Tag Archives: non-alcoholic beer

Beer Styles

Schönramer is the Perfect Alcohol-Free Beer

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That title says it all, but let me briefly explain. Just a few weeks ago I asked whether science has gone too far with the development of alcohol-free Bavarian Helles.

A few days ago, I came back from our summer holiday. One big part of it was visiting Waging am See which is roughly half-way between Traunstein and Petting-Schönram. The former is the home of three breweries, including Hofbräuhaus Traunstein, while the latter is the home of Private Landbrauerei Schönram, a regional brewery firmly embedded in the Rupertiwinkel region of Bavaria.

Of course, the locally dominant beers there are Hofbräu Traunstein Helles and Schönramer Hell, with Schloßbrauerei Stein also having some presence. Naturally, we drank plenty of Traunsteiner and Schönramer, and of Schönramer’s beers, I enjoyed having their Alkoholfrei readily available and pre-chilled in the local supermarkets.

I now very much believe that this is the perfect alcohol-free beer. When it’s properly chilled, and poured into a glass, it’s absolutely beautiful, and is virtually indistinguishable from a regular Helles. Only in the nose, there’s a tiny trace of an aroma that is a bit off, and while tasting the beer, the body is almost right. Literally the only thing that’s missing is that tiny bit of alcohol that is noticeable. Other than that, no flaws.

As we were in the area, we also did a tour of the brewery, which is an experience in itself. Probably the best brewery tour ever, other than maybe the handful of times where I was given private tours by brewers. Everyone was very open about the brewing practices and processes, and all my questions were answered. The only thing they said they wouldn’t hand out is brewing recipes, but if you wanted to brew Schönramer beers, you can get a good idea about their approach through articles like this one and home-brew recipes like this one.

As for the alcohol-free beer itself, that’s what I’ve been able to find out: Schönramer currently contracts out the dealcoholisation process, which is done at Brauerei Hutthurm near Passau. Hutthurm dealcoholises via reverse osmosis membrane filtration, exactly the modern method I mentioned the other week. The resulting beer is then returned by tanker to Schönram, where it is then blended with Schönramer’s Surtaler beer (which in itself has 3.5% ABV) to get just below 0.5%.

An open fermenter at Schönramer brewery with fermenting beer in it, with kräusen (white-ish foam) on top.
An open fermenter at Schönramer brewery with fermenting beer in it, with kräusen (white-ish foam) on top.

Schönramer is apparently working on moving dealcoholisation in-house, but this is still in the planning phase. When I briefly spoke to senior brewmaster Eric Toft (I had a bit of a fanboy moment), he actually voiced his preference for the Surtaler Schankbier, and to me it sounded like he wasn’t 100% happy with moving towards a beer style that is much more resource-intensive in production compared to their other beers (even just the dealcoholisation itself, never mind sending it around with tankers), especially after all the effort Schönramer put it to make the whole brewing process as energy-efficient as possible, including energy recovery at various stages of the process.

I still think Schönramer Alkoholfrei is an excellent beer, and knowing all the details that go into making the Schönramer beers as good as they are, it is not an accident, but rather shows the technical excellence of the brewmasters and the staff at that regional Bavarian brewery.

The back of a Schönramer-branded high-vis vest worn by a brewery tour participant. It says "Biersucher" on the back, a portmanteau of "Bier" and "Besucher" (visitor).
The back of a Schönramer-branded high-vis vest worn by a brewery tour participant. It says “Biersucher” on the back, a portmanteau of “Bier” and “Besucher” (visitor).
Beer Styles

Has Science Gone Too Far? Modern Bavarian Non-Alcoholic Helles

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In the last few years, a number of new Bavarian non-alcoholic Helles were launched by reputable breweries such as Augustiner (which really started this new craze), Tegernseer, Bayreuther, Weihenstephaner and Schönramer.

Augustiner’s new non-alcoholic beer was without any doubt Munich’s hype beer of the year 2024, and several other breweries followed suit and launched their own products once they realised that the hype was real.

From what I was told, these new beers are all based on new methods of gentle dealcoholisation using reverse osmosis, to a large extent driven by research at TU Munich at Weihenstephan (one paper about the impact of different production methods on NA beer aroma can be found here).

