How Are Nonalcoholic Beer and Wine Made?
March 9, 2010 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Ask The Wine Making Guy, Tips, Wine & Beer Styles
I was recently asked this questions via my blog and found this great article that explains the process.
Certainly worth reading. 
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—a nonalcoholic (or dealcoholized, as winemakers call it) brew.
But do nonalcoholic beers and wines taste the same as alcoholic ones? Almost. Most of the flavor of real beer and wine comes from the grain or grapes, plus flavor compounds from the fermentation and aging process. Nonalcoholic beers and wines still have all that. Alcohol in the real stuff contributes mouthfeel and a small amount of flavor. It actually makes wine taste sweeter, says Jeff Meier, vice president of winemaking for J. Lohr Vineyards & Wines, which makes Ariel nonalcoholic wines. This means that a dealcoholized wine needs about 2.5 percent residual sugar content to best match a completely dry (no residual sugar) alcoholic wine.
“Nonalcoholic” beverages still contain some alcohol, because it’s difficult and prohibitively expensive to get every single bit of it out. In order to be called nonalcoholic under federal laws, a beverage can contain up to half a percent of alcohol by volume. (Something with no alcohol at all is called alcohol-free.) So people who are forbidden to drink alcohol, like devout Muslims, can’t partake in so-called nonalcoholic beer and wine. Nor can people under the age of 21, according to the law. It takes about 10 nonalcoholic malt beverages to equal the alcohol in one American-style lager, says George Reisch, a veteran brewer with Anheuser-Busch and the former brewmaster of O’Doul’s.
One last point, about carbonation: When making nonalcoholic sparkling wine, producers do a secondary fermentation just like they do with regular sparkling wine. But the alcohol it produces is less than .5 percent, so the wine is still considered nonalcoholic. As for the carbonation in beer, like in most alcoholic beer, it’s “forced” with a charge of carbon dioxide at the brewery.
A former editorial intern at CHOW, Jason Horn is now an online editorial specialist at travel website VisitSouth.com in Birmingham, Alabama. He loves sweet tea and barbecue, but pines constantly for a San Francisco burrito. Or sushi.
A Quick & Easy Wine Storage Solution
July 13, 2009 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Ask The Wine Making Guy
I received an email last week from a gentleman who wanted to know if it would be alright to use a wine bottle box as a wine rack.
I figured why not?
On the way home from the movie on Friday night “The Boss” and I stopped in at one the local wine stores we shop at to pick up some “supplies” for a BBQ we were hosting on Saturday night.
I noticed on the way out that there were some empty boxes lying by the door so I asked the cashier if I could have them. He gave me that kind of look like “Dude – that’s what they’re there for – duh!” but instead said “Sure – no problem”.
I quickly snapped up all four boxes and brought them home. “The Boss” thought I was nuts at first but then quickly agreed it was a good idea once I explained why I grabbed them.
Empty wine bottle box
After brought them home I filled a box with 12 bottles of the Napa Valley Stags Leap Merlot we had bottled last week with our friend Mark.
Add your bottles to the box upright
I then turned the box on its side pulling the lid pieces to the side securing the top lid with a paper clip.
The turn the box on its side
I then stepped back to have a look at the setup and decided it was good.
It does the job and didn’t cost me a penny!
Here are some suggestions if you decide to go this route:
- If you buy new wine bottles then keep the case they came in to use for storage.
- If you’re using recycled wine bottles then you can easily pick empty wine boxes from wherever you buy commercial wine – after all they’re going to be thrown out anyways. Some places have them out in the open, while others just need to be asked.
- If all you’re going to do is use the boxes as a wine rack then consider using scissors or a box cutter to remove the lid sections.
- To keep the integrity of the box I’d remove bottles from the top row first then work your way down.
- I personally wouldn’t stack these on top of each other as you’ll break some bottles in the lower boxes as you remove them to drink your wine.
- Remember to store your wine in a cool dark place where the temperature is consistent!
If you decide to try this out (or already have) and have some thoughts or comments on it please reply to this email and let me know about them.
Even better, send me some pictures you don’t mind me showing the rest of the group!
Can I Use a Plastic Water Jug As A Secondary?
June 19, 2009 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Ask The Wine Making Guy, Equipment
Here’s a very interesting question I received via my blog this week:
“Can I use the plastic 5-gallon carboys that I have water delivered in for starting the secondary fermentation? What I would like to do is start some strawberry and blueberry wine when the fruits are in season – which is when we are here in Maine.
