Lucky Saint Unfiltered Lager

The brewers of Lucky Saint, Not Another Beer Co, suffered a number of setbacks on their journey to produce their product. Lack of interest and support from the drinks industry, numerous failed brews by various contract breweries, and even just plain-old bad tasting beer paved the road of Lucky Saint’s journey to fruition. A year in Germany put the company back on track, where founder Luke Boase found a brewer who had the same vision; to produce an alcohol-free beer worth drinking.

After a period of trial and error, the pair settled upon a style of non-alcoholic beer they were happy with, and went full steam into production mode in 2018. Today their unfiltered lager is still brewed in Germany, but has proliferated on the shelves of many of the UK’s bigger supermarkets. It’s even available on draught at a number of bars around London and the south of England, though I’m sure they have plans to extend this method of consumption far and wide.

So it’s a lager, brewed with Bavarian water and ingredients and then put through the vacuum distillation process to remove the alcohol. This is certainly nothing new, with the story being the same as many other non-alcoholic lagers we’ve reviewed. So what’s different with Lucky Saint?

The beer pours a bright golden colour with a bit of haze to it. It is unfiltered after all. A thin white head froths up and sticks around for a while. On the nose we get slightly roasted grains with some malt, but in the background there is something akin to a more wheat beer aroma there. Maybe this is from the yeast that clouds the brew?

On tasting we get a crisp taste of pale malts, quite dry with a slight grassy hop edge. A good lager taste with some interest from the hops, with a touch of sourness in there too. The body may be bordering on thin, but the carbonation is good and the mouthfeel is quite soft. We get a long dry finish.

A lovely refreshing lager with perhaps more depth of flavour than other non-alcoholic lagers. It veers slightly out of standard lager territory with it’s hop usage, adding some interest for those of us used to more hoppy ales. I know a couple of people who drink this and were initially unaware it was 0.5% ABV, it may well be one to try on your mates who have yet to be turned to the AF side.

Nutritional Information (per 100ml)

0.5% alcohol by volume
16 calories energy
<0.1g fat
3.5g carbohydrates
0.1g sugar
0.6g protein

(taken from the side of the bottle)

Ingredients

Water, Barley, Yeast, Hops