Sébastien Dué founded an artisanal brewery unlike any other: its beers all display the label “alcohol-free”. “To make alcohol-free beer, you have to act on the temperature of the water,” explains the man who runs the Edmond brewery with his partner Émilie Yana. He starts brewing his girlfriend and the tank begins to fill. “The temperature is quite high compared to normal brewing,” he says. As long as you are familiar with the world of brewing, it's as stupid as it is. Because all the rest of the process corresponds to the manufacture of an ordinary beer: addition of crushed malt, hops, filtering, sending in a fermentation tank… Until this fateful step: the addition of the yeast.
“In a normal beer, the yeasts feed on the sugar to produce alcohol,” explains our craftsman in a white coat, showing the package he is holding in his hand, “but this yeast will only use certain sugars and will therefore deliver much less alcohol. »He opens the packaging and pours its contents into the fermentation tank. "We will wait a week and then we will bottle it," he concludes.
But will we really get a beer devoid of all traces of alcohol? “There will be a little bit”, admits Sébastien Dué before showing the inscription “Less than 0.5% alc. flight. In small print on the label. On his telephone screen, he reads the decree of March 31, 1992 concerning beers: “The name“ alcohol-free beer ”is reserved for beer which has an acquired alcoholic strength by volume of less than or equal to 1.2% by volume, at following dealcoholization or the start of fermentation ”. “To comply with this law, we are obliged to check the alcohol level of our beers before marketing,” comments Sébastien Dué. After passing through a small machine called an ebulliometer, we obtain an estimate (to within 0.1% of the volume) of the alcoholic strength of the beer: “Here, we are at 0.2% vol”,announces the brewer. Either well below the volume advertised on the label and well below, also the maximum imposed by law.
More than 150 times less alcohol than in the original beer
To see even more clearly, we contacted Maxime Costilhes, general delegate of the Brasseurs de France interprofessional organization, and we asked him a few questions from the supermarket shelf.
"Consumed in excess or at times, this beer is not recommended," he comments, when shown a bottle of Heineken.
Would the solution be to seek on the side of Heineken 0.0, “alcohol-free”, as the label specifies?
“Like any alcohol-free product in France, this product contains less than 1.2% vol.
The big brewers have succeeded in developing “0.0” beers like these, that is to say with less than 0.1% alcohol ”.
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Heineken 0.0 specifies on its label that it contains 0.03% alcohol.
This alcohol-free beer therefore always contains alcohol.
But to reach the level of an ordinary Heineken bottle, it would be necessary to consume ... 166 bottles.
If you are looking for drunkenness, go your way!
If, on the other hand, in the evening, you want to drink something similar to regular beer but be sure that you can take the wheel home, or if you are pregnant, non-alcoholic beer may be the solution.
But is she really deluding yourself?
So let's go for a blind test with a fine palate ...
A surprise at the tasting
"At sight, I will not be able to determine if I am dealing with beers with or without alcohol", admits Daniela Lavendez, owner of the excellent restaurant Saint-Sébastien, in Paris, in front of four glasses filled with a blond liquid. and sparkling. She tastes them blindfolded… "On the face of it, you could say yes, I'm dealing with a beer," she said of the Kronenbourg non-alcoholic beer. And when tasting, there is even a pretty nice touch of honey ”. La Leffe without alcohol? “It foams a lot more in the mouth than the previous one, but I couldn't say that the taste is that of a beer”.
The next beer is a trap: it's regular Heineken, 5% alcohol.
“There are notes of tropical fruits.
This exotic side bothers me a bit.
»Explains our tester.
And the Heineken 0.0?
“It is rather pleasant on the nose.
»In the end, it is the alcohol-free Kronenbourg, the cheapest of all the beers tasted (€ 1.96 per liter and 0.4% alcohol) which wins the ranking.
It is followed by Leffe 0.0 (2.63 euros per liter and less than 0.05% alcohol) and Heineken 0.0 (2.50 euros per liter and less than 0.03%).
Surprise: it is the ordinary Heineken beer (2.54 euros per liter) that comes last.
The conclusion seems simple ... If you want to enjoy a beer without the possible harmful effects, non-alcoholic beer does the job perfectly.
Now it's up to everyone to do their own test.
