You know, I wonder what's so damn hard about making a decent non-alcoholic beer. I actually went online and stumbled across wikipedia's article on it (however reliable it might be, that's always up in the air) and it seems that the alcohol is simply "boiled out" of the beer as alcohol boils at a much lower temperature than water, and it's also possible to decrease the "atmospheric pressure" the beer is subjected to so that the alcohol boils at room temperature. (
Link).
Alcohol in and of itself is a fairly flavorless liquid. Aside from adding a level of astringency and "burn," there's not much to it, and you can't even taste the alcohol in most beers anyway. So when you really back up and think about it, boiling alcohol out and replacing with water really shouldn't do anything flavor-wise. So why is it that pretty much every non-alcoholic beer I've tried tastes terrible? You'd think after reading how it's made that you could make a rich, flavorful non-alcoholic beer in virtually any style imaginable.
So why hasn't any brewery taken on such a venture? Is it mass production/the "target audience" for non-alcoholic beer? Is it too much work? Do they not want to invest in some new equipment? Or do they think that somehow removing alcohol from beer is sort of messing with the integrity of the beer? Whatever the case, it really baffles me!
As a beer lover (I still am at heart, I'll be the first to admit) who stopped drinking alcohol, I just have to wonder about all this. Who knows? Maybe it's a venture I need to take up for myself. Brew a few different batches of beer in some various styles and de-alcohol them, just to see. Who knows? If I can get it to work, maybe I can sell the idea to someone and they can pick it up and run with it?
In theory, it shouldn't be that hard to do. In practice, maybe it is, and maybe that's why nobody's done it yet. Who really knows? At any rate, it would be a fun experiment, even if it does completely flop.
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Comments (6)
Because most people drink beer for the alcohol, not for the taste of beer. Nonalcoholic beer is like plain donuts - no point.
@lucylwrites@xanga - You have just explained my problem with drinking culture in North America. It's all about quantity and getting hammered. I'll NEVER understand that mindframe. I've only been drunk a couple of times and it's a feeling I don't like, and I further can't understand how ANYONE would like that feeling. Then there's hangover, which sucks even worse than that.
Alas, true beer/wine/liquor connoisseurs do, as you say, make up a minority of drinkers in North America. Hell, if you want to make money in the beer business, don't start a microbrewery. Microbrews combined still have much less than like 5% of the beer market share (Sam Adams, the largest "microbrewery" if you could even call them that, has less than 1% market share). In Europe, the drinking culture is totally different though, and you find plenty of people who drink their alcohol of choice in moderation and for flavor enjoyment.
Alas, I can, and have, fallen victim to the North American drinking mentality, even if not getting completely drunk but drinking more than I should. That on top of the negative impact it could have on my career and the health effects are what ultimately made me decide to stop drinking. I do miss my beer, but not for its intoxicating effects. I just like the flavor of good quality beer.
If you can brew an amazingly tasty non-alcoholic brew it would be a miracle. But that still wouldn't negate the fact that it wouldn't gain much popularity.
:)
I found this whole article very intriguing. I actually love the taste of "good beer" that is rich in flavor and have to admit, I don't see why it isn't possible for a really good beer to be non-alcoholic too?
I hear people say that beer is suppose to get you drunk! Well, some people choose to drink decaf coffee. Maybe because caffeine gives them the jitters or may because they want a cup of joe at night but don't want to be up til '3 in the morning.
I will say that sometimes the idea of non-alcoholic beer seems great.I mean, I love beer but sometimes I drink it and feel tired and just want to lay down. Beer isn't good for me if I have a lot on my plate that day.
So, why isn't it possible to brew a nice rich and flavorful beer that has no-alcoholic. I would like to see how this experiment is coming along. I find that non-alcoholic beer taste like really crummy alcoholic beer. You know that guy whose such a drunk, he'll slam anything for a buzz.. including Steele Reserve!!! Non-alcoholic beer is like that sort of painful desperation but the complete opposite!
I would like to see a Fat Tire or Rogue Ales Hazelnut Brown. Why not?
I think it's a bit more complicated than just people wanting to get drunk (although that does play a role). There wouldn't be beer snobs and wine connoisseurs and single malt scotches if people only cared about getting drunk(there'd be little reason to have liquors outside of vodka really). That being said, I also agree with secretbeerreporter that America has problems with the drinking culture(although that also applies to Europe, Australia, etc. in many ways too).
That being said, nonalcoholic beer also has other problems. While cost does play a role (both time and equipment, combined with a smaller audience, leads to fewer companies attempting it and thus less competition), it's also hard to maintain all the flavor compounds when removing alcohol. I'm not an expert but this is as far as I understand it:1. Alcohol has a lower boiling point, but it's faulty chemistry to think that mixtures of alcohol and water simply allow just the alcohol to boil off. The combination boils both water and alcohol at a single temperature based on the ratio and while pure ethanol would create steam that's mostly vaporized alcohol, it boils off increasingly more water as the temperature increases but still below 212F until the steam is mostly water even though there's still alcohol left.2. Other aroma compounds, like esters, are just as volatile(i.e. boils off) as alcohol, which is why distilled liquors have flavor. You lose a lot of the volatile aromas when you boil the alcohol, leaving only nonvolatile aroma compounds (although I say "aroma", it's a major contributor to taste). In addition to the volatile aroma compounds boiling off, you also can damage other flavor compounds due to heat (although that can be mitigated with a rotary evaporator for creating a vacuum to boil at near room temperature)3. Because of losing volatile compounds, most attempts at making nonalcoholic versions of beverages aren't done by boiling or even using a vacuum/rotary evaporator. The most popular/well known methods I know for nonalcoholic wines are a spinning cone method and reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis uses a membrane to try to selectively filter out alcohol with water and nonvolatile chemicals, boil the alcohol off that, and recombine that and the unfiltered volatile component with some water. However, the membrane can't perfectly separate only the desired molecules due to variance in size, and the pressure necessary to filter also potentially adds energy which damages the flavor compounds. The spinning cone method, as far as I know, uses a nonreactive gas like nitrogen to try to extract the volatile aroma compounds and add it back in later. Each method has its flaws, so, in addition to expense, produces a lower quality product than the full alcohol version.4. Some even try just making the 'wort' aspect of beer without fermenting (like making grape juice instead of wine) but that tends to be sweet due to the yeast not eating the sugar to turn to alcohol, and the yeast produces esters in addition to alcohol as a byproduct which also contribute to the flavor (which is how some beers taste like banana or whatever). So you lose out on yeast produced flavors and people will also complain it tastes too sweet.
That's mainly based on what I've read about nonalcoholic wine, but it should apply basically the same.