Creating an alcohol-free product sounds like it should be easy: you get your drink, take the alcohol out, and you’re left with an alcohol-free drink.
But the reality is much more complicated. Alcohol has a huge role to play in flavor. It contributes to how flavor is delivered; the mouthfeel; and the stability of the final beverages (instability leading to taste changes or inconsistencies).
While many brands might claim their flavor is top notch, the reality is that it’s a hugely difficult technical journey that many drinks developers underestimate...
Flavor first
Flavor is the top driver of drinks purchases. And, in alcohol-free, that’s an even bigger task: because people have a very clear idea what they think a drink should taste like.
“People are very used to a certain profile, they know what their beloved products look like, so we need to transfer those signatures into non-alcoholic beverages,” said Claudia Geyer from Solos, speaking at drinktec in Munich last week.
Headquartered in Germany, the company has spent more than a decade developing its patented Aroma Capture Technology for alcohol-free drinks.
“The other thing that is very interesting from a technical point of view is that consumers want transparency. They want to have clean label, naturally derived products, and transparency on what they are consuming.”
So keeping alcohol-free drinks natural, rather than adding synthetic ingredients, is crucial.
Consumers, continued Geyer, also want authenticity: whether that’s in the craftmanship used to create the beverage or the branding and messaging used.
Case by case basis
Deciding how to best drive flavor forward in alcohol-free beverages is tricky because there are now an increasing number of methods for delcoholization.
There’s a clear split between two schools of thought: firstly to create an alcoholic product then remove the alcohol; and secondly to prevent alcohol from being created in the first place.
Within these two approaches there are many different methods and pros and cons; and each may be better suited to one type of beverage or intended end product than another.
Alcohol-free wine, for example, might be created by vacuum distillation, spinning cone column, or reverse osmosis or membrane systems.
In beer, dealcoholization, steam distillation, reverse osmosis or preventing or limiting fermentation are common methods used.
“With alcohol free beer, the sensory profiles you get and sensory attributes are very much linked to the process you use to create these beers,” explained Breeze Outhwaite, head of applications at Totally Natural Solutions, a business acquired by ADM recently.
“They are all linked with sensory defects or off-notes which is concerning to brewers. For example, these beers will lack ethanol and thus lack mouthfeel.”
The company’s solution has been to develop natural hop extracts and hop oils that can help bring zero alcohol beers back up to their full sensory potential.
“You can use our hop products to re-introduce that mouthfeel in a beer natural way; or to neutralize wort off-notes associated with these processing methods,” explained Outhwaite.
“We also of course also have aroma and bittering products on top so we can bring all of this together to uplift and enhance the zero alcohol beer.”
Process tech
Meanwhile, Solos’ technology is about adjusting the process of creating an alcohol-free wine: harvesting the aromas during vacuum distillation and then adding them back in to the final product.
The tech can be used across wine, beer and spirits.
But what’s important - and exciting - is that flavor is still an area of development for alcohol-free beverages.
While flavor of alcohol-free products have undoubtedly improved drastically over the last few years, it’s important to remember that flavor is a complex and complicated dimension that will keep changing as the alcohol-free tech develops and new hybrid or category-blurring products appear on the market.
“Of course, we have to keep learning,” said Claudia Geyer of Solos. “R&D is always a constant process of continuous reflection on what you know and what you don’t know.”
Tools such as sensory mapping and AI can help drive flavor development; while Geyer believes sustainability will continue to drive the direction of innovation.
But most important, she says, is to think creatively about how alcohol-free drinks are developed.
“I’d like to encourage developers to collaborate with different disciplines,” she said. “Complexity is not just in the flavor world: we have to get different disciplines together because everyone knows something. If we combine different know-hows – like chefs, or other people doing sensory work – this is going to be the fountain of new ideas.”