I would like to get the secondary fermentation started here and then take the carboys home where I can finish the process and bottle it. My concern is if these water bottles will leave a taste in the wine.”
Here’s how I answered:
Great question!
As long as the water bottle is made of PET then you should be good to go.
I actually own a plastic carboy and there’s no issue with a plastic taste being transferred. I wrote an article about it on my blog called “Winemaking Designer Carboys” if you’re interested.
I’m curious what you think about using plastic vs. glass carboys and so reply to this blog post and let me know!
Follow Up Warning To Increasing The Alcohol Level In Your Wine
April 9, 2009 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Ask The Wine Making Guy, Tips
I received a very insightful reponse to my most recent post on increasing the alcohol level in your wine, which I thought I should share with you all as there is a “darker side” to it that you should be aware of!
Mark writes:
“I have a couple comments on your blog post. First of all, you should add a caution statement about adding sugar into fermenting wine. It needs to be added very slowly. The first time I did this, I dumped about 4 lbs of sugar into my 6 gallon primary while it was still actively fermenting. WOW what a mess. It foamed up like crazy and overflowed the primary bucket and went all over the floor. Lesson learned.
The next point is that I have found that adding extra sugar at the beginning has much the same affect if all you want is about 15% alcohol. If you start with a brix of about 30-32 I usually end up with at least 15% alcohol without having to add sugar a second time.
Lastly, there may be a consideration on the type of yeast you use. Some yeasts will burn themselves out and drown in the alcohol when it gets up around 13-14%. I have not experimented much with this but I do know that Cote des Blancs has a good tolorance for higher alcohol content.
As far as the taste is concerned, you may find that the final RS needs to be higher in the bottled wine if the alcohol content is higher to achieve the same taste as you’d have with a lower alcohol content. That has been my experience anyway.
I hope this information helps.- Mark”
Thanks Mark – certainly worth mentioning to everyone!
- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”
How Can I Increase The Alcohol Content?
April 6, 2009 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Ask The Wine Making Guy, Fruit Wine, Tips, White Wine, Wine Kits, wine
I received an email the other day asking what kind of sugar was needed to increase the alcohol content of a typical wine to 13 or 14% and I thought this would make a great blog post!
So if you’re interested in learning how you can increase the alcohol content of your wine read on!
What you’ll want to use is corn sugar, which you can buy from your local wine making supply shop.
Incidentally – if you’re into making your own beer you can use it also to carbonate your beer in the bottle (so it has multiple uses).
To increase your alcohol level you typically would do this as part of the primary fermentation and it is called “chaptalization” and is a common practice when making port or other fortified wines to increase the alcohol content.
Basically you let your primary fermentation happen and once the S.G. reduces to the point when you would rack to your secondary you add the sugar to your wine must (in the primary) so that you can reenergize the yeast to produce more alcohol (typically adds another 3 or 4 %).
So in essence you are doing your primary fermentation twice before you transfer your wine must to your secondary.
I followed this procedure when I made a chocolate raspberry port kit from Winexpert and I can tell you it definitely works.
To help you all further I tracked down some online instructions from Winexpert for one of their port kits and this should point you in the right direction if you wanted to give it a try.
Wineexpert Downloadable Wine Kit Instructions:
Try it and let me know how it goes!
- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”
P.S. To find out how you can easily calculate the alcohol of your wine read “Easiest Way To Calculate The Alcohol Content Of Your Wine”
P.S.S. He was also curious if the extra alcohol affected the taste and if so how. Would love to hear your comments on this!
P.S.S.S. Be sure to read the follow up post “Follow Up Warning To Increasing The Alcohol Level In Your Wine“
How To Make Wine: The Essential Ingredients Explained
January 4, 2009 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Ask The Wine Making Guy, Tips, Videos, Wine Kits
I’ve received numerous requests from people asking to explain what the main ingredients/chemicals used in wine making are and why they’re used.
Here’s a quick video I shot today that will give you some good insight into why we use things like:
- Bentonite
- Potassium Metabisulphite
- Potassium Sorbate
- Isinglass
- Yeast Nutrient
- Pectic Enzyme
- Acid Blend
- Campden Tablets
- Sanitol
So if you’ve always wanted to know what each was used for check out the video below!
- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”
Can You Use RO Water in Wine Making?
December 1, 2008 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Ask The Wine Making Guy, Tips
I have a wine making friend and colleague (Greg) who I know through a local business group. He owns a local environmental company (Douglas Environmental Solutions) and he specializes in mold remediation as well as water quality.
