Dealcoholized is not the same as non-alcoholic
The label 0.0% tells you almost nothing. Here is the production line we actually use.
Learn
Learn
Buying guides and the production methods that separate dealcoholized bottles from formulated alternatives.
Buying guides
How to shop the cellar
How to buy dealcoholized wine
Residual sugar, vacuum stills, and the difference between a wine that lost its alcohol and a grape soda in a Burgundy bottle.
How to buy non-alcoholic beer
Cold-filtered stout, low-fermentation IPA, and hop water are not the same shopping trip. Read the process before you trust the can.
Dealcoholized beer versus beer brewed to 0.5%
Some NA beers are full-strength brews with the alcohol filtered out. Others never get there. Both can be excellent. They are not the same process.
How to buy a non-alcoholic spirit
Dealcoholized whiskey is not a botanical tea. Ask what was in the still before the alcohol left — and whether anything was in a still at all.
How to buy non-alcoholic cider
Some bottles are fermented cider with the alcohol removed. Others are juice that learned carbonation. The glass will tell you, if the label will not.
How it’s made
Dealcoholization methods
Vacuum distillation
Alcohol is boiled off under reduced pressure so the wine or beer never has to reach a kitchen-stove temperature.
Spinning cone column
A thin-film vacuum column used to separate aroma and ethanol in stages. Common in wine industry language; less often explained on a back label.
Reverse osmosis
Pressure drives the liquid through membranes that separate water and ethanol from a flavor concentrate, then the parts are reassembled without (most of) the alcohol.
Membrane and cold filtration
Alcohol leaves through a filter, not a boil. Guinness 0.0 is the version of this story most people have actually tasted.
Osmotic distillation
A membrane process that pulls ethanol across a hydrophobic barrier into a stripping solution, usually at or near room temperature.
Arrested fermentation and low-alcohol brewing
The beer or wine is kept from making much ethanol in the first place. Useful. Not dealcoholization.