopeful that this will become a good option for people

        • OtterOPMA
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          1 year ago

          I was equating them, probably incorrectly, to things like plant based meat companies that did have to consider margins till they could scale up.

          But yes I guess a major conglomerate doesn’t have that constraint, and it’s probably not that hard to make something that tastes like X beer without alcohol

      • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Non-alcoholic beer is older than most of the people in this thread commenting¹. There’s no more “R&D cost” involved in making it. If they’re charging more for the non-alcoholic than the alcoholic, it’s just straight-up greed.


        ¹ Source: I was drinking this shit when I was 12—45 years ago, in other words—and even then it was old news!