Nonalcoholic and low alcohol beers have been growing in popularity as consumers become more health conscious, however making a nonalcoholic beer that tastes like a regular beer has been a real challenge for brewers. The alcohol content of beer can be reduced through physical methods that remove ethanol that remove ethanol, such as distillation and filtration, or biological methods that limit ethanol production during fermentation. Distillation is accomplished by heating the beer to remove ethanol, which can create off-flavors and alter the volatile profile of the beer. Membrane filtration can strip the beer of ethanol as well as important flavor compounds. Beer specifically brewed to have a 0-1% ABV are brewed with lower available fermentables in the wort, and the yeast strains used have been shown to give off volatile profiles that can be quite different and lower in concentrations of esters when compared with alcohol producing yeast strains. This study was developed to evaluate the differences of sugar profiles (maltose, maltotriose and glucose) and volatile profiles (DMS, vicinal diketones, esters and alcohols) of various styles of commercially available beer with an ABV &lt; 0.5% to well known commercial beers with ABVs of greater than or equal to 5% of identical or similar styles. RI-HPLC will be used to measure sugars and HS-GC-MS will be used to measure volatile compounds. Results of this study will help brewers better understand how nonalcoholic beers chemically compare to the same styles of beer with a standard alcohol content.

Comparison of sugar and volatile profiles of nonalcoholic beers to their alcoholic beer counterparts

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.