Non-alcoholic beer: Researchers have developed one that tastes exactly like the regular

Now, researchers have found a way to brew non-alcoholic beer that tastes just like regular beer. Even better, the method is far more sustainable than the existing brewing techniques. 

The study was published in 'Nature Biotechnology'. Even though sales of non-alcoholic beer have risen substantially in Denmark and Europe in the last couple of years, there are still many people that won't follow the healthy trend because they find the taste not to be quite as good as that of regular beers. 

Some people find the taste to be flat and watery and this has a natural explanation, according to Sotirios Kampranis, a Professor at the University of Copenhagen. "What non-alcoholic beer lacks is the aroma from hops. 

When you remove the alcohol from the beer, for example by heating it up, you also kill the aroma that comes from hops. Other methods for making alcohol-free beer by minimizing fermentation also lead to poor aroma because alcohol is needed for hops to pass their unique flavour to the beer," he said. 

But now, Kampranis and his colleague Simon Dusseaux - both founders of the biotech company EvodiaBio - have cracked the code of how to make non-alcoholic beer that is full of hop aroma. 

"After years of research, we have found a way to produce a group of small molecules called monoterpenoids, which provide the hoppy-flavour, and then add them to the beer at the end of the brewing process to give it back its lost flavour. No one has been able to do this before, so it's a game changer for non-alcoholic beer," said Sotirios Kampranis.