'Aroma recovery' improves the taste of alcohol-free beer

Researchers have developed a technique to enhance the aroma of alcohol-free beer, which is often perceived as ‘tasteless’ by consumers.

The alcohol in beer acts as a solvent for a variety of aromatic compounds; when it is eliminated to create non-alcoholic beers, the final product loses aromas and some of its taste. Now, researchers from the University of Valladolid in Spain have used a pervaporation process to restore the flavour and scent.

“This technique consists of using a semipermeable membrane to separate two fractions from alcoholic beer: one liquid phase in which alcohol is retained and another gaseous phase, where the aromatic compounds come in,” Carlos A Blanco, one of the authors, explained. “Then, this gaseous phase can be condensed, the aromatic compounds extracted and added to non-alcoholic beer.”

To conduct the study, which has been reported in the Journal of Food Engineering, the scientists used a special beer (with 5.5% alcohol) and another reserve beer (6.5%) from which they extracted three aromatic compounds: ethyl acetate, isoamyl acetate and isobutyl alcohol. They then added these substances to two ‘almost’ alcohol-free beers on the market: low-alcohol beer (<1% ABV) and alcohol-free beer (<0.1% ABV).

A panel of experts tasted them, with 80-90% of tasters preferring the enriched beers over their original factory counterparts.