Quezi

Nonalcoholic beer looks like the real thing. Plindberg photo. CC-BY.

Nonalcoholic beer, sometimes known as near beer, is made in the same way as the regular beer is, but after it has been brewed the alcohol is distilled off. Bottlers typically heat the beer at a relatively low temperature under low air pressure, so the alcohol can be removed without “cooking” the beer. Because alcohol boils (turns to gas) at a lower temperature than does water, the alcohol’s removal doesn’t destroy what remains. (A similar process is used to make some types of nonalcoholic wine.) It is also possible to use an osmosis process to filter out the alcohol.

However, no process can remove all the alcohol. Under U.S. federal law, beer that has less than 0.5 percent alcohol is not treated as an alcoholic beverage and can be labeled as nonalcoholic, so nonalcoholic beers typically have an alcohol content of around 0.4 percent, enough to get the nonalcoholic label and allow for a margin of error.

That’s not a lot of alcohol — in fact, studies have found that natural juices often have a similar alcohol content, such as from 0.2 to 0.4 percent for regular orange juice, as a small amount of fermentation occurs naturally. A 200-pound male who would require five beers (typically having 4 percent alcoholic content) over the course of an hour to become too intoxicated to drive legally (the actual amount varies according to local laws and the person’s metabolism) would require 50 bottles of near beer to accomplish the same thing — a practical impossibility. So for all practical purposes, near beer, like orange juice, is not intoxicating.

Laws on sales to minors vary from country to country, and from state to state within the United States, so it can legally be purchased by minors in some areas but not others. Localities that have outlawed nonalcoholic beer for minors have done so on the grounds that they encourage the drinking of the “real thing” by minors and/or provide a subtle way of avoiding laws that prevent advertising alcoholic beverages to minors.

Although nonalcoholic beer isn’t intoxicating, some experts advise that they be avoided by teetotaling alcoholics, who may be tempted by experiencing the appearance, flavor and social aspects of near bear to start using the alcoholic variety. And because it is made from an alcoholic beverage, near bear also is frowned on by some religions that take a firm stand against the consumption of alcohol.