Alcohol free beer + electrolytes – worth the hype?
I love alcohol free beer and write about it a lot, and I've now tried literally hundreds of different non-alcoholic beers from dozens of brands. Something I've noticed recently is that more and more non alcoholic beer brands are advertising that their beers contain electrolytes.
But a new brand I spotted on the shelves at my local Waitrose really piqued my interest because of how much they're leaning into the whole 'contains electrolytes' things.
These beers are from a brand called Outdoor Brewing, and as you can see from the cans in this photo, 'Hydration' is written in capital letters across the front label. They also both mention electrolytes and vitamin c - very interesting.
But when I started looking at the nutritional data of this beer, I was a little disappointed. You're only getting about 56mg of magnesium per can of the Original Lager, which isn't that much. A small handful of pumpkin seeds contains around 160mg of magnesium, roughly 3 times as much magnesium as you'd get in an entire can of the Original Lager. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to get some magnesium along with your beer, but you could just as easily have a handful of pumpkin seeds with a different alcohol free beer, or even something like almonds - which contain 80mg of magnesium per small handful - and get way more magnesium in your system.
Althiough I was a little disappointed by the magnesium content of the Original Lager from Outdoor Brewing, I would say I was super disappointed by the Vitamin C content - just 12mg per can. A medium sized orange contains between 70mg and 90mg of Vitamin C, so again you could just enjoy an orange with any other alcohol free beer of your choosing and get way more Vitamin C.
I'm yet to try the Original Brewing beers, and I definitely will, but not because I'm expecting them to make me feel great by filling my system with loads of magnesium and Vitamin C. I think if these beers contained double the magnesium and Vitamin C then I'd be way more excited to try them.
If you've tried these alc free beers then let me know your thoughts in the comments!
Finn H
Finn is the editor of You Well and has been writing about travel, health, and more for over 10 years.