Many people start the new year with the resolution not to drink alcohol for the first month of the year. The motivation behind 'Dry January' is very personal. Some people feel that they have enjoyed too much good food and all kinds of drinks in December. Other people want to stimulate their sporting life more. Also in January new diets are started and they start with a clean up of the body.
Five years ago, the choice for alcohol-free was still very limited. Most non-alcoholic or low-alcohol beers were not impressive in taste. Thanks to new technologies, the non-alcoholic beers have improved a lot in smell and taste. The low-alcohol beers have also been greatly improved because yeasts are now available that ferment only up to 0.3% alcohol. By using these yeasts you still retain the typical smell of a fully brewed beer. Something that was not possible years ago and because of that you mainly had sweet malty smells and flavors in these products.
We have two low-alcohol variants in our portfolio. Both are fermented with special beer yeasts that ferment no further than 0.3%. In the past we also experimented with 0.0%, so without fermentation, but we were not satisfied with the result. We missed the beautiful fermentation smells in that beer and it also lacked mouthfeel. It felt very thin.
This was the deciding factor for us to opt for low alcohol with 0.3% as a maximum. In practice, our alcohol percentage is around 0.2% alc. This is very low. If you drink orange juice and the pack is open for a few days, you also get a fermentation process in your juice. After a few days, your juice can also contain 0.2% alc, something that people often don't realize.
We have been looking for the right idea for a low-alcohol beer for a long time. Firstly, the product had to be very distinctive in smell and taste. We didn't want to brew a copy of other beers that were already on the market. So a low-alcohol IPA was not an option, there were already enough.
After a lot of testing with all kinds of ingredients, we came up with two great ideas. We wanted to brew a beer with cherries. This beer is very accessible in taste and very beautiful to see in the glass.
The second low-alcohol beer is golden blond in color and super fresh in taste. Brewed with lemon juice and seasoned with lemongrass and ginger! A real thirst quencher. Also a beer that you can drink well with spicy food such as Eastern cuisine!
Cheers to Dry January!
