Low-alcohol or non-alcoholic drinks were once a real rarity in the market. However, since the beginning of the year 2020, more and more people have started to prefer this type of drinks rather than alcoholic ones. For this reason, alcoholic beverages companies have started investing in this new market with the goal to introduce a wide number of new products to meet the demand. Many famous beverage companies, known all over the world for the production of alcoholic drinks, have in fact started to find low alcohol alternatives as well as real alcohol-free versions of the drink that made them famous. For this reason, 2021 saw an increase in the low or no alcohol alternatives of many popular wines, beers, spirits and cocktails. Many biochemical companies, such as AEB Group, are also starting to produce new low-alcohol beers by adopting the same process and equipment used for regular drinks with the aim of creating beverages with low alcohol content that meet the tastes of consumers. With such a sudden increase in demand for alcohol-free beverages, experts expect this phenomenon keep growing in the years to come.
What causes the increase in the consumption of low alcohol beverages?
With the sudden arrival of the pandemic, many places that sold alcoholic beverages, such as bars and restaurants, had to close for a long period of time consequently causing demand of alcoholic drinks to drop dramatically. While the alcohol market was struggling, the demand for new non-alcoholic or low-alcohol alternatives has started to skyrocket. In addition to the sudden arrival of the covid-19 health emergency, another reason for this change is due to the fact that more and more people have begun to re-evaluate their relationship with alcohol. For this reason, many young people have started to prefer non-alcoholic beverages while looking for alternatives that faithfully reproduce the flavor of their favorite drinks. This change could be due to a collective desire to change lifestyle and to adopt a healthier and more balanced diet without sacrificing taste.
Why is no or low alcohol beer dominating the market?
Another reason why soft drinks were not so widespread only a short time ago was the market didn’t offer a wide diversification of choice to their customer. With the sudden increase of the demand, beverage companies have started to produce more and more soft drinks while improving the quality of the ingredients and above all the taste. This has led more and more people to experiment with this new type of drink and to prefer it over traditional alcoholic beverages.
How is a low or no alcohol beer made?
In order to produce a low or non-alcoholic beer, craft breweries mostly use un-malted cereals or malted cereals with lower saccharification potential, while the fermentation method adopted is called “interrupted fermentation”. The fermentation development is indeed interrupted through cold crashing, which is a practice that stops the process by lowing the temperature of the beer. Of course, it’s crucial to choose a good aromatic yeast which will preserve the taste of the original beer while reaching the desired alcohol level in an easy way.
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