BEER STYLES

iStock.com/krisanapong detraphiphat Cheers to AFBs From remarkably bad to an everyday good; how alcohol-free beer is coming of age

consumer attitudes, the sector has BY ANTHONY GLADMAN enjoyed rapid growth – albeit from a One phrase cropped up again and again while I very small base – that makes the rest of the beer market look like it’s suffering was preparing this article. Whether I was talking to from a hangover. brewers, to retailers or to drinkers, when I asked them This article will not go over the technical ins and outs of producing to describe past experiences of alcohol-free beers alcohol-free beer. For these you should (AFBs) they all had the same answer: it tasted like s**t. see an excellent and detailed article But over the years there have been many innovative by Stuart Howe previously published in BDI under the title Countdown to developments in AFBs… Zero. Instead we shall spend our time together in these few pages examining o back far enough to Kaliber and impression they were brewed and sold how alcohol-free beers, and the market “Gthings like that, people accepted as an afterthought; consolation prizes for them, are coming of age. that’s what low-alcohol beer tasted for those compelled by some external One quick thing to note: labelling like,” says Fergus Fitzgerald, head reason to forego their usual pint. laws aside (because they’re such a brewer at Adnams. “If you drank it you They were often worty, riddled with confusing mess) I will use the term alco- knew what you were going to get. You dimethyl sulphide and lacking in hop hol-free here to mean anything under might not have been very happy with complexity. They would be too thin (no 0.5% ABV. it, but you knew that was your only surprise there) and often nished you off choice.” with a tinny, metallic aftertaste that made A stigmatised drink There wasn’t much for people sure you wouldn’t come back in a hurry. The way alcohol-free beers used to be who didn’t want to drink alcohol, but But that was then. Alcohol-free beer still casts a long shadow over the sector didn’t want a soft drink either. The few has come a long way since. Thanks today and is responsible for the mindset alcohol-free beers available gave the to technical innovations and shifting of some people who still say AFBs are

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Uttley was studying for an MBA at Warwick University at the time and he decided to incorporate researching AFBs into his studies. He began with secondary research based on a 2019 Mintel survey that showed 41% of drinkers choose to cut down once every 12 months or more. Uttley spotted that while the majority of those drinkers agreed AFBs were a good solution for reducing their alcohol intake, only 5% had drunk an AFB recently. This anomaly spurred Uttley to carry out further research of his own, surveying 965 people. His respondents were 75% male, 25% female, with an average age of 35. Of these 69% had cut down their drinking within the past 12 months. He asked his respondents to imagine they had an AFB that tasted as good as their regular beer and had only half of its calories. He then asked how much of their full-strength beer consumption such an AFB would Vandestreek Playground IPA, from Ultrecht in the Netherlands replace. “This is the bit I nd really stag- gering,” he tells me. Respondents said not ‘real beer’. Thankfully the catego- by a single drink. He had given up it would replace 50% of their drinking ry’s poor image is improving, helped in alcohol in mid-2018, but although he in the home, and 35% of their drinking large part by a wider availability of good missed beer very much he did not drink outside the home. tasting products. any alcohol-free beers. “I was very Uttley asked the same question to There is now a generation of much in the camp of no alcohol, what’s see how much of their regular soft drink brewers who understand that for the point? It all tastes like s**t.” But a consumption they would replace with drinkers to choose AFBs the driver glass of Vandestreek Playground IPA, an AFB with all the taste but half the must be taste, not sobriety. “People’s which he describes as a wonderful beer, calories; the answers were 46% in the expectations now are much higher,” set him on a path of discovery. home and 51% outside it. says Fitzgerald. “They’re expecting something they’ll actually enjoy rather than put up with.” Rob Fink, CEO and founder of Big Drop, agrees. “It shouldn’t be a distress purchase,” he says. “What really drives me up the wall is when brands who could do better and should know better bring out alcohol-free beer that is s**t. It doesn’t need to be.” He says such poor products continue to damage the category as a whole, and keeps brewers ghting the same battle over and over again. “It has to be about  avour rst and foremost,” he says. “We always say that we make great craft beer that happens to be alcohol free.” Still the nal hurdle remains that of getting your product into people’s hands. “You still need to get people to try it in the rst place,” says Fitzgerald. “That’s always the hard bit.” But once they do, people are usually pleasantly surprised. Adam Uttley, founder of specialist low-alcohol retailer Sober Sauce, says Brooklyn Brewery’s Special Effects: “Tastes just like a regular beer, but therein lies the special his perspective on AFBs was changed effect: it’s not”

