“Near beer” is a specific legal term with an exact number attached to it: any malt beverage under 0.5 percent alcohol by volume, a threshold that dates back to Prohibition and is still the same line US regulators use today. The term has outlived the era it was invented for by more than a century.
Where the 0.5% Line Actually Came From
The Volstead Act, passed in October 1919 to enforce the 18th Amendment’s nationwide alcohol prohibition, set a strict limit of 0.5 percent alcohol by volume for any beverage that could legally be sold. Anything above that line was “intoxicating liquor” and illegal to manufacture or sell (though not illegal to drink, oddly enough); anything at or below it was legal. That single number is the entire reason “near beer” exists as a category: breweries that wanted to stay in business during Prohibition brewed beer the normal way and then removed most of the alcohol to get under the legal threshold, producing something that looked and smelled like beer but was legally not “beer” at all.
Near Beer as a Real, Prosecutable Legal Category
“Near beer” wasn’t just industry slang, it showed up directly in court cases and statutes. An Ohio Supreme Court case from 1910, State v. Walder, predates national Prohibition entirely and shows the term was already in formal legal use nearly a decade earlier at the state and local level: a man was charged with illegally selling “a malt liquor containing .49 percent alcohol and no more, commonly known as Near Beer,” in a county that had voted to prohibit alcohol sales under local option law. That’s a strange case on its face, since .49 percent was technically under most local thresholds, which shows how contested and technical the whole “near beer” category was even before federal Prohibition made the 0.5 percent line universal.
What Near Beer Means Today
| Term | ABV threshold | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Near beer | Under 0.5% | US Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) rulings, tracing to the Volstead Act |
| “Non-alcoholic” (US labeling) | Under 0.5% | Same 0.5% threshold, modern labeling terminology |
| “Alcohol-free” (UK/EU) | Under 0.05% | Stricter EU/UK standard, ten times lower than the US |
A 1976 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms ruling formally confirmed that “Near Beer” could be used on the labeling of malt beverages under 0.5 percent ABV, provided both words appeared together per federal labeling rules, cementing decades of informal legal usage into an actual regulatory standard. Modern brands like O’Doul’s and Kaliber (and today’s much larger modern non-alcoholic beer category, including brands like Athletic Brewing and Heineken 0.0) all sit under that same historic 0.5 percent line, whether or not they use the specific term “near beer” on the label anymore.
If you’re curious how a modern non-alcoholic beer actually gets its alcohol removed to hit that number, our Can Beer Spoil guide covers a related brewing science question, and our Best Beer to Drink on a Diet guide is a useful comparison if you’re weighing a near beer against a standard light beer instead.
Best Non-Alcoholic Beers to Buy Today
All of these sit under the same 0.5% US threshold that defines “near beer.” For the full ranked list, see our Best Non-Alcoholic Beers guide.
FAQs
Is near beer the same as non-alcoholic beer?
Essentially yes in the US, where both terms describe a malt beverage under 0.5 percent ABV, the same threshold set by the Volstead Act in 1919 and still used by federal regulators today. “Near beer” is the older, Prohibition-era term.
Why is 0.5 percent the specific cutoff for near beer?
That exact number comes from the Volstead Act, the 1919 law that enforced national Prohibition. Anything at or below 0.5 percent ABV was legal to sell during Prohibition; anything above it was banned. The same threshold has carried forward into modern US alcohol labeling law.
Does the UK use the same alcohol threshold as the US for alcohol-free beer?
No. UK and EU rules generally require “alcohol-free” beer to be under 0.05 percent ABV, ten times stricter than the US 0.5 percent threshold for “non-alcoholic,” which is why the same brand’s labeling can differ between US and UK markets.
