Laine

Most of what Laine produces is alcoholic craft beer, brewed for their own 40-plus pubs across Brighton and London as well as for wider retail. Their flagship beers lean toward the approachable end of craft: hazy session IPAs, citrus lagers, and pale ales that suit a pub setting rather than a tasting flight. The philosophy is deliberately unpretentious. These are beers designed to be drunk, not studied.

King Limbo is Laine's answer to the question of how low you can go and still produce something worth drinking. The 0.5% IPA came out of a genuine brewing challenge rather than a marketing brief, and the name reflects that: it's a limbo, not a compromise. The grain bill combines wheat, rye, and oats alongside malted barley, and the hopping is generous — Citra, Mosaic, Summit, and Columbus all feature, which gives it a tropical character with grapefruit and passionfruit notes. It pours unfiltered and unpasteurised, which keeps it closer to the texture of a real ale than many zero-alcohol alternatives manage.

The beer is vegan-friendly and low in calories, though it tastes like the brewing team was more interested in flavour than fitness credentials. It's available through a range of AF-specialist online retailers in the UK, and directly from Laine's own shop.

For a pub group with this much real estate, the AF range is slim. King Limbo is essentially a standalone effort rather than a category play. But it's a well-made one, and it represents the kind of craft-first approach you'd hope to see from a brewery with genuine brewing chops behind it.