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are driving the performance of low/no alcohol, accounting for three-quarters of the money spent in the sector in the UK. It doesn’t take a great leap of imag- ination to see that drinkers who have developed a palate that appreciates bitterness will prefer an AFB to a sugary soft drink if the quality is high enough. At Adnams, initial forays into brewing an AFB were prompted by the 2011 duty cut for beers under 2.8%. Sole Star, the 2.7% beer created to take advantage of this, did well but fell between two stools: it was neither strong enough nor low enough, depending on who you asked. A subse- quent drop in ABV to 0.9% helped a little but still Fergus and his team felt they needed to make a truly low-alcohol beer at 0.5%. “What we wanted to do was make it for people who actually like beer, but for whatever reason can’t drink or want Adnams produce their Ghost Ship 0.5% by reverse osmosis using the GEA AromaPlus (Image: GEA) to reduce the amount of alcohol they’re Uttley’s research points to a huge Uttley. “There was a head-of-purchasing drinking,” says Fitzgerald. “So, using demand for AFBs in a market that is for a big-four pub group in this trial who Ghost Ship, which was our best seller, far from saturated. It also backs up the hadn’t really had non-alcoholic beer seemed to make a lot of sense.” notion that taste is more important than before, and he’s purchased at least four This decision to make an alcohol- sobriety when it comes to selling AFBs. cases of it,” Uttley tells me. free version of an existing beer put When Uttley asked people to rank Alcohol-free beer is often viewed as  avour at the top of the agenda. “If the most important factor in choosing a subcategory of full strength beer, or of we’re going call it Ghost Ship it needs a beer, alcoholic or not, taste came out soft drinks, but Uttley believes there is to taste like Ghost Ship,” Fitzgerald on top with an average score of 9.4 out enough interest for it to become a sepa- says. “Doing Sole Star was one thing, of 10. This was the same for those who rate category in its own right. “The trial because it was a stand-alone beer. regularly drank AFBs and those who did shows if you get these really great beers Once we decided to make a version not. “Health does come in further down into people’s hands and they know of Ghost Ship that was 0.5% there’s the line, but AFBs rst have to pass that where to get them, the take up will be obviously a direct comparison. They will taste hurdle,” Uttley says. huge,” he says. never be identical, but we need to do He also followed up his research everything we can to get it as close as with a taste trial, sending samples of Growth in the sector possible.” six mixed AFBs to volunteers, 90% Sales gures for the sector appear fairly Fitzgerald used restricted fermen- of whom were not already regular regularly in the news, even making their tation to brew Sole Star and initially consumers of AFBs and 76% of whom way out of the trade press and into looked at doing the same for Ghost drank alcoholic beer every week. mainstream outlets, with any number of Ship but soon concluded that, whether The volunteers were each sent articles from the last ve years trum- using less malt or a different yeast, it three lagers (Brooklyn Brewery’s peting double-digit growth in the low/no would inevitably change the fermenta- Special Effects at 0.5% ABV; Lucky sector, be that by volume or by value. tion character of the beer. “That didn’t Saint, 0.5%; and S.A. Damm’s Free In January of this year consumer suit what we wanted to do with Ghost Damm, 0.0%) and three pale ales (Big analysts Kantar reported an overall UK Ship,” he says. Drop Pale Ale, 0.5%; West Berkshire sector gain of 13.4% to £143m over To mimic the existing beer, fermen- Brewery’s Solo Alcohol-Free Peach the preceding 12 months, while sales of tation was key. So Fitzgerald decided Pale, 0.5%; and Nirvana Brewery’s low/no beers, cider and spirits grew by he needed to brew a full-strength beer Hoppy Pale Ale, 0.5%). 40%, 28% and 112% respectively. and then remove the alcohol. Fitzgerald The results were positive, with 31% These are often linked to results felt vacuum distillation would not be of the volunteers responding favourably from surveys showing that younger suitable for Ghost Ship, he says putting to more than half of the samples they drinkers are buying less alcohol. hoppy beers through the process leaves tasted. In fact, 98% found one or more Headlines often focus on Millennials a harsh bitterness so that left reverse AFB that they would buy themselves or drinking less and imply they are the osmosis as his next option. recommend to a friend, and 90% found consumers most likely to buy AFBs, but For the volume that Adnams a beer they described as excellent and this is not the whole picture. required, this option cost about ‘one of my favourite ever beers’. In March of this year Kantar analysts £500,000, whereas vacuum distillation One month after the trial concluded, concluded that while young people may would have been about two-thirds of 75% of the volunteers had purchased at be drinking less than older genera- the price. Reverse osmosis is also more least one of the AFBs sent to them by tions, it is people aged over 45 who expensive to run, with higher utilities

