Oh but I assure you they do.
In fact everybody I know drinks beer exclusively for the flavour. Why else would they?
Even my 93-year-old grandmother drinks it, but she can only drink half a bottle, after that it will start to affect her. She complains bitterly how she'd like to drink more, but can't anymore.
> or non-alcoholic beer would be a lot more popular than it is, since it just tastes like beer
I have never found a tasty alcohol-free beer. I'd be happy to find some. I love the taste of beer, but after a few I need to stop before it goes to my head.
The process that removes the alcohol somehow also removes the pleasant taste (maybe because the alcohol content partly determines the taste?)
> without the bitterness of alcohol.
The bitterness comes from hops, and possibly malt.
If it were the alcohol that was bitter, wine would be quite bitter, and Vodka would be unbearable.
I don't mean this as an attack on you at all, but you seem to have little experience in the matter.
I've drunk plenty of beer and it all tastes bad. I'm not inexperienced. I much prefer the flavour of fruit juice. I really do think there's a huge social pressure to get to like beer. Maybe after a while our brains get to enjoy the bad flavour and associate it with pleasant past experiences. I have learned to put up with the flavour of beer and sometimes I am able to ignore the bad flavour of beer if there are other parts of the flavour that are enjoyable.
I don't think anybody likes beer the first time they try it.
I feel the same way about coffee too. It's a bitter drink and it smells bad. It cannot possibly be true that these substances would be popular if it were not for the side effects. What is a popular bitter beverage or food that has no other side effects?
We don't all agree that beer tastes bad, but a lot of Holden Caulfield-ish high school kids (the main xkcd shirt buying demographic) would agree to that to demonstrate their intellectual superiority. Like it's a open secret that people don't like beer, but it's just an excuse to get drunk, and ole Randall is holding his nose because beer is terrible but he still wants to drink. How precious.
