Why you should switch to low alcohol booze

Lounging outside with cold booze is pretty much the point of London summer weekends.

There is no reason for July and August to exist unless the maximum number of those nine weekends is spent slightly sloshed in a park, garden or on a pavement. But the problem with summer sessions is that they’re lengthy — yay, sun! Let’s hang out for six times longer than we normally would! — and that means accidentally drinking enough craft IPA to stun a large pig. If you’re going to be boozing from midday till dusk, you need low-alcohol alcohol to hand.

Beer brands lead the way for accessibility here. Such as Bermondsey-based brewery Small Beer Brew Co, named for the light, lower ABV stuff everyone of every age drank in the 18th century, when water itself was too polluted to drink. James Grundy and Felix James, two former Sipsmith gin producers, say they started Small Beer when ‘we found ourselves going out for a social lunch, scanning the pump clips for a beer that wouldn’t slow us down, and quickly came to the realisation that it didn’t exist. You could either get great flavour at high strength or drink a lower ABV beer that compromised on taste.’ So they went to work, creating the 1% ABV dark lager, coffee-rich with Marmite depth, and the crisp 2.1% lager that’s practically more refreshing than water, and barely any more fattening — Small Beers clock in at half the calories of the regular stuff. Add in a sustainable practice, which has reduced water usage from 8-10 pints to produce a single pint of beer to 1.5 pints, and drinking its beer is practically an ethical duty.

More dutiful booze comes in the form of The Kernel brewery’s light, citrusy table beer, which at 3% enables you to spend an entire Saturday afternoon perched outside the brewery eating Maltby Street Market deliciousness without getting hammered. If you’re trying to really cut down on booze, there’s hypercool Danish brewer Mikkeller, which makes four stonking low ABVs including the grapefruit-packed 0% Energibajer and the 0.3% Drink’in the Sun, a peachy perfect pale ale that happens to be under 50 calories a bottle.

Spirits are also following Seedlip in jumping on the wagon — at mass market level, there’s Gordon’s Ultra Low G&T bottles, with less than 0.5% alcohol; at the indie craft level, there’s Kentish Town maverick Willie Borral of Ladies & Gentleman bar, who has prototyped his Nolo spirit, a 1% concoction that has all the burn and wallop of booze without the getting drunk bit.

‘Consumer drinking habits are changing,’ say Grundy and James. ‘We all still want the social occasion, just not the “slowdown” typically associated with it afterwards.’ Avoid the slo-mo this summer and sip yourself through a slightly more sober summer sesh.