OnTap Magazine

ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2025 | 35 ALCOHOL-FREE BEER ANYONE? FEATURE CRAIG CLAASSEN ALCOHOL FREE BEER INTEREST IS GROWING, BUT IS THIS ONLY AMONGST NEW BEER DRINKERS, OR FROM HABITUAL CHANGES? T here are certainly a lot in the press (beer media and otherwise) that Gen Z or the twenty- somethings are drinking less. Off the back of this, there are celebrities like Tom Holland, Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue getting involved in non-alcoholic beer and wines. (This is not considering the mixers and non-alcoholic spirit brands by other celebrities and influencers.) Big beer brands like Heineken 0.0 and Castle Free has been around since 2017, so it is safe to say this is not a new phenomenon; it has most certainly not come out of nowhere. As far back as 1986, Guinness launched Kaliber, a beer that fell below the 0.5%ABV legal limit, which placed it in the market as a non-alcoholic beer. Wine has been playing around with it for even longer than that, Carl Jung (not THAT Jung) patented his method for dealcoholisation, through means of vacuum distilling, as early as 1907 in Germany and 1908 in the USA. So why do we think it is a new phenomenon? Is it the zeitgeist at play? There are certainly many more options on the market now, new methods available to brewers, which makes it a touch more accessible for smaller brands to try to enter the market. A large driver, which is a pattern in global beer development, is government regulation and taxation linked to alcohol. This is evident from the lower alcohol beers (above 0.5% alcohol by volume or ABV) getting tax cuts in certain parts of the world. This incentive, certainly drives some breweries towards producing beers in that alcohol range. But this is also not new, for throughout history, many beer styles have come out of government legislation. The next time you see a beer with the word “Reinheitsgebot” on it, think of the Dukes of Bavaria, Wilhelm IV and Ludwig X. They introduced a rule limiting beer to the use of water, barley and hops, only later adding yeast to the mix. This was largely due to avoiding famine in Bavaria, but also to cut out potentially toxic ingredients that were being added to beer at the time. Whatever the reason for no-alcohol trends, what has come out of the last 10 years or so, is the sudden variety of non- alcoholic beers on the market. And this is probably a good thing for the consumer. 0%