Have you set yourself some hefty new year’s resolutions? No beers, say it isn’t so!! But seriously, if you’re keen to be more health conscious with lowering the amount of alcohol, with the increase in demand to drink in moderation there has been an explosion of low alcohol and non alcoholic craft beers on the market. Now there are some great options so you can still enjoy a social session, tick off those resolutions and be set for a healthy start for the new year.

The trend towards mindful drinking or being more health conscious and choosing to simply drink less alcohol has been growing in Australia and the rest of the world in recent years. The issue previously has been that low alcoholic beer often tasted terrible. Where’s the craft in that? 

Enjoying a few cold ones is undoubtedly ingrained as part of the Aussie culture. And even if Aussies are choosing to drink less, culturally at get-togethers we typically like to have a cold one in hand – even if it’s just to keep hydrated in the Australian Summer. Given there are only so many sodas you can have, with this swing in the market and shifting mindsets, many brewers have been passionate about creating flavourful beers with low alcohol or even alcohol-free levels to suit this growing demand.

Science of Sobriety
ABV stands for Alcohol By Volume and is the most common measurement of alcohol content in beer and simply indicates how much of the total volume of liquid in a beer is made up of alcohol. Low alcohol brews are classified as non-alcoholic beer when they have fewer than 0.5% ABV.

Alcohol-Free Yeah-Nah
Yep, that’s right alcohol free beer does contain a small amount of alcohol! This is because some alcohol naturally forms as part of the brewing process.  To achieve less than 0.5% ABV, there are different processes available to breweries for dealcoholisation. 

Brewers can opt to take the alcohol out of regular beer at boiling point, known as steam distillation, but this can have a negative impact on the flavour of the beer. Brewers can alternatively use specialised yeast strains that do not produce alcohol at the end of the fermentation process or cease to when they reach 0.5 ABV, or even by limiting fermenting sugars. An alternative is to use a vacuum distilling process as it has far less intensity than the heat of a boiling process and has much less impact on the final brew. Breweries are experimenting with natural raw materials, hops, grains and yeasts to create tasty options versus previous mass produced main stream diluted beers.

Low Alcohol Brews On The Rise
As sales of alcohol-free beers have continued to rise in Australia, the community has embraced these health-conscious beverage options across all demographics. Perhaps you are unable to mix alcohol with current medication, be pregnant or maybe you want to be tip-top for a morning surf, or perhaps you simply want to keep the kilos off after Christmas– whatever the reason–there are now some good drops on the market for you to explore.

ABV is not only the measurement of alcohol strength it is also seen as a number that may help you indicate how strong that beverage might taste in terms of alcohol content and the brew’s overall flavour profile. Therefore, as brews take on lower levels of alcohol, brewers have been rising to the challenge to improve the zero alcohol beer flavour options in this growing beverage category.