I have recently found that some alcohol free beers such as German hefeweissbiers like Weihenstephaner Hefeweisbier Alkoholfrei, and BrewDog Nanny State taste pretty ok, actually. I have also found that some other alcohol free beers are heavily unbalanced and are practically undrinkable.
About the only drawback of these alcohol-free beers is that they cost quite a lot; the cost with taxes is the same as the cost of beer with 5% ABV, and the taxes where I live are high for alcoholic drinks!
How are the good tasting alcohol free beers manufactured? Is the alcohol in the beer somehow removed in an industrial process, or do they just use less malt so that the alcohol concentration remains below 0.5%?
Can one reasonably make alcohol-free beer that tastes good at home? Where I live, distilling high-alcohol-content drinks is illegal, and if the process to make an alcohol-free beer is to just distill the alcohol away, it might be pretty risky to own the equipment for that... (Well, ok, if the purpose is to just get rid of the alcohol, you don't need all of the distilling equipment, simply boiling it at a controlled temperature would work.)