Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbaumb here. Just a few decades ago in the
Speaker 1: United States, beer choices for purchasing non alcoholic beer were
Speaker 1: just about as scant as their alcohol content. As of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety, there was really only one national brand, Oduels,
Speaker 1: and it had a reputation for being sort of flat
Speaker 1: and dull, even more boring than the other boring beers
Speaker 1: on the market. But as laws in the United States
Speaker 1: changed during the nineteen nineties, allowing for the growth of
Speaker 1: small craft breweries, innovation and competition increased, and with that
Speaker 1: expansion in the styles of beer available our pallets expanded.
Speaker 1: Beer is the world's most popular alcoholic beverage and the
Speaker 1: third most popular drink period behind water and tea. Brewers
Speaker 1: have tapped into what consumers want most better tasting beer
Speaker 1: in general, but also better beverage options for anyone who
Speaker 1: doesn't want to consume alcohol at the moment for whatever reasons.
Speaker 1: Since about twenty fifteen, but especially during the pandemic, that
Speaker 1: category of us has grown. For the article this episode
Speaker 1: is based on, has Stuff Works spoke with John Walker,
Speaker 1: the chief product officer for Athletic Brewing Company, a non
Speaker 1: alcoholic craft brewery. He explained, when we started in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: the non alcoholic beer market was zero point zero three
Speaker 1: percent of the total beer market, and now we just
Speaker 1: created two percent in grocery sales this past year. According
Speaker 1: to GMI Insights, the global non alcoholic or NA beer
Speaker 1: market raked in twenty two billion dollars in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two and is expected to reach forty billion by twenty
Speaker 1: thirty two. Legally speaking, non alcoholic beer can contain up
Speaker 1: to zero point five percent alcohol by volume or ABV,
Speaker 1: so one half of one percent, meaning that these beers
Speaker 1: aren't always appropriate for people looking to avoid alcohol entirely.
Speaker 1: There are some completely alcohol free beers on the market,
Speaker 1: like sun Trees brand All Free, but they're a little
Speaker 1: trickier to make, which is why they're more rare. It is, however,
Speaker 1: highly unlikely that you'll catch a buzz from a beer
Speaker 1: with a zero point five percent ABV or lower. That's
Speaker 1: because your body can metabolize that amount of alcohol about
Speaker 1: as fast as you consume it. By contrast, alcoholic beer
Speaker 1: usually ranges from around three to twelve percent ABV, although
Speaker 1: they can go lower or higher. Just for example, a
Speaker 1: beer with a five point six percent ABV takes more
Speaker 1: than three hours to metabolize. These days, no and low
Speaker 1: alcohol beers are brewed pretty much the same way that
Speaker 1: alcoholic beers are, but afterward extra steps are taken to
Speaker 1: remove the alcohol produced during the process. Okay, brief rundown
Speaker 1: of how brewing works. So, to make beer, you need
Speaker 1: grains like wheat, corn, rice, oats, rye, or barley. You
Speaker 1: typically malt them, meaning you let them start to germinate
Speaker 1: a little so that they start to produce sugars, and
Speaker 1: then you roast them off to stop that and to
Speaker 1: give them some amount of roasty flavors. Then you heat
Speaker 1: your grains in water, which becomes your wart, and ferment
Speaker 1: the wort with friendly yeasts. These yeasts eat some of
Speaker 1: the sugars from the grains and poop alcohol, carbon dioxide,
Speaker 1: and flavors. You probably also add some hops at some
Speaker 1: point during this process. Hops are the flour of this
Speaker 1: climbing plant, once called a pernicious weed, that add flavors
Speaker 1: and especially bitter flavors plus super bonus inhibit the growth
Speaker 1: of unwanted microorganisms, especially bacteria in your beer. They also
Speaker 1: help stabilize beer's foam. You might add other stuff to
Speaker 1: to help flavor your beer, fruit herbs, more other yeasts,
Speaker 1: or bacteria that poot, more other flavors, what have you.
