How it's made
Dealcoholization Methods
How alcohol is removed from wine, beer, and spirits — and which common nonalcoholic production techniques are not dealcoholization.
Alcohol removal
These techniques take alcohol out of an alcoholic drink.
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.
What happens to the wine?
The starting wine, aroma recovery, and later adjustments all matter. Follow the process from wine to glass.
Read the guideFermentation approaches
These approaches limit alcohol formation or develop flavor through a different fermentation pathway.
Arrested fermentation and low-alcohol brewing
The beer or wine is kept from making much ethanol in the first place. Useful. Not dealcoholization.
Nonalcoholic fermentation
Fermentation designed to build flavor, acidity, aroma, or texture without conventional alcoholic fermentation. Not alcohol removal, and not arrested fermentation.
Undeclared
Tasted bottles whose type may be known, and whose machine is not. A technical sheet corrects the record. The score stays with the tasting.
Withheld
The producer declined to name the process. Silence after research stays under Undeclared. A technical sheet updates this record.
Cite Karl Hill, “Dealcoholization Methods,” The Dry Standard, https://drinkdrystandard.com/methods/.
No techniques match your search. Try “vacuum”, “membrane”, or “fermentation”.