8 Canadian Booze-Free Beers and Spirits for Dry January

Six months ago, a doctor told me to stop drinking alcohol.

The medical advice came after a long weekend of debauchery on a houseboat on Vancouver Island and the resurgence of a serious health issue that sent me limping sheepishly into the emergency room.

At first, the recommended abstention felt like a punitive sentence. I love alcohol in all its forms and have even welcomed it into my career as a journalist who covers food and drink. I’ve also been known to patake in the great Canadian pastime of getting good and fucked up on the occasional weeknight.

But not anymore. Now I’m all about the non-alcoholic (NA) beverages…(and ebiles, but that’s for another story). And my timing couldn’t be better, as the number of NA beer and spirit options have grown exponentially in recent years. According to Business Insider, sales of NA beverages increased 33 percent over 2021, rising alongside alcohol consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The quality of the product has also increased, far eclipsing that of the old standbys like Anheuser-Busch’s O’Doul’s or Heineken Zero. Today, there are numerous tasty alcohol-free IPAs, stouts, blondes, and lagers, as well as a growing number of zero-percent spirits like gin and rum with which to mix up a convincing booze-less cocktail.

Don’t wait for your doctor to prescribe them for you. Try one of these non-alcoholic beverages available in Canada today.

You might recognize Calgary-based Partake from Dragon’s Den. They offer a number of legit tasty NA brews, including a stout, lager, blonde, and red, but it’s the IPA that’s most noteworthy. It’s citrusy and hop-forward with a sweet malt finish.

If you crack one expecting it to taste exactly like a traditional 6.8 percent IPA that’s boozy and bitter, you’ll be disappointed, but if you prepare for a hoppy seltzer, you should like it.

Partake is one of the most popular and widely available NA breweries, and you can find them at liquor stores as well as drug stores and grocery stores like Whole Foods, Sobeys, London Drugs, Safeway, and more.

Whether you’re into a G&T or a classic gin martini, there’s a NA gin that tastes nearly like the real thing. Sobrii is Canada’s first distilled non-alcoholic gin and it uses ginseng harvested in Ontario. Sobrii has a distillery in Stratford where it makes small-batch bottles of its gin as well as a tequila. Both the gin and tequila have no artificial flavours, sweeteners, or calories.

Niagara-on-the-Lake’s only brewery, The Exchange, does a hop seltzer that’s basically like a hop-flavoured soda water. Think of it as a La Croix that tastes like hops rather than peach, pear, or whatever. It’s oddly satisfying and can be served straight out of the can or over ice. The Exchange sells it in cans out of their tap room, but also offers it online for shipping within Ontario.

Another craft NA brew out of Ontario is Harmon’s. The brand, launched by three friends just last year (2021), uses what it calls a “clever recipe design.” They don’t go into specifics for obvious reasons, but it seems that rather than remove the alcohol during the fermentation process (which is what a lot of the big international brands do), they use their proprietary technique, which achieves a more familiar flavour profile. It’s certified organic, too, if that sort of stuff matters to you. In addition to the lager, they also do a hazy IPA, and a pale ale.

Yes you can still pop bottles even if you’re off the sauce. Quebec-based St. Regis has de-alcoholized “prosecco” that basically tastes like real thing, as well something inspired by a brute for anyone who isn’t into sweet flavours. St. Regis has other wines in its line-up, too, including a chardonnay, cab sav, and shiraz rose.

British Columbia’s Lumette! creates incredibly convincing hard liquor-inspired bottles with no alcohol at all. The brand’s Bright Light can be subbed into any cocktail that would normally call for gin, same with its London Dry. Lumrum, meanwhile, is a spiced sip that mimics rum and is a solid mix with Coke. Currently Lumette! products are available at various retailers across B.C.

Vancouver-based Big Drop’s Galactic Dark has an impressive flavour profile. Like, drink your La Croix at lunch, sure, but post-work when you want something with more of a backbone, this is it. Big Drop has won countless awards for its NA brews, and the Galactic Dark in particular nabbed World’s Best Style at the 2020 World Beer Awards.

It’s two brothers behind Montreal’s Sober Carpenter. They do five different brews, including an Organic Session IPA, Blonde Ale, IPA, White, and Irish Red, all of which are worth a swallow. You can get four-packs of cans delivered right to your door country-wide via well.ca.