When Augustiner released that new beer, my prediction was that it would be a big deal, and I firmly stand by that assessment. It’s changed the world of alcohol-free beer for the better, making it actually enjoyable. My first tasting a few weeks later also confirmed it for me. And zebra-striping between Augustiner Oktoberfestbier and Augustiner Alkoholfrei Hell in the Augustiner tent at Oktoberfest on the last day of the festival in 2024 further showed what an incredible beer it is: when served extra cold from keg, it’s virtually indistinguishable in terms of aroma and flavour compared to a regular Augustiner Helles.

When I first tried Tegernseer’s version last year, I actually found it to be even better, at least from the bottle, to the point where it tastes exactly the same except for a slightly noticeable lack of alcoholic mouthfeel.

Last weekend, I finally had the chance to try out the latest contender, Schönramer Alkoholfrei. Schönramer Hell is one of my favourite Helles, it’s incredibly light, fairly dry and just incredibly drinkable. So of course I was looking forward to trying it.

And… it’s good. It’s very good. It seems even more refined than either Tegernseer’s and Augustiner’s version, but it’s the first time where I feel like there’s something lacking in the non-alcoholic Helles (other than the alcohol itself, of course), rather than something still being in there that makes it identifiable as a NA beer. The Schönramer version is so clean, the beeriness almost seems diminished to the point where it reminded me a bit of American light beers.

Me holding a bottle of Schönramer Alkoholfrei on my balcony. It's a standard brown German NRW beer bottle. The label says "Private Landbrauerei Schönram", the brewery logo with "seit 1780" referring to the foundation date, and "Schönramer Alkoholfrei" in the center. The label itself is a white with thin vertical green stripes, and green stripes on top and bottom with white text on it. In the background, tomato and chili plants growing on the balcony can be seen.
Me holding a bottle of Schönramer Alkoholfrei on my balcony.

This was the first time when I thought: has science gone too far? Has non-alcoholic Helles been optimised so much in an attempt to make it as clean-tasting as possible, that it has actually lost some of its character as a beer? It still tastes like a beer, don’t get me wrong, but I do wonder whether the non-alcoholic version could just be a bit more characterful. I also wonder whether this is simply down to the base beer, and I don’t know whether this is just a dealcoholised version of their regular Helles, or whether more tweaking was done that caused the beer character to become less and less.

So I had to go back the day after and try the beer again. What I noticed was that from a beer glass (nothing fancy, just a Willibecher), the beer was somewhat more aromatic, without any noticeably increased non-alcoholic character, and closer to the regular Schönramer Helles.

Anyway, in a few week’s time, I’ll be drinking Schönramer straight from the source, and we also have a tour booked, so I hope I’ll be able to ask a few more questions about the specific way Schönramer produce their non-alcoholic Helles and report back on my blog.

Beer Styles

Why Augustiner’s new alcohol-free Helles is a big deal

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Augustiner brewery of Munich, known to be very conservative, secretive and loaded, recently announced their latest addition to their portfolio, an alcohol-free Helles, aptly named “Augustiner Alkoholfrei Hell”. Augustiner hadn’t released a new beer in 38 years, and in fact was the last of the “big six” Munich brands without an alcohol-free beer.

They first teased the release of a new beer type on Instagram without getting specific, which of course came with lots of outcry, “oh no, not an alcohol-free one! Please anything but an alcohol-free beer!” and such, but my first thought that this could be a game changer. Augustiner obviously cares a lot of about the quality and presentation of their own beers (for example, they still run their own cooperage on the outskirts of Munich to ensure that they can serve all their Oktoberfestbier from massive 200 liter “Hirsch” wooden casks, and will typically serve at least one beer from wooden casks in their prime locations), and a poorly-received alcohol-free beer (or any new beer type, really) could have really tarnished their reputation.

On Monday, 18th March 2024, the rumours of an alcohol-free beer turned out to be true, when Augustiner officially presented their new beer. I was of course very curious, and checked out early reports about it. Süddeutsche Zeitung was probably the first one to report on it (link to a paywall-free archived version of the article), and one thing that caught my eye was how openly Augustiner spoke about their method of production.

Basically, there are two ways of producing an alcohol-free beer: one is to brew a low-gravity wort and ferment either with a poorly attenuating yeast (essentially, one that cannot ferment maltose sugar) or to stop fermentation shortly after it’s started by chilling down the beer very quickly to prevent the yeast from metabolizing any further sugar. This approach is called arrested or restricted fermentation. The other method is to brew a regular beer and then dealcoholize it, i.e. remove the alcohol after fermentation through some method of cold distillation. This is generally called physical dealcoholisation. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, leading to either worty-sweet beer with the former method, or very thin, watery and slightly sour with the latter method. And as the Süddeutsche Zeitung says, “Augustiner decided on a mix of both methods.”