At one of our meetings we discussed the use of reverse osmossis (RO) water for wine making as he makes wine himself and has access to this kind of water.
I’ve heard a lot of different opinions on water but here’s the general consensus. You could use tap water with wine kits but you risk having a chlorine taste in your wine. One thing you could do is let your water sit for 24 hours so the chlorine evaporates but then again you need to leave this open to the air so bugs could get in it. You could also filter your water but that’s a pain in the butt too. The best type of water to use is clean spring water as it has just enough trace elements in it that the yeast can use them as food.
The problem with RO treated water is that it’s “dead” so the yeast won’t have access to some minerals to act as food. I recently read that if you used RO or distilled water you could bolster the water with yeast nutrient so technically could use it.
You could use RO water to rinse your equipment (if you wanted to find a good use for the water) as RO limits adding bacteria or germs to the equipment after you’ve cleaned and sterilized it.
Here’s a good article that I found for you that can explain it in further details:
http://www.grapestompers.com/articles/winemaking_water.htm
Greg asked the author of the above article at GrapeStompers.com to clarify his position on water used in wine making and here’s what he said:
Using RO or distilled water to dilute a concentrate makes real sense to me as you are replacing what was removed. I don’t recall ever saying to add minerals to wine must as a general practice. I suspect the effect of using tap water is small unless your water is heavily mineralized with calcium.
Calcium can precipitate out tannins affecting taste and color. For example, if calcium carbonate is used to remove acid in grape must or wine, a lot of color and other flavors go down with the precipitate. This is just like that soap scum you get around bathtubs in hard water areas and with real soap. Using un mineralized water makes sense, but I wouldn’t pay the shipping costs, just go to your local supermarket and get ozonized RO. I don’t know if chlorine (or now chloramines) will have any effect, as there is so much else that is oxidizable in the must, it will probably not affect the yeast.
BTW the best way to reduce acid and not affect the wine is to use potassium bicarbonate and then chill the wine to remove the potassium bitartrate as crystals (wine stone).
There are plenty of minerals (potassium, etc) in the grape juice to supply the yeast and the weak acids (tartaric and malic) buffer the pH, so the yeast stay within their desired pH range for fermentation.
With meads, these minerals are not present and pH control becomes more difficult as there are no weak acids in sugar or honey and leads often to stuck fermentations as the pH drops out of the operating range. In this case, adding potassium or (less desirable) sodium carbonate periodically during the fermentation to maintain a pH around 4 or above will cause the fermentation to finish in the same time range as wine. Beer also benefits from minerals as this can affect the after taste (dry, bitter, round, etc), but there are plenty of weak acids in most beer worts.
So I guess using RO water is that bad after all …
What type of water do you use in your wine making and what’s your opinion on the subject?
Leave your comments below!
- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”
How Do You Clean Your Wine Making Equipment?
November 1, 2008 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Ask The Wine Making Guy, Equipment, Tips
I was asked the other day how I clean my wine making equipment so I thought this would be a good topic for my “question of the week” as I’m sure there are others curious as well. So here’s what I do to keep the germs off my winemaking gear:
I call it the “Double Whammy”!
Step 1 – Pink Solution (Sani Brew)
It’s comes as chlorinated pink powder that you dissolve 3.5 g per litre of cold water (5 tsp. per gal). Soak stained equipment up to 48 hours. Rinse thoroughly with hot water. Because it’s a chlorine product you want to be careful with stainless steel equipment and you’ll also want to make sure you rinse really well. I like soaking my wine and beer bottles in it for several days to clean all the “gunge” out of them, especially if they’re used. It’s also great for removing stains from your equipment (especially your primary).
Step 2 – MetaBisulphite spray down.
This is a good sanitizer as well but doesn’t clean like in step one hence why I do both. I use a spray bottle like the one below as it really helps get you good coverage. The nice thing about the MetaBisulphite solution is that it is reusable for up to a month. Note that it has a strong sulphur smell so use it in a well ventilated area so you don’t irritate your lungs. I typically rinse my equipment after using it but some people just let their equipment drip dry as it won’t be a bad thing if it gets into your wine as it will help prevent oxidization.
Anyhoo, that’s basically what I do to clean my equipment.
