Alcohol free IPA? WTF...

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alcohol-free IPA

Kehrwieder, Germany

This was a dream coming true. To get an IPA and no alcohol. This could be my case. A beer every day possible without risks of alcohol consumption.

YUPPI-KA-YEY…

I have opened the bottle and smelled – malty I thought. Some hops aroma, but not a kick ass one. Then the beer went in the glass – carbonation? Almost zero, it was like pouring the tea. Aroma kept, maybe some citrus from hops coming out. And then I took the first sip.

Is this really a beer? Seriously? Malt and malt, almost sweet. Flavor of hops is there but relatively dimmed. Some low IBU coming out after some times. In fact, it was like drinking the wort of the beer. Not that it was bad, but surprising, and not really giving you a flavor of drinking a beer.

Now I went to a beer label. What I have found is another proof for unlimited creativity of the craft beer brewers. Even if in this case, the world creativity may not be a positive one.

OK, so the brewers have taken an interesting approach and sued yeast that cannot process the sugar. Therefore – no alcohol. As simple as that. Why bother about the technologies necessary to remove the alcohol if you can skip producing it. The idea may sound brilliant, but there may be a small thing forgotten – yeast based fermentation is the process that changes wort in beer (yes also an IPA). I don’t think that there are exceptions from this case.

As I am brewing myself, getting a bottle of wort is not interesting from my point of view. If you feel to try wort – go to a brewery tour, or buy a bottle of this invention. If you really look for an alcohol free IPA – you are wrong here.

Very interesting from the scientific-commercial point of view – if the yeasts put in this drink do not process sugar (or do this in a minimal form) what are they doing? What’s the idea behind putting them at all? Very interesting, indeed.