How Does Non-Alcoholic Beer Work?

on the market. But as laws in the United States changed during the nineteen nineties, allowing for the growth of small craft breweries, innovation and competition increased, and with that expansion in the styles of beer available our pallets expanded. Beer is the world's most popular alcoholic beverage and the

third most popular drink period behind water and tea. Brewers have tapped into what consumers want most better tasting beer in general, but also better beverage options for anyone who doesn't want to consume alcohol at the moment for whatever reasons. Since about twenty fifteen, but especially during the pandemic, that category of us has grown. For the article this episode is based on, has Stuff Works spoke with John Walker, the chief product officer for Athletic Brewing Company, a non

alcoholic craft brewery. He explained, when we started in twenty seventeen, the non alcoholic beer market was zero point zero three percent of the total beer market, and now we just created two percent in grocery sales this past year. According to GMI Insights, the global non alcoholic or NA beer market raked in twenty two billion dollars in twenty twenty two and is expected to reach forty billion by twenty

thirty two. Legally speaking, non alcoholic beer can contain up to zero point five percent alcohol by volume or ABV, so one half of one percent, meaning that these beers aren't always appropriate for people looking to avoid alcohol entirely. There are some completely alcohol free beers on the market, like sun Trees brand All Free, but they're a little trickier to make, which is why they're more rare. It is, however, highly unlikely that you'll catch a buzz from a beer

with a zero point five percent ABV or lower. That's because your body can metabolize that amount of alcohol about as fast as you consume it. By contrast, alcoholic beer usually ranges from around three to twelve percent ABV, although they can go lower or higher. Just for example, a beer with a five point six percent ABV takes more

than three hours to metabolize. These days, no and low alcohol beers are brewed pretty much the same way that alcoholic beers are, but afterward extra steps are taken to remove the alcohol produced during the process. Okay, brief rundown of how brewing works. So, to make beer, you need grains like wheat, corn, rice, oats, rye, or barley. You typically malt them, meaning you let them start to germinate a little so that they start to produce sugars, and then you roast them off to stop that and to

give them some amount of roasty flavors. Then you heat your grains in water, which becomes your wart, and ferment the wort with friendly yeasts. These yeasts eat some of the sugars from the grains and poop alcohol, carbon dioxide, and flavors. You probably also add some hops at some point during this process. Hops are the flour of this climbing plant, once called a pernicious weed, that add flavors and especially bitter flavors plus super bonus inhibit the growth

of unwanted microorganisms, especially bacteria in your beer. They also help stabilize beer's foam. You might add other stuff to to help flavor your beer, fruit herbs, more other yeasts, or bacteria that poot, more other flavors, what have you. You can make low alcohol beer by simply stopping the

fermentation process before very much alcohol is created. There are also enzymes you can use to simulate some of the effects of fermentation, or modified strains of yeasts that don't digest maltose so they don't produce alcohol, or strains that produce alcohol really slowly. But with those methods you're also not letting very much flavor or carbonation develop. So most na beer goes through the full brewing process. But then you get the alcohol out in one of a couple

of ways. The easiest way is to heat it out. Everything has a different boiling point, right, and alcohol's boiling point is about one hundred and seventy three degrees fahrenheit or seventy eight celsius, much lower than the boiling point of water. So easy you heat up your beer to alcohol's boiling point, it releases as a gas boom non

alcoholic beer. Right. Not quite. The problems are that a some of the flavor compounds and beer are alcohol soluble, so boiling off the alcohol will take them out too, meaning you'll have to recapture them and add them back in later and b more Complicatedly heating or reheating your beer enough to boil out the alcohol can break down or alter all of your flavor compounds in ways that will make the final product taste like not beer. So the workaround is to rig physics so that you can

boil the alcohol out at a lower temperature. You do that by lowering the pressure by putting your brew in a vacuum chamber. At lower pressures, the boiling points of stuff are lower. The exact pressure you go down to, and thus the boiling point you go down to depends on your equipment. Generally, the lower it can go, the more expense of it is. Temperatures might range from one hundred and twenty fahrenheit all the way down to eighty

that's about forty nine to twenty seven celsius. This more gently cooks the alcohol out and you can then recapture those alcohol soluble flavor compounds and add them back in. Okay, So that's the vacuum distillation method. The other main method used is filtration or reverse osmosis. In this process, you take your beer and force it using applied pressure through ultrafine filters. So ultrafine that only molecules of alcohol and

water can pass through because they're so tiny. Pretty much all the other stuff in the beer, all of the flavor molecules get trapped. You can then take your alcoholic water safely boil out the alcohol at the normal temperature, and add the flavor molecules back in to the resulting plane water. This is a little bit more expensive than

vacuum distillation. Either way, the carbon dioxide bubbles in your original brew have not made it through this process, so you're probably going to want to carbonate it like you might as soda. This can also add a slightly sour or metallic taste, so you might also doctor the flavor a little more at the end of the process. Technology is always evolving and brewers are constantly refining their craft

for both alcoholic and non alcoholic beers. Perhaps ironically, as na beer slowly gains more attention, it's actually becoming one of the hardest to learn. How to make it home. Home brewing is a popular hobby, and how lots of craft brewers got their start, but the craft brands that make great NA beers, like Athletic and Brooklyn Brewery are keeping their methods. Industry secrets are now. Today's episode is based on the article how do Today's Brewers Make non

alcoholic Beer? On how stuffworks dot com written by Jennifer Walker Journey. To learn more about the history of NA beer, check out the episode of my other podcast SAB called the Lowdown on non Alcoholic Beer. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.