I don't drink either, but I decided to try the scientific method regarding beer, to see if I don't drink it because I truly don't like it or because I'm influenced by knowing the effect alcohol has on my body beforehand. So I tried the following:

* I got myself some German non-alcoholic beer, to remove alcohol from the equation altogether. This measure is flawed, though, because apparently non-alcoholic beer sucks. In the interest of science, we'll temporarily dismiss this as an excuse from drinkers and move on.

* I went to the Guiness factory in Dublin, and ordered myself a quarter of a pint. This should be a good baseline beer.

Result 1, non-alcoholic beer: it tastes awful. I'd describe it as sparkling tomato juice. Regular drinkers were apparently right.

Result 2, alcoholic beer: it tastes like beer. It turns out I don't like beer.

I don't know what I was hoping to get from this experiment, but there you go. Expect a paper one of these days.

Non-alcoholic beer can be great – if the number one goal of whoever made it was not to just imitate beer with alcohol as best as possible.

Brewers that don’t approach the problem of leaving the alcohol out of the beer that way end up with what’s basically a somewhat different kind of drink, but one that is also enjoyable on its own merits.

Unfortunately, Guinness is one of the most overrated beers in the entire world. While not a lager, it's essentially a light beer that uses a toasted malt to give off the perception that it is a "heavy" beer. It is also served on nitro to help give the beer a mouth feel that it doesn't truly have.

As a former drinker (mostly beer), who now partakes an an occasional non-alcoholic beer. I can say that most NA beer does indeed suck, but not all of them. Erdinger and Buckler are pretty good and even O'Douls Amber is not too bad.

Beer can be an acquired taste, Guinness especially.

As a beer-drinker, and lover of stouts and porters... I can't drink Guinness. It's dreadful.

I'm Irish and I'm still not a fan. It tastes of boring, Irish guilt and dread. Most of my designer friends are very partial to it, but it's more a case of having the one Guinness and then moving onto other beers.

Room-temperature bottled Guinness (the old man's pint) is far nicer than draft

Guiness takes like stout.

Technically, alcohol is a poison. (And acetaldehyde, a product of alcohol metabolism is worse.)