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costs and more water usage, but for Fitzgerald the quality of the results justi ed the extra investment. “I’m not saying vacuum distillation doesn’t work really well for others, but for Ghost Ship we were happy that the extra expense was worth it,” he says. Adnams installed their RO kit in 2018, with three banks of membranes and enough space to install a further bank in the future. But Fitzgerald says demand for the alcohol-free Ghost Ship was far ahead of expectations. “We thought we might want to expand in three or four years’ time, but within seven months of running it we were already at capacity on that rst bank of three membranes. We had to expand it in February last year to take it up to its full capacity, and we’re now running it at 90% of that capacity,” he says. Fitzgerald says that brand recog- nition was extremely important when Ghost Ship 0.5% was launched, as drinkers were still generally wary of Award-winning Adnams Ghost Ship 0.5% AFBs. “We felt it was an easier way in for drinkers. You know what Ghost Ship Windsor ale yeast, which attenuates at bottlers. The last thing we wanted was tastes like. We’re going to tell you this 40% to 50%, as that was all he could that Windsor yeast still working.” tastes the same. Then they’ve got con - get his hands on. Eventually Steve spent time at dence that they can buy it and it will still This meant the focus for reducing VLB in Berlin and was introduced to taste like a beer. Going in with a new alcohol had to go instead to the malt WLP618 Saccharomycodes ludwigii, product is a harder sell when there’s bill and mashing methods. “It was very a yeast strain with limited maltose and lack of con dence in the market.” tricky,” he says. The thinner body, for maltotriose consumption, which would But he says that this recognition will instance, that resulted from restricted have allowed Nirvana to brew with a become less important as the segment fermentation needed to be addressed more normal malt bill. grows and customers become more by adding oats to the mash to Sailopal believes that many of the comfortable with AFBs. contribute some unfermentable sugars, larger brewers who have recently intro- For some breweries, though, the lack and by using lower alpha acid hops to duced AFBs are using S. ludwigii. This of a full-strength equivalent is a selling control the amount of bitterness coming is a very delicate yeast, however, and point. Much of the innovation in the low/ through in the nished beer. Nirvana lacked the facilities to pitch it no sector has come from smaller craft “We had to be very careful while we properly at the time. brewers who specialise in AFBs. were fermenting the beer. The time of Next Sailopal turned his attention Steve Sailopal was one of the early fermentation was much less. We had to a new yeast strain from ‘a certain pioneers of modern AFBs when he to crash it quickly, to make sure we got German yeast manufacturer’, which founded Nirvana brewery in 2015. It all the yeast out before we sent it to the attenuated at just 10% and would was London’s 100th brewery when it opened, was also the rst in the UK to focus completely on producing beers under 0.5% ABV. “Everybody in the industry was saying Steve, have you bumped your head or something?” he tells me. “I love this industry, I love craft beer, and I love alcohol-free beer. I certainly believe there’s so much more that can be done than just a lager.” Back then, says Sailopal, there was nowhere in the UK he could send an IBC (intermediate bulk carrier) of liquid to be de-alcoholised. Nor could he afford the £250,000 to buy the equip- ment himself. So he chose instead to use a restricted fermentation and brew to strength. He used a standard Big Drop Brewing Co…AFB’s should not be a distress purchase