Speaker 1: You can make low alcohol beer by simply stopping the
Speaker 1: fermentation process before very much alcohol is created. There are
Speaker 1: also enzymes you can use to simulate some of the
Speaker 1: effects of fermentation, or modified strains of yeasts that don't
Speaker 1: digest maltose so they don't produce alcohol, or strains that
Speaker 1: produce alcohol really slowly. But with those methods you're also
Speaker 1: not letting very much flavor or carbonation develop. So most
Speaker 1: na beer goes through the full brewing process. But then
Speaker 1: you get the alcohol out in one of a couple
Speaker 1: of ways. The easiest way is to heat it out.
Speaker 1: Everything has a different boiling point, right, and alcohol's boiling
Speaker 1: point is about one hundred and seventy three degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 1: or seventy eight celsius, much lower than the boiling point
Speaker 1: of water. So easy you heat up your beer to
Speaker 1: alcohol's boiling point, it releases as a gas boom non
Speaker 1: alcoholic beer. Right. Not quite. The problems are that a
Speaker 1: some of the flavor compounds and beer are alcohol soluble,
Speaker 1: so boiling off the alcohol will take them out too,
Speaker 1: meaning you'll have to recapture them and add them back
Speaker 1: in later and b more Complicatedly heating or reheating your
Speaker 1: beer enough to boil out the alcohol can break down
Speaker 1: or alter all of your flavor compounds in ways that
Speaker 1: will make the final product taste like not beer. So
Speaker 1: the workaround is to rig physics so that you can
Speaker 1: boil the alcohol out at a lower temperature. You do
Speaker 1: that by lowering the pressure by putting your brew in
Speaker 1: a vacuum chamber. At lower pressures, the boiling points of
Speaker 1: stuff are lower. The exact pressure you go down to,
Speaker 1: and thus the boiling point you go down to depends
Speaker 1: on your equipment. Generally, the lower it can go, the
Speaker 1: more expense of it is. Temperatures might range from one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty fahrenheit all the way down to eighty
Speaker 1: that's about forty nine to twenty seven celsius. This more
Speaker 1: gently cooks the alcohol out and you can then recapture
Speaker 1: those alcohol soluble flavor compounds and add them back in. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's the vacuum distillation method. The other main method
Speaker 1: used is filtration or reverse osmosis. In this process, you
Speaker 1: take your beer and force it using applied pressure through
Speaker 1: ultrafine filters. So ultrafine that only molecules of alcohol and
Speaker 1: water can pass through because they're so tiny. Pretty much
Speaker 1: all the other stuff in the beer, all of the
Speaker 1: flavor molecules get trapped. You can then take your alcoholic
Speaker 1: water safely boil out the alcohol at the normal temperature,
Speaker 1: and add the flavor molecules back in to the resulting
Speaker 1: plane water. This is a little bit more expensive than
Speaker 1: vacuum distillation. Either way, the carbon dioxide bubbles in your
Speaker 1: original brew have not made it through this process, so
Speaker 1: you're probably going to want to carbonate it like you
Speaker 1: might as soda. This can also add a slightly sour
Speaker 1: or metallic taste, so you might also doctor the flavor
Speaker 1: a little more at the end of the process. Technology
Speaker 1: is always evolving and brewers are constantly refining their craft
Speaker 1: for both alcoholic and non alcoholic beers. Perhaps ironically, as
Speaker 1: na beer slowly gains more attention, it's actually becoming one
Speaker 1: of the hardest to learn. How to make it home.
Speaker 1: Home brewing is a popular hobby, and how lots of
Speaker 1: craft brewers got their start, but the craft brands that
Speaker 1: make great NA beers, like Athletic and Brooklyn Brewery are
Speaker 1: keeping their methods. Industry secrets are now. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on the article how do Today's Brewers Make non
Speaker 1: alcoholic Beer? On how stuffworks dot com written by Jennifer
Speaker 1: Walker Journey. To learn more about the history of NA beer,
Speaker 1: check out the episode of my other podcast SAB called
Speaker 1: the Lowdown on non Alcoholic Beer. Brain Stuff is production
Speaker 1: of by Heart Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com
Speaker 1: and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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