I'm very aware of Shipyard Brewing Co. being a New Englander (born and raised). My experience with those beers, however, has always been from the actual Shipyard Brewery in Portland, ME, making them actual craft. For those who are unaware, here in the UK, Shipyard beers are brewed under contract at Marstons (making it a macro beer) (even though the labels have "Portland" plastered across the front). Despite its macro roots here in the UK, Low Tide - their low ABV version of the Shipyard Pale Ale - was one of only macro beer to be mentioned as an enjoyable alcohol free beer in a recent questionnaire I put out to across multiple beer-based social platforms. With this in mind, I chose to do a bit of a deeper dive into it and compare it to it's "full fat" version.
In terms of appearance, they were both crystal clear with a golden yellow hue. Both also had a thin, white head that dissipates quickly. Despite their identical appearance, they smelled worlds apart. Low Tide had a near chemical aroma without even a hint of grains. It was as appealing to me as the name itself would suggest. The normal Pale Ale smelled as expected, which was promising: grainy, mildly citrus, and lightly hopped.
When digging into taste, I must admit that Low Tide was....not great.....It was as enthralling as the aroma. For me, it was overly lemon and herbal without much depth or mouthfeel. For me, it would not even come close to scratching the itch for needing a beer during dry spells. But, to be fair to it, I have not had any other supermarket/marco AF beers to compare it to and so this might be the standard. While I would say that it was watery, overly sweet, and the carbonation didn't land in the right way, you could probably say the same about some other macro beers that include alcohol.
For the "regular" Shipyard Pale, I was actually surprised how much I enjoyed it even for it not being the same as it is back in my homeland. There was definitely more hoppy and grainy flavours alongside citrus notes. It was a full "pale ale" experience unlike other traditional and/or macro brewed efforts you can pick up in the exact same section of the aisle of your local supermarket.
All in all, I much preferred the alcoholic version to the alcohol free interpretation. Low Tide would be one of only a few options I would probably outright refuse if offered. I would much prefer a soft drink, juice, or water in its place... While I have no real experience with other macro and/or traditional style non-alcoholic beers to say if this is a common theme among them, it would be interesting to see how it stacks up so might be worth a separate experiment (if I can stomach it).
Edited just to add that if you want to see the live tasting/reaction to these two beers, check out A Woman's Brew Podcast - Episode 18 Dry January where I start off with macro (roughly at the 30 minutes mark)