Most breweries use one of just a few basic options for production, each of which comes with its own set of considerations. There’s dealcoholization through evaporation, aka vacuum distillation, in which beer is heated and distilled to remove the ethanol. Dealcoholization via reverse osmosis, meanwhile, uses membranes to separate the alcohol from the rest of the liquid. The former method can strip some desirable flavor compounds, and both options are a financial stretch for smaller craft breweries.
Emphasis on the last line. So yeah it does add some significant cost. Which is why they resort to cold-contact brewing which can result in worty/bready taste as the article notes. So if you want good NA beer yeah, it’s more expensive probably because they’re using all the same ingredients and then doing the extra process. Obviously there won’t be the alcohol tax though.
Even if made through the same process you aren’t paying the alcohol tax at the till so it should be a fair bit cheaper.
Unless it’s inherintly difficult to remove the alcohol which I can’t see since alcohol evaporates pretty easily but I’m no expert or a brewer.
From the article:
Emphasis on the last line. So yeah it does add some significant cost. Which is why they resort to cold-contact brewing which can result in worty/bready taste as the article notes. So if you want good NA beer yeah, it’s more expensive probably because they’re using all the same ingredients and then doing the extra process. Obviously there won’t be the alcohol tax though.
My favourite is Erdinger 0%, and it does taste significantly sweeter and breadier than the alcoholic counterpart.
Oh. I didn’t think of that. I Germany the tax for beer is just 5% so it wouldn’t change that much.
In Canada I think it’s somewhere between 20-30%