Light to Red Ales
• Vacuum distillation can limit the mouthfeel. • Arrested fermentation techniques help to create body. India Pale Ales (IPA) The hop forwardness of this popular style lends well to non-alcoholic beers because the large aromatic flavors stand at the forefront and can help to cover up flavor deficiencies and aldehyde off-flavors. Vacuum Distillation Arrested Fermentation Dark beers like Deschutes Black Butte NonAlcoholic (Odom Odom Corp) and Guinness (Paradise Beverages) work well because, as the academic literature suggests, Maillard reaction compounds help to bring the beer’s resulting aldehydes into balance. Belgian Wheat Beers • Dealcoholization: Given the high reliance on esters for this style of beer, it is unlikely this technique would be used for non-alcoholic beer production. • Arrested fermentation: An arrested fermentation style procedure is typically combined with alternative yeast. This would be ideal for the style. • Alternative yeast, especially Torulaspora delbrueckii, produces the higher levels of isoamyl acetate necessary for this style of beer. It is also used as a co-inoculant in Bavarian Wheat beers (Weissbier). This we suspect is the production methodology of Erdinger Alkoholfrei which was released in 2001 but, in our opinion, tastes very similar to Erdinger’s alcoholic Weissbier. Usage Perspective On-premise • While the industry in the United States is emerging, internationally it is a mature market. • Non-alcoholic IPAs are great for pool bars. They do not contain the alcohol of a traditional IPA, and can be more refreshing than their alcoholic counterparts. They also provide a clean, citrusy, aromatic hop aroma instead of high-sugar-content alternatives. This makes drinking (therefore selling) multiple non-alcoholic IPAs much easier than selling a lot of sugar. Building A Non-Alcoholic Beer Offering Strategy
Our approach to designing a strategy for non-alcoholic beer offerings uses your current beer menu/retail offerings as a guide. The thought process can fundamentally be broken down into two categories, based upon your current beer selection, by answering the following: Is your current beer selection predominantly craft offerings or macro-brands like Guiness, Heineken, and Budweiser? • If macro-breweries, look to Heineken 0.0, Guinness Draught 0, Coors Edge and Budweiser Zero. Use your current menu to decipher a response of Heineken 0.0 versus Coors Edge and Budweiser Zero. Then select between Coors Edge and Budweiser Zero, based on which is more popular on your menu. ? Does your establishment do more Coors/Coors Light or Budweiser/Bud Light? For example, if your current menu includes Heineken, Coors Light, Guinness, and a few other big-name beers, then you can mirror that with non-alcoholic Heineken 0.0, Guinness Draught 0, Budweiser Zero, and Coors Edge. Similarly if it is only Heineken 0.0 and Bud Light then mirror that with Heineken 0.0 and BudZero. |
Off-premise
Brand Perspective Legacy N/A brands (from the 1980’s and 1990’s) Examples: O’Doul’s, Buckler, Kaliber These are familiar brands which some customers have purchased regularly and developed a taste for. In our opinion, these do not taste as beer-like as their modern counterparts, and often have exposed aldehyde off-flavors if made from arrested fermentation, or very little flavor if made from dealcoholization. N/A Versions of Alcoholic Counterparts Example: Guiness, Heineken, Budweiser Zero The beers which are designed as non-alcoholic versions of an already-existing product like Heineken 0.0, Guinness Draught 0, and Coors Edge taste similar enough to the original that it doesn’t leave anything to be desired. The reality is that if one wants the full experience of the alcohol version, they need to drink the alcoholic version. The choice is akin to purchasing a white shirt instead of a blue shirt because you did not want a blue shirt, then being disappointed while wearing it that the white shirt is not blue. N/A Exclusive Beers • Lagunitas IPNA has a combination of great mouthfeel, a touch of yeast and big hop aroma. As a company that has hung its hat on hops, this is stylistically up their alley of development, and similar to their Lagunitas IPA. While each account should have their own personal preference and style, this has become our go-to non-alcoholic IPA. • Athletic Brewing provides a solid and diverse set of products, compared to other brands. The products that really stand are the Free Wave Non-Alcoholic Hazy IPA, due to its texture being able to simulate mouthfeel of a regular beer, and an IPA flavor driven by hops. • If your establishment has more craft offerings, look to brands like Lagunitas and Athletic Brewing, then, select by beer style (although there is a limited selection available at the time of this article). Then use sampling to determine if you feel like the beers within a category are different enough to warrant multiple offerings. For example, if IPAs are a top seller, then your choices are: the Lagunitas IPNA, Athletic Brewing’s Run Wild IPA or Free Wave IPA. If you only offer three alcoholic IPAs, then select one of those to be a non-alcoholic IPA of those three, whereas, if there is an extensive list of IPAs on the menu, it may be advantageous to carry all three N/A varieties.
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