The Secret to Dry January: Non-Alcoholic Beer

Although it’s been around since 2013, somehow I had not heard of “Dry January” until this year.

“Sober October” I was familiar with, when people abstain from alcohol for the month to give their livers a rest and reset their overall relationship with booze.

After all the excesses of the holiday season, I can see why Dry January is a thing and appeals to people who either a) want to get their healthy routines back on track or b) want to start some healthier habits.

I had intended to take part in Sober October, but . . . my motivation just wasn’t there. So I did a Dry January! My husband joined me. We’re not planning to swear off alcohol forever, and PLEASE do not use the phrase “sober-curious” (just . . . ick). We were simply enjoying a healthy challenge.

One of the ways we kept things interesting was by sampling the world of non-alcoholic (NA) beers. It’s quite a growing industry, with more and more people experimenting with these brews. It was a lot of fun to explore NA brews and learn more about how they are made.

So . . . How Is NA Beer Made?

Something to note, there is a distinction between NA (non-alcoholic) and AF (alcohol-free) beer. NA beer, by law, can have up to 0.5% ABV (alcohol by volume). AF beer has 0.0%. Just something to be aware of, since some people use the terms interchangeably.

All beer is born from the same four ingredients—water, grain, hops, and yeast. From that blueprint, brewers can take beers in seemingly infinite taste directions. But how do they make it non-alcoholic? In a nutshell, they can either:

Brew regular beer and then remove the alcohol
Brew beer that doesn’t create much alcohol to begin with

Method #1
To remove alcohol from fully-leaded beer, brewers can:

Distill It: Alcohol has a lower boiling point than water, so if beer is heated to the correct temperature, the alcohol will boil off but leave the rest of the beverage behind. Brewers can also use vacuum pressure rather than heat to force the alcohol to evaporate.
Filter It: There are a few ways to filter out the alcohol. With reverse osmosis, pressure is used to filter full-strength beer through a semipermeable membrane. The smaller water and alcohol molecules slip through the membrane, but the beery-tasting goodness remains behind. The brewer can then add water and carbonation to the concentrate before bottling it up. Brewers can also force nitrogen gas through beer to filter out the alcohol.
Dilute It: With this method, brewers craft their full-strength beer as usual, then water it down to achieve a lower ABV. Maybe home brewers do this? I have not been able to find any commercial brewers that claim to use this method, so I haven’t sampled any diluted beers.

Method #2
Alternatively, brewers can craft NA beer right out of the gate in a couple of ways.

Controlled fermentation (aka “microfermentation”): When yeast gobble up the sugars from grains during the fermentation process of beer making, one byproduct is alcohol. By using grains with less sugar (like rice or corn instead of barley or wheat) or by using special strains of yeast, brewers can “control” how much fermentation occurs, therefore controlling the amount of alcohol produced (and making sure it stays below the 0.5% ABV threshold). Brewers can control the amount of fermentation by playing with other variables too, like temperature, pressure, and acidity.
Simulated fermentation: With this technique, brewers don’t actually ferment the beer at all (because, remember, fermentation creates alcohol). They add special ingredients and enzymes to the base ingredients to replicate a fizzy, hoppy beverage. I was curious to sample a beer made using this method, but I couldn’t seem to find any. Then I came across an explanation on taprm.com that made me laugh out loud and also probably explains my dilemma:

“There’s also a process referred to as ‘simulated fermentation,’ which basically means a brewer uses a blend of ingredients that simulate the flavor a beer has after fermentation. This isn’t a popular method of creating non-alcoholic beer, because quite frankly, they usually taste like garbage.”

The Tasting Room

On the last Saturday of Dry January, I put together a collection of NA beers to conduct a tasting with a small group of friends. The lineup included beers made from different methods of removing alcohol (as nearly as I could tell from my research). We had a mix of lager-ish beers and IPA-ish beers.

The Lager-ish Lineup:

Athletic Upside Dawn Golden (controlled fermentation)
Clausthaler (controlled fermentation)
O’Doul’s Golden (distillation)

The IPA-ish Lineup:

Athletic Free Wave Hazy IPA (controlled fermentation)
BrewDog Nanny State (controlled fermentation)
Untitled Art Hazy IPA (filtration)

The Results:

People were pleasantly surprised that all of the beers actually tasted like beer. If they hadn’t known that the beers were non-alcoholic, they would not necessarily have guessed them to be. Also in the pro column: The beers are lower in calories than regular brews, won’t interfere with your sleep, and can’t be blamed for next-day headaches. But that being said . . . it IS near-beer. Everything was pretty good, but nothing was truly great. Overall taste-wise, we concluded that the beers had a little less flavor, a little less carbonation, and a little more bitterness than we would want from a really good brew. But you know what? We had so much fun sampling the different beers! Goes to show that the most important ingredient for a good time is the company, not the alcohol.

So maybe you’ll consider indulging your “sober-curiosity” next Dry January. I’m glad I did. I discovered not only that non-alcoholic beer is better than nothing . . . it’s not half bad!