Researchers have claimed to find a way to brew non-alcoholic beer that tastes just like regular beer. In addition, the method is far more sustainable than the existing brewing techniques, hailed as “a game-changer for non-alcoholic beer,” according to a study coming out of Denmark. 

The research comes amid rising trends in low- and no-alcohol beers and other beverages, as global consumers, especially younger generations, edge toward healthy lifestyles that do not necessarily include the levels of alcohol consumption that have been seen from previous generations.

Even though sales of non-alcoholic beer have risen substantially in Denmark and Europe in the last couple of years, many people are still put off by non-alcoholic beers because they find the taste not to be quite as good as that of regular beers.

Improving the aroma
Some consumers brand the taste of non-alcoholic beer as “flat” and “watery.”

“What non-alcoholic beer lacks is the aroma from hops. When you remove the alcohol from the beer, for example, by heating it, you also kill the aroma that comes from hops. Other methods for making alcohol-free beer by minimizing fermentation also lead to poor aroma because alcohol is needed for hops to pass their unique flavor to the beer,” says Sotirios Kampranis, a Professor at the University of Copenhagen.

But now, Kampranis and his colleague Simon Dusséaux – both founders of the biotech company EvodiaBio – have made a breakthrough in making non-alcoholic beer full of hop aroma.

The method of adding hoppy flavor to alcohol-free beer is pegged as a “game-changer” for the non-alcoholic beer space.Creating a “hoppy” flavor
After years of research, the scientists found a way to produce a group of small molecules called monoterpenoids, which provide the hoppy flavor, and then add them to the beer at the end of the brewing process to give it back its lost flavor.

“No one has been able to do this before, so it’s a game-changer for non-alcoholic beer,” says Sotirios Kampranis.

Instead of adding expensive aroma hops in the brewing tank just to “throw away” their flavor at the end of the process, the researchers have turned baker’s yeast cells into micro-factories that can be grown in fermenters and release the aroma of hops, they state in their study.

“When the hop aroma molecules are released from yeast, we collect them and put them into the beer, giving back the taste of regular beer that so many of us know and love. It makes the use of aroma hops in brewing redundant because we only need the molecules passing on the scent and flavor and not the actual hops,” explains Kampranis.

Brewing sustainably
According to the researchers, besides improving the taste of non-alcoholic beer, the method is also far more sustainable than the existing techniques.

First of all, aroma hops are mainly farmed on the west coast of the US, which causes the need for extensive transportation and cooling down the crops in refrigerators.

Secondly, hops demand lots of water – more accurately, you need 2.7 tons of water to grow one kilogram of hops. This, combined, makes it a not very climate-friendly production.

“With our method, we skip aroma hops altogether and thereby the water and the transportation. This means that one kilogram of hops aroma can be produced with more than 10.000 times less water and more than 100 times less CO2,” Kampranis adds.

The researchers hope that creating non-alcoholic beers equal in taste to regular alcoholic beer will help more consumers shift toward consuming less alcohol. 

“Long term, we hope to change the brewing industry with our method, and also the production of regular beer, wher the use of aroma hops is also very wasteful,” concludes Kampranis.

The method is already being tested in breweries in Denmark, and the plan is to have the technique ready for the entire brewing industry in October.