My 20-year-old is swiping my no-alcohol beer. Should I feel ripped off, or relieved?

Q: My 20-year-old son and his mates have discovered my stash of zero-alcohol beer and have been helping themselves to copious amounts. Should I hit them up for reimbursement or should I see this as my contribution to encouraging (a degree) of sobriety in the next generation? P.B., Dural, NSW

A: Zero-alcohol beer contains, I’m assuming, hardly any alcohol, so it’s really just a fizzy, yellowish soft-drink with a vaguely beery flavour – tones of hops, malt, citrus, herbs and the wrung-out counter towels from the Hornsby RSL club after Meat Raffle Thursday. So I guess it’s not a problem if your son and his mates are drinking copious amounts of fizzy, yellowish soft-drink: it’s better than them raiding your actual beer stash or your liquor cabinet or that little Chinese teapot where you hide your dope and you think no one ever looks there (but people have looked, believe me, they’ve looked).

The worry is, in letting them drink zero-alcohol beer, are you just normalising the act of beer drinking so that by the time they hit their 40s, they’ll all be sad, bloated alcoholics with pancreas issues and hepatitis, still hanging around your house, completely hammered at four in the morning, shotgunning full-strength beer through a pool noodle? Impossible to say, but is it worth the risk?

Not only would I be hitting them up for reimbursement, I’d be adding a 6 per cent drinking-at-home surcharge. At the same time, I’d offer free bottled water, kombucha and a selection of herbal teas, including peppermint, ginger and South African rooibos; see if they take to that instead. And I’d be hiding all my alcoholic beverages for a while because they’ll be hunting round for beer. And maybe whack a heavy-duty bicycle lock over the lid of that little Chinese teapot, too.

guru@goodweekend.com.au

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