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.
October 30-November 1, 2009 – Zinfandel Winemaking Experience
June 24, 2009 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Red Wine, Tips, Wine & Beer Styles, Wine Tours
Make your own wine from Berry to Bottle with First Crush winemaking experience in Paso Robles.
This complete winemaking experience includes accommodations, local transportation, welcome reception, breakfast and lunch in the vineyard, winemaker dinner and Halloween party at Pomar Junction Vineyard & Winery, two cases of your own custom-made, privately labeled Zinfandel wine, and more.
Visit http://www.firstcrushwinemaking.com/ for pricing and details.
Reservations required.
Registration deadline: September 25, 2009. (805) 434-2772
October 23-25, 2009 – Cabernet Sauvignon Winemaking Experience
June 24, 2009 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Red Wine, Wine & Beer Styles, Wine Tours
Make your own wine from Berry to Bottle with First Crush winemaking experience in Paso Robles.
This complete winemaking experience includes accommodations, local transportation, welcome reception, breakfast and lunch in the vineyard, winemaker dinner at Mitchella Winery, two cases of your own custom-made, privately labeled Cabernet Sauvignon wine, and more.
Visit http://www.firstcrushwinemaking.com/ for pricing and details.
Reservations required.
Registration deadline: September 18, 2009. (805) 434-2772
October 9-11, 2009 – Syrah Winemaking Experience
June 24, 2009 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Red Wine, Tips, Wine & Beer Styles, Wine Tours
Make your own wine from Berry to Bottle with First Crush winemaking experience in Paso Robles.
The complete winemaking experience includes accommodations, local transportation, welcome reception, breakfast and lunch in the vineyard, a winemaker dinner at Sharp’s Hill Vineyard & Winery, two cases of your own custom-made, privately labeled Syrah wine, and more.
Visit http://www.firstcrushwinemaking.com/ for pricing and details. Reservations required.
Registration deadline: September 4, 2009. (805) 434-2772
How To Make Champagne Using Cheap White Wine
June 19, 2009 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Featured, Sparkling Wine, Tips, Videos, White Wine
Came across this short little video on YouTube showing how to make champagne using cheap white wine and a soda streamer. Enjoy!
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”
Wine Making Using Household Items
January 2, 2009 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Fruit Wine, Recipes, Tips, Videos, wine
Here’s another interesting video that I found on YouTube that shows you how to make wine using store bought grape juice.
This type of wine would probably fall under the “Baby Duck” category – easy to drink and it’ll give you a good buzz, but not something that’s going to win any awards.
If you make this wine let me know how it turns out!
- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”
How To Make Wine From Coca Cola
January 2, 2009 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Recipes, Tips, Videos, wine
Have you ever considered making wine from Coca Cola?
I can’t really say I had … at any point in time, but I came across this video on YouTube and it peaked my interest.
See for your selfL
Sounds tempting until you see what happens when he tastes his wine “experiment” …
So what do you think? Something you’d try?
- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”
Making Correct Food And Wine Pairings
November 1, 2008 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Fruit Wine, White Wine, wine
The selection of appropriate food and wine pairings was at one point an art practiced only by the gourmand, the Maitre d’ or the sommelier at your favorite expensive restaurant. Today the choices of wine in the grocery and wine stores across the world are incredible. It is in fact possible to make food and wine pairings using almost any good quality wine and well prepared food. However, many folks still regard it as important to only combine appropriate wines with certain foods.
Food Selections With Red Wine
Red Fruit Wines is said to enhance the flavors of the food and in most cases provide a set of supporting not overpowering tastes to your meal. Red wines are described in terms of body, depth of color, smoothness and mix of tastes and tannins. Cabernets and merlots are red wines that should not bite when they go down and should be soothing to the palette. It is for these reasons that the traditionalists favored food and wine pairings that combined these red wines with red meats such as beef, and exotics such as ostrich and emus. Other red wines that are usually paired in this way are varietals from Spain, such as the Rioja and the red Bordeaux’s from France and some of the Tignanellos from the Tuscany region in Italy. Of course not all red wines should be thought of in this way.
There are many red wines today that are more sweet or lighter in nature. Food and wine pairings for Texas red, Beaujolais Nouveau or a Valpolicella can be extended to almost anything you eat. These wines are often drunk a little chilled and can add to any meal. Roses can also be included in this category and outstanding food and wine pairings with a good Rose are easy.
The other most frequently drunk red Fruit Wine in Italy is the Chianti. It has been said that the right Chianti can be paired with almost any food and it is truly hard to argue that there is food and wine pairing that is wrong for good Chianti. However, there should be a warning on the label, bad Chianti ranks among the worst things anyone can imbibe. If you are serving up a grand meal make sure that you choose a good Chianti or the occasion will be a real disaster.
Food Selections With White Wine
Food and wine pairings for white wines and Liqueurs are traditionally very broad. Often lighter and crisper in taste many white wines can be used at all stages of a meal, depending on your palette and taste. Common main course food and wine pairings for white wine include Chardonnays with fish, poultry and roast pork. As deserts are offered sweeter desert wines such as a Sauterne may be offered. In fact, as with red wines there are perhaps no food and wine pairings that are bad if good choices are made. Wines such as Fume Blanc, or Cabernet Blanc or even a good Chablis or German wine can be served with any food. Who is to say what is right and wrong, as long as the particular food and wine pairing provides a pleasant eating experience.
