Far be it from us to worry you. Especially in the middle of Dry January, when many of you are putting your alcohol consumption on hold for a month. But here’s the question on our minds: Are alcohol-free beers really alcohol-free?
To answer this, we must take an interest in the manufacturing process and the nature of the producers – industrial or artisanal – knowing that several techniques make it possible to obtain a beer (almost) without alcohol. “The first process is stopped fermentation. We start fermenting the beer, we stop it quite quickly. The disadvantage is that we cannot avoid a certain degree of alcohol, these are beers which are between 0.5 and 1.2 degrees,” explained Elsa Calegno, journalist at UFC-Que Choisir, in one of our Consumer Briefs.
Between artisanal and industrial brewers, a question of percentage
“The second, more recent process is vacuum evaporation: vacuum distillation at low temperature, which has the advantage of preserving the aromas. We first obtain a normal, alcoholic beer, then we pass it through a distiller, and the alcohol evaporates first without evaporating the taste. We can go down to almost zero levels,” says the specialist journalist. In any case, everyone is on target, knowing that French legislation allows the name “alcohol-free beer” to be used for a drink with an alcohol content of less than or equal to 1.2%.
“Only industrial breweries manage to obtain 0.0%,” says Aurélie Baguet, co-founder of L’échoée beer, a tourism and events agency dedicated to beer. For the sector specialist, it is a certainty: when a manufacturer displays a clean rate, we can trust it, given the “internal and health controls”. According to Elsa Calegno, “when we see 0.0, the alcohol content is less than 0.05%, in other words very very low”
On the artisanal side, the challenge is greater. Each brewer has “their little secret recipe” in the manufacturing process, continues Aurélie Baguet. And in order to obtain the lowest possible alcohol level, it is necessary to “interrupt fermentation, have specific yeasts and have a low volume of fermented malt”
“Complicated to completely remove alcohol and guarantee it”
All of this makes the majority of craft beers profit at “a rate of 0.2 to 0.3%”, according to Augustin Laborde, founder of Le Paon qui boit, an alcohol-free cellar located in Paris. “It’s complicated to completely remove the alcohol and guarantee it,” continues the professional, who promotes transparency in his store by putting different posters in front of the beers depending on the alcohol level. “Most craft breweries make the effort to indicate the alcohol levels,” confirms Aurélie Baguet.
Behind its different levels of alcohol-free beer, ranging generally from 0.0% to 0.5%, an economic argument: only industrial breweries have the capacity to invest in very expensive machines to obtain total alcohol-free beer. “The costs are too high to enter into an artisanal business model, even if Dry January develops,” says the professional.
It is therefore difficult for craft breweries to obtain 100% alcohol-free products. But rest assured, taxation encourages producers to stay below 0.5% almost every time. “Below 0.5% alcohol, the VAT rate is 5.5%, above that, it rises to 20%, specifies former jurist Augustin Laborde. Brewers therefore have no interest in exceeding this rate.”