On Mon, 8 Feb 2010 14:40:12 -0500, I am Tosk wrote:

> In article >, says...
>>
>> What the world needs is a really good non-alcoholic beer.
>> I drink a huge amount of non-alcoholic beer to moderate
>> my alcohol intake to a safe and healthful level, and
>> I think it's a shame there are no good non-alcoholic beers.
>>
>> I asked a home beer brewer how non-alcoholic beer is made,
>> and he said he wasn't quite sure but he thinks that it's
>> a strain of yeast that more completely digests the sugars.
>> He said you can make a fermented root beer that's safe to
>> give to kids using yeast that doesn't produce a significant
>> amount of alcohol.
>
> Actually the way my peers make it is to evaporate off much of the
> alcohol and replace it with water iirc. I do have somebody I can call to
> confirm.
>
> Scotty

that's my understanding as well:


How Are Nonalcoholic Beer and Wine Made?

By Jason Horn
Secrets of fake booze revealed

How are nonalcoholic beer and wine made?

Put simply, you make alcoholic beer or wine, and then remove the alcohol.
You do this by distilling the beverage, as if you were going to make
liquor. But rather than save the booze and throw out the rest, you throw
out the booze.

When you make alcohol, you typically heat up whatever it is you¡¦re
distilling to boil off the alcohol (which you collect in vapor form, then
cool back into liquid). It doesn¡¦t matter all that much if the water,
syrups, herbs, and whatever else that¡¦s in your base get a little cooked in
the process, because you¡¦re tossing out most of that in the end anyway.
When making nonalcoholic beverages, though, maintaining the flavor of the
base is important, because you¡¦ll save that part, and you want it to taste
as much like real beer or wine as possible. So you don¡¦t want to cook it.

There are two ways to get the booze out that don¡¦t require high heat. The
first is a process called vacuum distillation. The beer or wine is put
under a vacuum. The change in atmospheric pressure allows the producer to
boil the liquids at a lower temperature, or in some cases with no heat at
all, and distill off the alcohol.

The second process is called reverse osmosis, and is the same method often
used to purify drinking water. It doesn¡¦t require any heating. The wine or
beer is passed through a filter with pores so small that only alcohol and
water (and a few volatile acids) can pass through. The alcohol is distilled
out of the alcohol-water mix using conventional distillation methods, and
the water and remaining acids are added back into the syrupy mixture of
sugars and flavor compounds left on the other side of the filter. Bingo¡Xa
nonalcoholic (or dealcoholized, as winemakers call it) brew.

<http://www.chow.com/stories/10519>

your pal,
blake