Dry July Finale

After the enlightening non-alcoholic Waldhaus beer experience on #beersaturday 158, I reckoned it might be worth to hold a prolonged enquiry on this subject.
Thus, for the month of July I decided to run more on light fuel. I had the entire lineup from Rügener island brewery and also the brand new Waldhaus pilsner, which was equally good as the mentioned red label.
While some of the beers I tried were really good despite their lack of alcohol, all of them were quite different from their 'real' versions. Except for one.

Maisel & Friends is one of my most favorite breweries, because their craft brews are always very reasonably priced and still never fail to amaze. This time they blew the roof off and made an alcohol free pale ale that sets the bar well into the league of regular craft beers.

This week with a twist

If it is that good, why not try and fool a beer connoisseur? Luckily the perfect candidate pays us a visit this week and I managed to get my hands on a regular Maisel pale ale, which I then deceitfully
used to manipulated the bottles.
The subject will receive a bottle of non alcoholic beer that is camouflaged with a regular pale ale label and we will then observe what's happening.

But first let's see what I have to say about the beer:

Appearance

Definitely a juicy pale ale. The color is of a light yellow and slightly hazy. The head is creamy and absolutely sufficient.

Nose

Right on the first pour a strong hoppy IPA flavor hits the nose.
Smells like a proper IPA. Actually this smells like a proper beer altogether.
Flavors of citrus, resin and a little bit of candy can be found.

Palate

First impression: Wow! This is in fact a real beer! It's full bodied, nicely carbonated, packs the perfect amount of bitterness, balanced sweetness and awesome fruity hop flavors on top. The only thing missing is the oily alcoholic mouthfeel.

Conclusion

I'm absoluteley baffled. This is the most perfect alcohol free beer that I had so far and I can't see how one would improve this further. In direct comparison to a real pale ale you might notice a difference but on it's own I'm sure you could fool even experienced beer drinkers into thinking it's a regular one. Combined with the incredibly fair price tag, this is an absolutely perfect brew.

5 out of 5 stars!

Now, let's see if we actually managed to fool the connoisseur. After a football session I opened two bottles, making sure to skillfully hide the improper cap. We decided to drink straight from the bottle and he clearly enjoyed the fist sip without beeing suspicious. In fact, he finished the first bottle with the words "very nice". He then had the second, and the third - until I resolved the experiment as I was running out of manipulated bottles.
He did indeed notice the lack of alcoholic bite, but he wouldn't have bet on it beeing non-alcoholic and rated it 4.5/5. Guess that speaks for itself.

Now I challenge YOU to fool your buddies!
Do the sneaky label swap and test how long they drink a pale ale with allegedly 5.2% before they notice the tipsiness failing to appear. It's fun - I promise!