Three cans on the same shelf: a non-alcoholic craft beer, a kombucha, a cola. They get lumped together as "the non-drinker options," but they are three different products made three different ways. Here is the honest side-by-side.
**How each one is made.** Non-alcoholic beer starts life as regular beer: malted grain is mashed, boiled with hops, and fully fermented with yeast. Then the alcohol is removed — at SOMA, by vacuum distillation at around 35-40°C — until the batch tests below 0.5% ABV. Kombucha is also fermented, but differently: sweetened tea is cultured with a colony of bacteria and yeast (the SCOBY) that eats the sugar and produces acids, carbonation, and a small amount of alcohol as a by-product. A soft drink is not fermented at all: it is water, sugar or sweetener, acid, flavoring, and carbonation from a tank. One-line version: NA beer is brewed then un-alcoholed, kombucha is fermented on purpose and stays that way, cola is mixed.
**The trace alcohol question — all three, honestly.** This surprises people: trace alcohol appears across the shelf. Non-alcoholic beer declares it up front: under 0.5% ABV, the legal non-alcoholic threshold in India, the US, and most of Europe. Kombucha typically also contains trace alcohol — raw versions can sit in the same sub-0.5% band, and home-brewed or long-fermented kombucha can drift higher, which is why commercial brands manage fermentation carefully. Even everyday foods play in this range: very ripe bananas, some fruit juices, and certain breads carry comparable trace levels from natural fermentation. The difference is that a lab-tested NA beer states its number; on this shelf, that is the more transparent label, not the more alcoholic one.
**Sugar: the biggest gap on the shelf.** A 300ml cola carries roughly 30g or more of added sugar — sugar is the recipe. Kombucha varies widely by brand: fermentation eats some of the starting sugar, and what remains typically lands anywhere from a few grams to over 15g per bottle, so the label matters. A brewed non-alcoholic beer has no added sugar at all — its carbohydrates come from malted grain, and fermentation has already consumed the fermentable sugars. A 500ml SOMA can carries 11-20g of carbs depending on the style, across a full half-litre.
**Calories, per honest serving.** A 500ml SOMA runs 63 (Lager) to 99 (Stout) calories. A 300ml cola is around 120-140. Kombucha usually lands between 25 and 60 per bottle, brand depending. Note the serving sizes: the beer numbers above are for a serving 60% larger than the cola.
**Caffeine.** Kombucha is made from tea, so it carries some caffeine; colas add it by recipe. Non-alcoholic beer has none.
**What each is actually for.** A cola is a sweet drink. Kombucha is a tangy, live-cultured drink — closer to a sharp apple juice than to anything brewed from malt. Non-alcoholic beer is the only one of the three that is a beer: it pours with a head, tastes of malt and hops, pairs with dinner, and belongs in the hand at occasions where a beer belongs. That is the real decision criterion — not virtue, just what you want to be drinking.
**The label-reading cheat sheet.** One: fermented or mixed? (Fermented drinks earn their flavor.) Two: what is the declared ABV, and is it lab-tested? Three: added sugar or grain carbs? Four: calories per the serving you will actually drink. Run those four checks and the shelf sorts itself.
SOMA brews four non-alcoholic craft beers in Bangalore — full-strength brew, vacuum distillation, every batch lab-tested under 0.5% ABV. ₹199 per 500ml can, zero added sugar, zero caffeine, zero hangovers.