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London’s Nirvana are changing the game in AFBs, bringing better choices to a wider audience convert only glucose, fructose and getting around this – adding different and a softness on the palate thanks sucrose. This would have allowed speciality malts, using different yeasts to the residual yeast left in the beer. “It Nirvana to achieve the desired low – were pulling his beer away from tastes more like the product that it’s ABVs from a completely normal his original goal of brewing a classic, based on,” he says. fermentation, but he never managed pilsner style lager. Customer reaction to Lucky Saint to implement this yeast into Nirvana’s Retaining hop aroma and char- has been very positive. “It’s pretty beers, as he left the brewery in 2018. acter for more than a few moments humbling to be honest,” says Boase. “Sadly for me I had a huge fall-out with after opening the bottle was another “People say really nice things about it.” my investors and I had to leave just challenge without any alcohol to lock Boase says the highest compliment is when this new yeast was hitting the them into the beer. He also tried reverse when customers tell him his beer is as market and life was becoming easier.” osmosis with a brewery in Belgium, but good as or better than any lager they Sailopal says that by brewing to says the results were ‘not great’. have ever had. “One trade customer strength, brewers can create alcohol- So he ended up in Germany in West London kept ordering via free beers that taste “pretty much trialling vacuum distillation. “Initially his restaurant all through lockdown. the same” as full strength ones. And we were brewing ltered lagers, and He told me it’s quickly becoming his certainly, the reception to Nirvana’s the results were ne if not game favourite beer, and he’s drinking it in beers at launch was testament to changing,” he says. “The quality was place of full-strength beer not because their quality. as good as – or with any luck a little he wants to avoid the alcohol but Within their rst year of trading, bit better than – things that already because he prefers it.” Nirvana beers were on the shelves at existed out there, but it wasn’t enough Marks & Spencer. “We were a surprise to get me wildly excited.” Clear view to the future to the industry, having created our own Boase needed to nd that extra Boase points out that for all the growth brewery,” says Sailopal. “Nirvana is still something, a way of making Lucky and noise around the category, AFBs the only alcohol-free brand that’s got Saint taste fuller and richer, more like account for just 0.5% of all beer its own brewery. A lot of the others are the beer he was aiming for in his mind. sales. “It’s a minuscule category that contract brewing, or they’re brewing He says he found inspiration while sits across the bottom of the beer alcohol as well.” drinking non-alcoholic wheat beers in market, usually in the bottom of a Sailopal says he plans to return to Germany. “Wheat beer lends itself very fridge somewhere,” he says. To grow the industry soon with a new project. well to ‘non-alc’. It’s got this amazing the category, the industry will need to “I’ve got un nished business.” body to it,” he says. “You hold up the attract hundreds of thousands of new Brewing a decent beer at 0.5% is glass to the light and it’s this wonderful consumers. an incredible technical challenge. What kind of hazy liquid that’s just full of Predominantly these will not be works for one beer will ruin another. (No texture and character.” teetotallers, but simply those who doubt this is why brewers who aim so It was then that Boase realised that want to moderate their alcohol intake, low are, by and large, a bit more cagey developing an un ltered lager would for whatever reason. “It’s important when it comes to discussing technique.) retain the  avour and character that he for the industry as a whole that there Luke Boase, the founder of Lucky wanted for Lucky Saint. “That was the are good options for all social occa- Saint, tried brewing to strength but night and day. Once we started doing sions, whether they are with or without found the results lacking in  avour and that it was like, a-ha!” He found that alcohol,” says Boase. “It can’t feel like body. Moreover, he found the ways of un ltered, his beer had more  avour a sacri ce. It can’t feel like a compro-

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mise. It needs to be good enough to opposed to a bottle, the sales at least beer isn’t for teetotallers, it’s for anyone bring new consumers into this cate- double.” He says customers often feel who wants to moderate their drinking, gory based on  avour.” uncomfortable asking bar staff what for whatever reason – or for no reason One important way to push the non-alcoholic beers are available. in particular. category forward is to bring more Often they are reluctant to spend The nal part of the category’s AFBs into the on-trade, particularly time exploring options simply because coming of age will come when it stops on draught. In 2020 Lucky Saint the bar is busy. “If it’s on the bar on apologising for being alcohol-free. At launched on draught and became a pump clip then people know it’s Big Drop, Fink says it is important to the rst non-alcoholic beer producer there,” he says. The reassurance of nd a way of talking about alcohol-free to join the BBPA. And although the having your drink poured in a pint is beer without focusing on it being on-trade was disrupted by COVID-19 important too, he tells me. People want somehow less than alcoholic beer. soon afterwards, the push to get his familiarity, particularly if they are in a “There is a risk with alcohol-free beer beer onto the bar remains important group with others drinking full strength that when you talk about it from a sales for Boase. beer. There’s pleasure in the ritual, too. perspective, you talk about it by de ning “Alcohol-free beer comes from a “People like having a pint poured.” it against alcoholic beer. You talk about pretty chequered past and there’s still it as something that is less than, or an a lot of stigma around the category. It Owning its space alternative, or better for you.” doesn’t have a great reputation. Putting Alcohol-free beer used to be remarkable He points to BrewDog’s advertising it on the bar will help to break down for all the wrong reasons. But these for Punk AF, which talked about sobriety some of those preconceptions,” says trends that have developed over the as if that were the reason for drinking Boase. “Once we get people to try the past ve years or so – the improvement the beer. “It’s dif cult to not de ne your- beer there’s this a-ha moment. In a in quality and  avour, the increased self by opposition to alcoholic beer but I category that they thought wasn’t rele- choice, the wider variety of styles to don’t think you should. That’s why we’re vant to them there’s actually a product choose from including stouts and sours, called Big Drop. The whole point is that that they really like.” the move into draught – are all signs it’s not little or small or less than, it’s big. For Adnams, too, having Ghost Ship that AFB is becoming normalised. Big  avour. Big taste. Big mouthfeel. All 0.5% in kegs is vital to its success. “It It is becoming unremarkable, in the rest of it.” makes a huge difference,” Fitzgerald a way. And its customer base too is The trick will be to nd and occupy tells me. “As soon as it goes into a growing away from de ned groups a space in the market that alcoholic pub, as soon as we put it into a keg as towards general drinkers. Alcohol-free beer cannot.

Pushing AFB’s to draught will be important to growth in the on-trade. Lucky Saint launched its draught offering earlier this year

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