The search for a non-alcoholic beer that’s actually worth drinking

By. Jessica Lahey

I’m approaching 50 and have been sober nearly five years. I’m profoundly grateful for each and every day, but boy, do I miss a good, cold beer.

Beer has been a part of American culture since Europeans set up the first colonies, first as an English import and later as a home brew made from Indian corn or barley. The first commercial brewing equipment arrived on our shores in 1633, and within a year, every New England community was required by law to have an inn, or “ordinary,” which sold beer to the public at a fixed cost. 

Today, nearly 5,100 American beer producers sell about $111.1 billion in beer annually, much of it marketed as a means to celebrate with friends and quench our thirst.

Various forms of nonalcoholic beer, or “small beer,” have existed since the medieval era as an alternative to contaminated water. Modern nonalcoholic beer, “NA beer,” or “near-beer,” was born during Prohibition, when alcohol levels above 0.5 percent were illegal. Despite the optimistic nickname, most “near beers” are a poor substitute for the real thing, and many are downright undrinkable. As the market share for nonalcoholic beer increases, however, some craft brewers are working to change the reputation of NA beer.

Most fall flat, not because they’re missing the alcohol, but because the process most brewers use to remove the alcohol also removes volatile flavors. To make beer, water and a grain, usually malted barley, are cooked into a “wort.” Hops are added for flavor, and yeast is added for fermentation. The yeast eats the sugar from the barley and excretes digested sugar as alcohol and carbon dioxide. Most brewers bottle the beer at this point, allowing the residual yeast to consume the last of the sugar and carbonate the beer. Brewers of nonalcoholic beer, however, either stop the fermentation before it’s complete (“stop-fermentation”) or boil the beer to lower the percentage of alcohol by volume (ABV) below 0.5, and it’s this final step that renders so many NA beers unpalatable.Continue Reading