Alcohol-free beer still needs improvement in taste. Scott Lafontaine’s research in ACS Food Science & Technology looks at alternative yeasts that can be used to brew tastier beers.
Nowadays, more and more varieties of ‘0.0’ beer are on offer. Consumption of 0.0 is on the rise, reaching 82 million litres of alcohol-free beer in the Netherlands (2022) and 35 million litres in Belgium (2023). At the same time, taste remains a major bottleneck. Many consumers miss the character of regular beer and find alcohol-free variants too sweet or flat in taste. Kevin Verstrepen, professor of microbial and plant genetics at KU Leuven, says there is still a lot of room for improvement in 0.0 beer, but there are alternative yeasts that come close to creating ‘real beer’.
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