How are non-alcoholic beers, wines and spirits made — and how healthy are they?

After decades of hiding at the back of grocery store shelves, non-alcoholic beverages are getting their moment in the limelight. 

Seen as a healthier way of drinking, a new study published this week in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review found that no or low alcohol beverages (NoLo) may help some higher-risk drinkers consume less alcohol.

Many bars are experimenting with using non-alcoholic spirits in cocktails, while breweries around the country are creating zero-alcohol versions of their product to keep up with demand.

Today, NoLo consumption is increasing worldwide, with ANZ’s Food For Thought Report finding that non-alcoholic beer made up about 10 per cent of beer sales in Australia in 2023.

Even for those in the industry, the skyrocketing appeal of NoLo products has come as a bit of a surprise.

Making non-alcoholic beer was "a culturally challenging idea in Australia" just five years ago, according to Ben Holdstock, co-founder and head brewer at alcohol-free beer company Heaps Normal.

"We were noticing this shift and interest in people cutting back but not completely being sober," he said.

"At that time, there weren't many craft beer options available in the non-alc space."

But NoLo products are not to everyone's taste, and there are limits to how effective they are in reducing harm, the authors of the new study warned.

So how are alcohol-free beverages made, and how healthy are they?

How do you remove alcohol? 

One of the easiest ways to make non-alcoholic drinks is to start with the full-strength version and warm it up.

Heating an alcoholic drink to around 78 degrees will remove the ethanol, leaving just water and other compounds. This is called de-alcoholisation.

But a large increase in temperature can start to cook the beverage, changing the flavour — and usually not for the better.

"You've kind of destroyed the wine," Wes Pearson, a wine maker and scientist at the Australian Wine Research Institute, said.

Instead, breweries and wine makers use large systems to lower the pressure of the liquid, which allows the ethanol to boil off at a lower point. This process is known as vacuum distillation.

"Regular distillation would happen around 70 degrees … whereas if we used a strong vacuum we can distil the ethanol at around 35 to 40 degrees," Dr Pearson said.

Vacuum distillation is how most non-alcoholic wine and most high-volume non-alcoholic beer is made.

According to Nic Sandery, co-founder and brewer at non-alcoholic brewery Hiatus Beers, this process can be particularly effective for simple beers like lagers.

"I think it's very hard to discern the difference between our [non-alcoholic] lager and an alcoholic lager," Mr Sandery said.

Are beers always made this way? 

No. While de-alcoholisation has been used for decades, it isn't the only way to make non-alcoholic beer. More recently, some of the most popular non-alcoholic beers have been made without alcohol being part of the process at all.

To make a traditional alcoholic beer, yeast is used to turn sugars like maltose or maltotriose into ethanol and carbon dioxide. 

Some yeast strains produce less alcohol than others, and some strains of yeast have been bred to produce almost none. 

These special non-alcoholic beer yeasts still undertake the fermentation process, but don't eat maltose or maltotriose. This means that in the right conditions, they produce only a trace amount of alcohol.

"We're paying really close attention to what's going into the beer to control the amount of sugars — and therefore ethanol — that's produced," Heaps Normal's Ben Holdstock said.

While this process is cheaper than vacuum distilling, it can be more challenging to get right compared to traditional brewing methods.

"It's definitely a lot harder than brewing alcoholic beer," Mr Holdstock said.

"It's the same ingredients, the same process … it still takes two weeks or more to make one of our beers."

To get the taste of a traditional beer, more of certain ingredients need to be added, without increasing the amount of sugar.

"Our target is to get the flavour profile [of a beer], it's not to brew it the same way that we brew normal beer,"  Mr Sandery said.

What about non-alcoholic spirits? 

Beers usually only contain about 5 per cent alcohol, so there's plenty of 'beer' remaining after the de-alcoholisation process. 

Wine, which can be up to 18 per cent alcohol, can be more difficult to imitate, but products like grape juice and tannins can be added to provide more flavour and texture.

Spirits, on the other hand, which traditionally are about 40 – 50 per cent pure ethanol, are extremely hard to replicate in the same way. Instead, non-alcoholic spirit makers have to get creative. 

Carolyn Whiteley, co-founder of non-alcoholic distillery Seadrift Distillery, said you can still infuse or distil a gin or a whisky with flavours like juniper or wood, but water is used as a base instead of alcohol.

"It uses a lot more botanicals than you would in even a mass production of gin, so the costs are very high," Ms Whiteley said.

Traditional copper stills — used to distil regular spirits — can also be used in the production of non-alcoholic spirits, but instead of producing or flavouring alcohol, they can concentrate flavours in water.

Some distilleries might use tea or another compound as a base to concentrate the flavour further.

"We tried numerous other processes in our development, and none of them create one signature liquid that is repeatable or has the brightness of small batch copper distillation," Ms Whiteley said.

Some non-alcoholic spirit makers may also add compounds or concentrated flavours to a product to produce an alcohol-like mouthfeel or spirit-like flavour.

Is it healthier? 

It's well understood that alcohol is not good for your health, and recent Australian guidelines note that the "less you choose to drink, the lower your risk of harm from alcohol".

In 2022, the World Health Organisation went even further, explaining that "no level of alcohol consumption is safe".

If used as a replacement for drinking, which research shows is becoming common, non-alcoholic products are likely to be a healthier choice — primarily because you're consuming less alcohol.

But they will not bring the same benefits as substituting alcohol with water or soda water.

As Dr Pearson, wine maker and scientist at the Australian Wine Research Institute, notes, you shouldn't expect non-alcoholic wine to be free from sweetener.

"Without the alcohol, wine is basically a little bit of flavour, acid and water," he said. 

"Things are added back to that product to replace the texture and mouthfeel that alcohol gives, and of all those additives, the most notable is sugar." 

In most cases, however, non-alcoholic beverages have less sugar than a can of soft drink.

There's also some evidence that chemicals like resveratrol in wine and phenols in beer might lead to health benefits, and non-alcoholic versions of these would provide the chemicals without the damages of ethanol.

But studies have shown these benefits to be small (or the studies are inconclusive), so more research is needed.

"There is a social lubrication aspect ... and being able to have a glass of wine with your friends or colleagues and ‘fit in’ is another reason why someone may choose to have a no-alc wine as opposed to a soft drink or water."

According to the new study on NoLo products, these social and motivational factors could be harnessed help some people kick their alcohol habit.

But high-risk people who consume alcoholic drinks for fun or to get drunk are less likely to turn to NoLo drinks, the survey of more than 33,000 people worldwide found, so other strategies might be needed. 

"Intervention efforts should focus on promoting alcohol-free novel experiences and viable activities that could replace the positive reinforcing effects of alcohol, leading to longer-term culture change," the authors concluded.