Dealcoholized beer versus beer brewed to 0.5%

The NA beer boom hid a fork in the brewery.

One path: brew the beer you already know, then remove the alcohol — cold filtration, membranes, vacuum. Guinness 0.0 is the public case. The roast, the widget, and the stout recipe come first; the filter comes last.

The other path: change the mash, the yeast, or the fermentation so the beer never climbs past 0.5%. Athletic Brewing talks about a proprietary process and is openly skeptical of taking beer all the way to 0.0. That is not automatically worse. It is not dealcoholization until they say it is, with a method attached.

What to look for

A named removal step. Cold filtration, vacuum, reverse osmosis. Words you can search.
A base beer. “We brew Guinness, then…” is a different sentence from “we pioneered a method.”
Ingredients after the fact. Fructose, flavorings, and lactose are common patches. They do not disqualify a beer. They should be on the page.

How we score them

A dealcoholized stout that still drinks like stout can outrank a technically interesting low-fermentation IPA that tastes like hop tea. The reverse is also true. The badge and the score answer different questions. Keep them separate.

Removal is Dealcoholized. The tasted set is Best dealcoholized beer and the dealcoholized beer collection. A fermentation that never climbs past the ceiling is Naturally low alcohol. A producer that declined to name the process is Process withheld, not a sixth type. The longer split is Dealcoholized is not the same as nonalcoholic.

In the cellar

Compare holds up to four. Want to try keeps a bottle in My Bottles.