The Dry January campaign is 10 years old this year. The idea of abstaining from booze after a December of decadence gains more traction annually. The damage this yearly temperance movement does to our friends in the beer and cider industries is incalculable, especially during what is already the leanest time of the year for pubs and breweries.

I don’t necessarily think we should all march out to the pub and sink a couple of pints every night this month in protest. I’m not going to stand in your way if you want to, so long as you drink responsibly. But I prefer the gentler idea of Tryanuary. Since 2016, I have been using January as an excuse to try new beers and bars.

These days, it’s easy to combine these two ideas, the Dry and the Try. Since I won the British Guild of Beer Writers 2022 award for best communication about no- and low-alcohol beer (I will stop mentioning that eventually, I promise) it feels like I am well placed to suggest an exploration of the exciting world of alcohol-free (AF) beer and cider to you in 2023.

Believe me, I can feel the frenzied tide of rolling eyes as you read this but stick with me. For many people, alcohol-free beer began and ended with Kaliber, a 0.05 per cent de-alcoholised lager launched by Guinness in the 1980s. It wasn’t very good.

But Kaliber was just the starting gun in the great race to produce drinkable beer that doesn’t contain alcohol. In the last five years, that race has hotted up considerably with an incredible number of runners and riders that you can pick as your new favourite. It doesn’t matter what style of beer you like, there is a quality booze-free iteration out there.

A couple of weeks ago, I tried Northern Monk’s Holy Faith on draught at dry. in Shrewsbury, a newly opened low and no-alcohol bottle shop. The 0.5 per cent hazy pale ale did everything you would hope. Hopped with Citra, Simcoe and El Dorado it is fruity, complex and has a soft mouthfeel thanks to its generous body. I adored that it wasn’t too sweet or too thin – the criticism that can usually be levelled at the poorer standard of AF beers on the market.

You can even get alcohol-free cask ale, although it is naturally incredibly rare. The difficulty in keeping the alcohol level low when cask conditioning, as well as the need for rapid turnover make it a difficult proposition commercially. Big Drop has arguably been leading the way in the AF beer market, and it presented the world’s first alcohol-free cask beer at the London Craft Beer Festival last summer. Paradiso Citra IPA was carefully monitored to ensure that the recipe didn’t breach the 0.5 per cent ceiling – a low enough ABV to legally be labelled alcohol-free.

Plenty of brilliant cask brewers that you already trust are making fantastic low alcohol beers too, in cans, bottles and kegs. I hope this will encourage more people to dip their toes into the waters of (semi) sobriety. Wiper & True has just released a delicious German Helles-style lager (0.5 per cent), while Thornbridge’s Zero Five (0.5 per cent) has the air of Jaipur’s flavour profile. Good Chemistry is releasing a new 0.5 per cent offering this month that I am looking forward to trying.

It may surprise dark beer lovers to discover that there are some brilliant AF stouts hitting the shelves too. Mash Gang has been pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved with alcohol-free beers for a while now, and Anxiety Saint (0.5 per cent) is a great example. Aged on bourbon-barrel oak staves and made with vanilla, coffee and a hint of chilli, it packs a surprising amount of flavour and body into each can. Also keep an eye out for the collaboration with Fierce Beer, Very Small Moose. Everything you loved about the chocolate and vanilla classic, Very Big Moose, but a teeny 0.5 per cent.

If you don’t want to withdraw from the hard stuff entirely there are plenty of low-alcohol options that really hit the spot. The Kernel’s Table Beer is probably the best-known example, brewed to around 3 per cent. But you can also enjoy great body and flavour from Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing Shetland Pony Pale Ale at 2.8 per cent or Wild Card Brewery’s 2.7 per cent Table Beer.

As more low and no-alcohol beers find their way onto the bar, taking a break from booze is not an excuse to stay away from the pub. For me, a visit to the pub is about so much more than alcohol anyway. It’s about sharing social spaces and finding a sense of community that is otherwise desperately hard to discover in other areas of life. The people make the experience, whichever side of the bar they are on.

The pub is a true lifeline for many people – somewhere to break the monotony of loneliness, somewhere to get warm, somewhere to find a sense of belonging. Let’s keep supporting them through their bleak midwinter dry patch. Why not commit to trying new beers and breweries at our brilliant pubs, whether or not you are going dry this January?