When you see bar scenes on Treme, the patrons have bottles with near-beer, no matter what the label. A beer wrangler opens a few cases of real beer from a number of brands and dumps the good stuff, then refills the empty bottles to differing levels of fullness with a NA beer. It’s a heartbreaking process. Why do all this? Steve Earle learned the hard way when some of the extras for the Cajun Mardi Gras scene got a hold of a case or two of the real stuff and started playing with the whip. Let’s just say they weren’t as precise or careful as they otherwise might have been.

–Alex Rawls