TASTE TEST

I Bet My Mate He Couldn't Tell AF Beer From Real IPA. He Lost.

5 IPAs. 3 alcoholic, 2 alcohol-free. One very confident bloke. A kitchen table and some pint glasses.

Dave A Shaw - 19 March 2026 - 6 min read

My mate Rob has opinions about beer. Strong opinions. The kind of opinions that make him hold forth at barbecues about hop varieties while everyone else quietly moves to the other end of the garden.

Last Tuesday he was round mine and I mentioned I'd been drinking some alcohol-free IPAs. He did that face. You know the one. The face blokes do when you tell them you've started doing yoga or eating salad for lunch.

"They're water, mate. Expensive water. I could tell the difference blindfolded."

So I bet him a fiver he couldn't.

The Setup

Five IPAs. Poured into identical pint glasses in the kitchen while Rob sat in the living room being smug. Numbered 1 through 5 with Post-it notes. He had to taste each one and tell me: real or AF.

The lineup:

I randomised the order using the dice app on my phone. Because I'm nothing if not rigorous.

Glass by Glass

Glass 1: BrewDog Punk IPA (5.4% - alcoholic)

Rob took a sip, nodded like a sommelier at a wine tasting, and said: "Real. Obviously. Classic Punk. Grapefruit on the nose, that piney bitterness."

His verdict: Alcoholic.
Actual: Alcoholic. CORRECT

Fine. Easy one to start. He looked pleased with himself.

Glass 2: IMPOSSIBREW Triple Hopped IPA (0.5% - AF)

He took a longer sip this time. Then another one. Swirled it around like he was auditioning for MasterChef.

"Yeah, this is real. Proper hoppy. Decent body on it. Nice bitterness at the end. Not sure which one but it's definitely a real IPA."

I said nothing. He took another sip.

"Actually really good this one. What is it?"

His verdict: Alcoholic.
Actual: AF. WRONG

His face when I told him was worth more than the fiver.

Glass 3: Beavertown Neck Oil (4.3% - alcoholic)

Now he was suspicious of everything. Took tiny sips. Held the glass up to the light. Basically did everything short of sending it to a lab.

"I'm going to say... AF. It's lighter than I'd expect from a real IPA. Feels a bit thin."

His verdict: AF.
Actual: Alcoholic. WRONG

Two wrong out of three. The smugness was evaporating.

Glass 4: BrewDog Punk AF (0.5% - AF)

He was rattled now. Took ages with this one.

"OK. This one is definitely AF. It's got that... thinness. That watery thing at the end where a real beer would have more depth. AF."

His verdict: AF.
Actual: AF. CORRECT

He punched the air. Bit premature for a man who's 2-for-4.

Glass 5: Camden Hells IPA (6.2% - alcoholic)

"Right. This is real. Definitely real. Strong. I can feel the alcohol."

His verdict: Alcoholic.
Actual: Alcoholic. CORRECT

He could tell the strongest one in the lineup was alcoholic. Groundbreaking stuff.

The Scorecard

Final score: 3 out of 5.

Worse than a coin flip if you factor in that there were only two possible answers. A chimp with a dartboard would have averaged 2.5.

What Actually Happened

Here's the interesting bit. Rob is not an idiot. He drinks beer most weekends. He's been to brewery tours. He has a favourite glass (it's a Spiegelau tulip, he'll tell you about it).

And he thought an alcohol-free IPA was real beer.

Not just any AF beer either. The IMPOSSIBREW one properly fooled him. He said "proper hoppy, decent body, nice bitterness" - all the things he'd say about an IPA he actually liked. He was more confident about that one than the Beavertown, which is a 4.3% IPA that's been around for years.

The BrewDog Punk AF was the easy one to spot. It has that slightly hollow finish that most AF beers have. Not bad, just... you can tell something's missing. Rob got that one right straight away.

But the gap between the best AF beer and the worst AF beer is absolutely massive. It's bigger than the gap between the best AF beer and a mid-range regular IPA. That's the thing nobody talks about. People say "AF beer" like it's one thing. It's not. It's a spectrum from "tastes like someone described beer to a chemistry student" to "I genuinely can't tell."

The Bit Where Rob Changed His Mind

After the test, I told him the IMPOSSIBREW has L-theanine and ashwagandha in it. He asked me what that meant. I said it's supposed to give you a bit of that relaxation you get from the first pint without the alcohol.

He was skeptical. Obviously. Rob is skeptical of everything. He once spent 20 minutes arguing that sourdough was a conspiracy.

But then he said something that stuck with me: "If that one's AF, I've been overpaying for Neck Oil for years."

He asked where I got it. So I sent him the link.

My Takeaway

I've been drinking less since January. Not because of a resolution or anything noble like that. Mostly because I started running again and waking up feeling rough on a Wednesday was getting old. I'm 46, not 26. The maths stopped adding up.

The taste test confirmed what I'd been thinking - the best AF beers have genuinely caught up. Not all of them. Most of them are still rubbish. But the good ones? You'd struggle to tell in a blind test. Rob proved that.

The worst thing about AF beer used to be the taste. Now the worst thing is that your mate at the pub will make fun of you for ordering one. Which is a people problem, not a beer problem.

The IMPOSSIBREW that fooled Rob is the Triple Hopped IPA. I've been buying it through their referral thing - saves a tenner off your first order. Not going to pretend that's why I'm writing this but it doesn't hurt.