Scientists make non-alcoholic beer taste like regular beer

Researchers have found a way to brew non-alcoholic beer that tastes just like regular beer

Even though sales of non-alcoholic beer have risen substantially in Denmark and Europe in the last couple of years, there are still many people that won’t follow the healthy trend because they find the taste not to be quite as good as that of regular beers.

Some people find the taste to be flat and watery and this has a natural explanation, according to Sotirios Kampranis, a Professor at the University of Copenhagen.

“What non-alcoholic beer lacks is the aroma from hops. When you remove the alcohol from the beer, for example by heating it up, 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,” he says.

But now, Kampranis and his colleague Simon Dusséaux – both founders of the biotech company EvodiaBio – have cracked the code of how to make non-alcoholic beer that is full of hop aroma.

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.

On top of improving the taste of non-alcoholic beer, the method is also far more sustainable than the existing techniques, according to the researchers.