How is alcohol-free beer made?

Over the past few years there has been significant investment in alcohol-free technology meaning more and more people can now enjoy their favourite tipples without the guilt or hangover. Due to their popularity, beer was one of the first to undergo this alcohol-free revolution and it is easy to find non-alcoholic well-known beer brands sitting amongst alcohol-free craft beer specialists.

So, how are alcohol-free beers produced in the first place? Well, it’s worth reminding ourselves that an alcohol-free beer still needs to retain many of its favoured characteristics from a satisfying carbonation and frothy head to a rich aroma and enjoyable taste. So whether you’re after an IPA, lager or stout the beer in question should be a pleasurable one.

Three ways in which they make alcohol-free beer

The three core methods by which brewers create alcohol-free beer are dealcoholisation, limited fermentation and dilution and we’ll cover all these three in order.

Dealcoholisation

So, what exactly is dealcoholisation? In essence this is the process by which beer goes through its normal manufacture and then the brewer uses different techniques to remove the alcohol. There are generally two ways by which brewers do this either steam distillation or reverse osmosis.

Steam distillation is a way of boiling beer to remove alcohol but not the water. This method does however impact flavour so vacuum distillation can also be used to heat beer under low pressure and avoid taste issues. Reverse osmosis is a costly technique where the beer is pushed through a membrane to separate it from the flavour molecules and once complete the alcohol is separated from the water and the flavour added back to the water; pretty futuristic stuff but it does mean a beer free of alcohol but full of taste.

Limited fermentation

As I’m sure you’re aware fermentation is a pivotal part of making beer so one way brewers create alcohol-free beer is to alter the fermentation. Although it is less complex than dealcoholisation it still requires a lot of work. Brewers will either impact fermentation by reducing the amount of fermentable sugar (thus producing less alcohol) or using special yeast that produces alcohol in very low amounts. Although the taste isn’t impacted as much as it would from (for example steam distillation) it does mean the resulting alcohol-free beer is on the sweet side.

Dilution

The final way in which brewers create low-alcohol beer is arguably the simplest and that is through dilution … but it still has its challenges. When it comes to dilution, beer is brewed as per normal but produced in a much higher concentration through the increased use of grains and hops (which give IPAs for example their punchy, fruity taste). Once the fermentation of the beer is complete the beer will be diluted down using water so that the resulting alcohol-free beer is no more than 0.5% ABV.

So there you have it, three advanced ways in which they make alcohol-free beer. At My Dry Bar we constantly update the site with alcohol-free beer reviews so you can drink the best ones out there. Make sure you check out the site and subscribe to be kept up to date with all the latest alcohol-free news and reviews.

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