Through my very good friend Ben who works as a brewing scientist at VLB, I’ve learned about the paper Effect of Production Technique on Pilsner-Style Non-Alcoholic Beer (NAB) Chemistry and Flavor by Nils Rettberg, Scott Lafontaine, et al., published in early 2022 (Ben himself wrote about his experience with non-alcoholic beers after completing Dry January 2022). One of its conclusions was that blending non-alcoholic beers from restricted fermentation and from vacuum dealcoholisation produced a more harmonious beer that generally fared better in blind tasting than beers solely produced using either method. Another conclusion was that more hop compounds, such as through late kettle-hopping or dry-hopping, can mask the less pleasant flavours of non-alcoholic beers. This a very interesting paper, though of course rather technical, but if you’re interested in all the nitty-gritty details, definitely worth checking out.

While the paper is about Pilsner-type beers, and Helles is certainly not a beer type that has a particularly large amount of hop aroma or flavour, it still shows that for more lightly hopped beers, it still seems to be a practical approach for Augustiner, and they seem to have either drawn the same conclusions as the paper above or got convinced by the methods through it.

The tasting notes from Mareike Hasenbeck describe the beer as having a fresh, spicy and malty aroma with a hint of sulfur, while the flavour is malty-bready with a touch of lemon and sulfur and ample carbon dioxide on the tongue, finishing with a noticeable hop bitterness. Especially that last bit made me wonder whether the hopping rate was slightly increased compared to Augustiner’s regular Helles to create an overall nicer and rounder beer. Even though Augustiner’s approach was not to create a 1:1 copy of their flag-ship Augustiner Lagerbier Hell but rather a really good alcohol-free beer that meets their exacting, Mareike Hasenbeck notes that straight from the fridge, the fact that the beer is alcohol-free could be easily missed by laypeople (i.e. the non-nerdy, less discerning drinkers).

And I think that’s a big deal. If a regular beer drinker can have the non-alcoholic beer served under optimal conditions and not notice that it doesn’t contain alcohol (or at least, less than 0.5% by volume), you’re at a point where it is satisfying enough for consumers. At least for me personally, unless I specifically want to get inebriated, it would then make no difference whether I drink the regular version or the alcohol-free version. In fact, I would sometimes even want to specifically have the alcohol-free version, for example to avoid getting tipsy too quickly.

Previously, only one beer got close enough for me to this ideal, and that’s Guinness with the 0.0 version of their draught stout. When I first had it from nitro can, this was quite the revelation. To this day, I would still call it the most convincing alcohol-free beer, and don’t mind having a can or pint (or two) whenever I have the chance. Unfortunately, Guinness 0.0 has not made it to Germany yet, but I’m still hopeful. The only other beer that got close to it for me was Riedenburger Dolden Null, a German alcohol-free IPA, but their trick is basically to hide the worty flavour under loads of hops.

Everything I’ve read about the Augustiner Alkoholfrei Hell sounds to me as if Augustiner may have pulled off the same as Guinness, to release a convincing alcohol-free Helles that may be pleasing even to consumers and Augustiner fans that otherwise would not choose an alcohol-free beer. That’s a big deal, and could change the landscape and expected quality of alcohol-free beer in Bavaria and the rest of Germany.

As for myself, I have yet to try the new beer, and it doesn’t seem to have arrived in Berlin yet. One drinks wholesaler with a dedicated beer shop in Charlottenburg estimated it 3 to 4 weeks until they get it, while a restaurant/beer garden near the government district that is known for its Augustiner from wooden cask estimated it to take more like 4 to 8 weeks.

Ben on the other hand has already had a chance to try the beer at Augustinerkeller in Munich, and called it “unsurprisingly excellent”. With everything he also told me about it in private conversations, I am very hopeful that Augustiner Alkoholfrei Hell will indeed be a game changer.

Since the release, Tegernseer also started talking about how they’re currently working on their own alcohol-free Helles. The game is definitely on.

P.S.: in case you wondered what the last beer was Augustiner launched 38 years ago: it was their Hefeweizen.