How is non-alcoholic beer made?

It appeared in parties, on beaches, in festive or family events. Non-alcoholic beer has been around for a long time but has benefited from a real trend in recent years, to the point of becoming the “first sponsor beer” of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

Growing demand has led to a plethora of supply on the shelves of wine merchants and supermarkets. Heineken, Leffen Guinness… all the multinationals have developed their alcohol-free beers, designed as clones of their alcoholic big sisters, breaking with the bad image of insipid and sugary beers which hitherto stuck to their necks. But not only ! Independent brewers and micro-breweries have also seized on the phenomenon, such as the Brasserie du Mont-Blanc, Mont Salève, BapBap or La Parisienne, in Pantin (93).

We have thus witnessed a sort of industrial revolution in breweries. Each, like an alchemist, committed resources, tested and then refined their techniques for producing alcohol-free beer. Four main ones are used on a more or less large scale, with very different taste results.

How is non-alcoholic beer made?

Let’s think first of the consumer, who has well-established taste cues for alcoholic products and who must find them in non-alcoholic products: foam, bitterness, character, gas, malt, cereals, etc. Alcohol-free beer must therefore restore a taste but above all maintain a balance of flavors, which is disrupted when alcohol is absent. Developing a beer without alcohol is not without consequences on its production process, which can be natural or very interventionist. We thus distinguish two families of non-alcoholic beers: natural fermentation beers and dealcoholized beers.

• Natural fermentation beers

Most small breweries produce beers that are naturally alcohol-free. To achieve this, they can choose to initiate a classic beer production process and suddenly stop its fermentation. Yeasts do not transform sugar into alcohol and the rate displayed rarely exceeds 1%. But this has a huge impact on its taste, which is reminiscent of bread and cereal, with sweet notes. Enough to make you want to open a beer for breakfast! These beers with high isotonic potential are used by athletes to promote the intake of water, minerals and nutrients into the body, but are shunned by beer lovers. This method is also at the origin of the bad reputation regarding the taste of non-alcoholic beers.

Modern breweries instead use another technique, just as natural. By choosing a very specific type of yeast that produces very little alcohol, it is possible to complete the fermentation process while maintaining a very low alcohol level in a beer. However, without the support of alcohol, beer can turn out to be tasteless or watery. It is then necessary to play with several cereals and malts to gain taste, textures and roundness. Some choose to flavor their beers.

• Dealcoholized beers

These are beers produced in a completely classic manner which have undergone a dealcoholization process. This can be evaporation or vacuum distillation, for which the beer is placed in large columns at low pressure and then heated to thirty to forty degrees. The volatile aromas evaporate first while the alcohol remains in the cylinder. Once returned to a liquid state, the beer will be injected with carbon dioxide and, in certain cases, with aromas. Another technique called reverse osmosis involves filtering the beer.

These two techniques require such a significant industrial investment that they are unthinkable for craft breweries. They are not considered by them, considered too interventionist: it is more a question of reconstituting a beer after a heavy and industrial process, rather than developing a product closer to the terroir. Dealcoholization is part of the arsenal of multinationals to produce their alcohol-free beers.

Artisanal or industrial alcohol-free beer: which one to choose?

These are two completely different styles of beers, which meet distinct criteria. Non-alcoholic beers with natural fermentation, mainly produced by breweries craft, are designed as signature beers with unique tastes, notably thanks to the use of unique malts or yeasts. They can be completely organic and flavored with real fruit. You should know that they always contain a little alcohol, a maximum of 1.2% in accordance with French law.

Industrial beers are more standardized and often designed to imitate the taste of alcoholic beers. It is therefore a safe bet, which should not confuse traditional Guinness fans, for example. It is nevertheless important to point out that multinationals do not only use the dealcoholization technique to produce their alcohol-free beers. Rather, they are the result of a clever mix of several previously mentioned techniques, in order to preserve both the taste of the beer while displaying 0.0% alcohol. Some of them are corrected or flavored with “natural flavors”, additions of glucose or concentrated juices, such as Grimbergen.