Ever wondered how they make non alcoholic beer?  A lot of people think that it is not actually beer as such but a drink made to taste like beer.  Rather like a soda stream like drink with some flavouring added.  However, this is a common misconception, good non alcoholic beers are beers that have been brewed the normal way and then had the alcohol taken out.

Ok, so you have made a good quality beer and now you want to take the alcohol out, so how do you do that?  Well the most simple way is to boil off the alcohol and collect the alcohol as vapors.  Of course this means that in the production process the beer has been boiled twice (one in the boil before fermentation and a second time during the removal of alcohol).   The downside of this method is that it can lead to strange flavours in the beer.  That is not to say that all non alcoholic beer made this way is bad, indeed there are some very good non alcoholic beers and non alcoholic lagers made this way.

Another way of removing the alcohol via boiling is to control the boil within a vacuum.  This means that the alcohol can be removed at lower temperatures, which in turn has less impact on the final flavour.

Finally there is a process of filtering which can remove the alcohol without any boil taking place what so ever.  Non alcoholic beer and non alcoholic wine produced this way is referred to as dealcoholised and leads to a very rich flavour.  In fact in wines it can produce an amazing final product (just try Söhnlein as a good example)

The quite often asked question of why is non alcoholic beer more expensive should be explained by the above.  it is in essence a full quality beer which has had to go through an extra costly process to remove the alcohol.

In our opinion here at Alcohol Free Review, we would like producers to state which method they use, not that it really matters though as great non alcoholic beer can be produced with each method.

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