How ‘Cheers’ Made Beer Taps for Their Nonalcoholic Beer
The NBC comedy Cheers was set in a bar, but you know they weren’t really drinking beer. The actors would never be able to memorize their lines. Norm actor George Wendt even acknowledged he’s sluggish to begin with, so couldn’t afford to get drunk while working. But, they didn’t make nonalcoholic beer on tap in the ‘80s, so Cheers had to get inventive.
Wendt was a guest on Cheers writer Ken Levine’s podcast Hollywood and Levine on June 30, 2021. He revealed the tricks to make Cheers look like a working bar with a tap, serving nonalcoholic beer.
Cheers used a soda dispenser as their beer tap
Wendt reflected on the selection of non-alcoholic beer when Cheers debuted in 1982. O’Doul’s wouldn’t be on the market for another eight years.
“There wasn’t a lot of choices for nonalcoholic beer back then, like now there is,” Wendt said on Hollywood & Levine. “It was Kingsberry Brew near beer. It came in cans and it was from Cincinnati I believe. They didn’t want it to be in cans. They wanted it to be on tap and nobody made it on tap. So they had to use soda pop dispensers.”
The secret ingredient that made flat nonalcoholic beer bubble
The soda dispenser simulated the tap a bar like Cheers would have. The problem was, by the time they filmed the episode, the beer had been sitting around too long.
“So they poured cans of beer into soda pop dispensers well before we shot so it was completely warm and flat at time to shoot,” Wendt said. “They go, ‘We don’t like the way that looks, it doesn’t look good.’ So the prop man had to put a pinch of salt in every beer mug that was on the set so whatever one Sam grabbed would have the salt in the bottom. So, it was warm, flat, salty near beer.”
George Wendt learned when Norm didn’t have to drink on ‘Cheers’
Norm was a regular at Cheers, with a legendary unpaid beer tab. Given the concoction Wendt was faced with, he didn’t have quite the appetite Norm had for real beer.
“There were a couple of chugging gags which was pretty fun,” Wendt said. “Probably in the early days before I wised up, I’d probably drink two or three of them. But then I figured out when the cameras were nowhere near pointing at me that I didn’t have to sit there and drink as if I were on stage or in one giant master all the time.”
Levine himself had a chance to sample the goods on the set of Cheers. He vouched for Wendt’s disgust.
“I remember taking a sip once and going, ‘Oh God,’” Levine said. “When Jim Burrows would say, ‘Okay, let’s just do another take of this’ which normally, so what? But if the take meant you gotta drink another beer, oh God. Please, let’s get this on this tape. Please, don’t anybody screw up a line.”
Still, there is a lot of beer drinking on Cheers for 11 seasons. It gives the comedy a whole new dimension when you take into account the sacrifice the actors were enduring every time they had to take a sip.