Oh … one thing you might want to do is go to your hardware store and invest in a short garden hose that you can attach to a tap as this’ll help you clean your primary and secondary. I was able to pick one up that was about 6 feet long with one end open and the other with the tap connector. I’ve used it for years and it makes things really easy. Make sure that you clean this out first (i.e. in step 1) so that you clean out any bugs that might be lurking in it as well.
If you’re interested in some more details on how to clean your equipment here are two good resources for you:
- http://www.clickabrew.com/cn-0903.html (scroll down the page and look for “Cleaning & Sanitising your Winemaking Equipment”
- http://www.eckraus.com/Cleaners_-and-_Sanitizers.html (an online store where you can buy some of the sanitizers)
- http://www.grapestompers.com/sanitation.asp (lot’s of great detail here)
If you have any interesting cleaning methods please share below!
- Scott
Do You Have A Quick Apple Cider Recipe?
September 17, 2008 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Ask The Wine Making Guy, Recipes, Tips
Peter, one of my loyal wine making participants from the UK sent me this message today about getting a recipe for apple cider and I thought it would make for a great “Question of the Week”. Enjoy!
Hi Scott
Hows are things? You dont happen to have a easy recipe for cider?
I have aquired about 30 to 40 pound of apples but not sure of the best way to make a gallon of cider or more if i can, out of the apples.
Hope to here from you soon,
Good health
Peter
I tracked down this recipe online for him that sounded tasty:
APPLE CIDER
Makes 1 Gallon — for larger quantities, multiply everything except the yeast, which is sufficient up to 5 gallons.
14-16 lbs Apples (or 1 gallon of juice)
1/2 cup Dextrose
1/2 tsp Pectic Enzyme
1/2 tsp Andovin Super Nutrient
1 Campden Tablet (crushed)
1 pkg Lalvin EC-1118 Wine Yeast
Cut apples into smaller pieces, which will help in juice extraction. Crush, press, and add juice to primary fermenter with all ingredients except wine yeast. Cover primary.
Pressing: if a fruit press is not available, add fruit to a nylon straining bag. Strain out juice, and when finished, tie the bag up & add it to the primary fermenter as well.
After 24 hours, strain the juice from the pulp, & discard straining bag. Add yeast.
Rack to secondary carboy after SG drops below 1.010. Rack again when fermentation is complete (SG below 0.999), or in 3 weeks — whichever is later.
Fining & Stablilizing: If you are NOT going to sparkle your cider, you should add 1/2 tsp of Potassium Sorbate per gallon to stabilize the yeast. After this is done, you’ll be able to sweeten your cider to your liking. A clarifier may also be added.
Racking: Any further racking should be done with the addition of 1 (crushed) Campden tablet per gallon.
Sparkling Cider: When ready to bottle, add 1/4 cup dissolved table sugar PER GALLON to an empty pail. Syphon the cider into the pail, give a quick stir, and bottle into beer bottles (or pop bottles, or Champagne bottles), and cap accordingly.
Allow to sit 4 weeks before sampling. Age in a cool, dark place.
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The original can be found at: http://www.homecraft.on.ca/recipes/applecider.htm
I should also mention that there is also an Apple Cider recipe in The Winemaker’s Recipe HandbooK as well. It is recipe number #4 on page 3.
If you end up making the recipe please let me know how it turns out!
- Scott
Can You Put Hot Water In Wine Bottles?
September 11, 2008 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Ask The Wine Making Guy, Equipment
Here’s a question I received the other day that I found very interesting and am interested to hear how you would respond:
Hoping you can help me. I’ve been making grape juice for quite some time and have used your regular mason jars to store the juice and poured directly in the jar while hot then sealed with the jar lid.
I would like to store the juice in some type of wine bottle using cork or bartop finish. My question is, will I have an issue pouring hot grape juice in the wine bottle then use the cork or bartop finish to seal it. Usually when I pour the grape juice in the mason jar I’ll hear the pop sound of the lid then I know the bottle is sealed and can be preserved.
I hope I’ve made sense.
Thanks,
M.
My understanding is that carboys and wine bottles aren’t tempered and therefore not heat resistant. This means that the glass can potentially crack or shatter (and hurt anyone close by) when hot water is added to them.
I’ve also mentioned in earlier posts that you can now buy clear plastic carboys (see my “Winemaking Designer Carboys” post) and these you definitely need to be careful that you don’t add boiling water to them to clean them out.
Here’s proof from one of my readers:
So what do you think? Would you add hot water/juice to your wine bottles or carboy?
I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are so please leave a comment!
- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”
