Non-alcoholic beer—A new industrial process

This paper studies a new industrial process for producing non-alcoholic beer with a corrected natural flavour profile. The aroma compounds are obtained by pervaporation of the original beer. The operating conditions of this unit, using polyoctylmethylsiloxane/polyetherimide (POMS/PEI) composite membranes, are investigated. High permeation temperature and low feed flowrate are the most effective for maximizing the permeation flux and the equilibrium of the flavour profile. The aroma depleted beer stream is then added to the feed stream of an industrial unit of spinning cone column distillation for dealcoholization. In this unit, the beverage contacts counter-currently with a water vapour stream that strips the ethanol and other volatile aroma compounds from beer. After dealcoholization, the beer is blended with the extracted aroma compounds and with a fraction of original beer to achieve a non-alcoholic beer (ethanol lower than 0.5 vol.%) with a good flavour profile. This new industrial process proved to originate a dealcoholized beer with a taste very close to the original one.

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► New process for producing high-quality non-alcoholic beer.
► Pervaporation extracts beer aroma compounds before dealcoholization.
► Spinning cone column distillation promotes the beer dealcoholization.
► Pervaporated aroma compounds are added to the dealcoholized beer.
► The flavour profile of the final product is very similar to the original one.