In a tasting of the 19 dry beers sold in this country, four food and beverage writers for The New York Times found that most had little or no aroma or aftertaste and were highly carbonated. Although some of them were thought to be well made and some were described as refreshing, few were considered distinctive.

''Dry'' is not a new description for beer. Decades ago, as New York baseball fans might recall, there was Rheingold, ''the dry beer.'' One of the new dry beers, Esquire Extra Dry from the Jones Brewing Company in Smithton, Pa., near Pittsburgh, bears a name the company used in the 50's and 60's, and revived last year. But now brewers are using the term to refer to beer made with different strains of yeasts than they use for regular beer and that is fermented longer than usual.

The first of the new dry beers was Asahi Super Dry, introduced in Japan in March 1987. The Asahi beer was developed as a result of consumer research and soon captured 20 percent of the Japanese market. Three other Japanese breweries, Kirin Brewery, Sapporo Breweries and Suntory International, followed suit, and now dry beers account for 40 percent of the Japanese market. The trend spread quickly to the United States. Although dry beer accounts for only about 1 percent ot the $38.7 billion American beer market, 10 of the 30 new domestic brands introduced in the first half of 1989 were dry. Some dry beers are available nationally, some regionally and some only in test markets. Canada and Australia are the only other countries where dry beers appear to have made any impact, though on a smaller scale than in Japan and the United States.

Americans seem interested in dry beer, but it remains to be seen if they will be won over. ''When it first came out everyone wanted to try it,'' said Mike Haas, beverage manager for the Waterfront, a restaurant in Covington, Ky. ''Now it has leveled off to nice steady sales.''

James Riggi, general manager of Roeblings Restaurant in South Street Seaport in Manhattan, was less enthusiastic. ''I'm stocking it because of the huge advertising,'' he said, ''but it hasn't done what I expected.''