TOWARDS ZERO.ZERO WRITTEN BY PAUL HUGHES, PH.D.
HOW TO CREATE N/A BEVERAGES
T
he over-consumption of alcohol has been increasingly linked to various aspects of mental and physical deficiencies, especially when consumed in excess. To combat this crisis, more and more outlets are producing low-alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. But how did we get here, and how are these products created? Low- and non-alcoholic (LA/NA) alternatives to beer have been commercially available for more than 100 years,1 but historically they have not enjoyed sustained success. Anheuser-Busch launched one of the first commercial nonalcoholic beers, Bevo (0.5 percent ABV), in 1916, with sales volumes expanding substantially when Prohibition was enforced four years later. Similarly, Sutter Home Winery launched Fre, one of the first commercial alcohol-free wines, in 1992. The dealcoholization process used to create Fre was initially based on conventional vacuum distillation, although today dealcoholization of Fre employs spinning cone technology, which will be discussed below.
1 In the U.S., nonalcoholic beer today is considered to be less than 0.5% ABV, and alcohol-free has no detectable alcohol.
W W W . ARTISANSPIRITMAG . C O M
LOW- AND NON-ALCOHOLIC ALTERNATIVES TO BEER HAVE BEEN COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE FOR MORE THAN 100 YEARS. Alcohol-free spirit mimics are a more recent development, pioneered by Seedlip in 2015. It is, perhaps, ironic that the alcohol production industry, that has existed for millennia, is increasingly focused on the removal or avoidance of the very thing that makes up their existence. In principle, there are three broad approaches to producing nonalcoholic variants of beverages that are conventionally alcoholic:
> Modification of conventional manufacture to at least partly suppress alcohol formation
> Conventional manufacture of the alcohol-containing product followed by dealcoholization
> Compounding of alcohol-free ingredients to create nonalcoholic drink alternatives. These alternatives each provide unique challenges. The dealcoholization of conventional products by some form of alcohol removal can risk the thermal degradation of the product matrix and the loss of volatile flavors, so flavor matching requires careful management. Examples of thermal degradation include residual sugar caramelization and other non-enzymatic browning reactions. These
can be avoided or minimized by fermenting to dryness i.e., eliminating sugars and reactive free amino nitrogen (FAN). The loss of volatiles during dealcoholization can be mitigated by adding back flavors post-dealcoholization, although this requires an excellent understanding of the volatiles’ profile pre-dealcoholization. “Missing” volatiles can in principle be recovered from the collected distillate. But, reconstitution of volatiles is not, on its own, sufficient as it is well-recognized that for all but the simplest food and drink matrices, there is incomplete understanding of the finer points of flavor matching.
THE DEALCOHOLIZATION OF CONVENTIONAL PRODUCTS BY SOME FORM OF ALCOHOL REMOVAL CAN RISK THE THERMAL DEGRADATION OF THE PRODUCT MATRIX AND THE LOSS OF VOLATILE FLAVORS, SO FLAVOR MATCHING REQUIRES CAREFUL MANAGEMENT. 101