Nonalcoholic beer has long been the beverage of choice for everyone from delusional recovering alcoholics to people too drunk to notice they accidentally bought nonalcoholic beer. Shouldn't you be drinking more nonalcoholic beer, if you know what we mean?

[Uncomfortably lengthy pause.] To appear more European, we mean. Did you know that Spain drinks more nonalcoholic beer than any other country? I don't know why, they're just weird. Ask a fucking Spaniard if you're so curious. Back to my point: the only way that the beer industry will survive in Western Europe is if they take out all that alcohol. How do you expect Europeans to tolerate that?

And while retail sales of beer in Western Europe dropped 7% to 27.3 billion liters over the last five years, sales of nonalcohol beer increased 37% to 520.5 million liters, says market-research firm Euromonitor International.

The market trends are clear: Europeans prefer warm milk from their mother's teat as their beverage of choice. Or failing that, nonalcoholic beer. All the flavor of rotted grain soaked in water, none of the godlike intoxication.

[WSJ, photo of typical European party via acornchief/ Flickr]