The engineering of non-alcoholic spirits

Remove alcohol from a spirit and you change the way it smells, tastes and feels. Ethanol carries aroma, contributes warmth and texture and helps give a spirit persistence in the mouth. Recreating those qualities without it is a complex production challenge. In a recent WSET webinar, Hendrik Giersiepen, R&D Director at Casa Lumbre, explored how producers are approaching that challenge, drawing on his work developing the non-alcoholic blue agave spirit Almave. From capturing aroma and rebuilding mouthfeel to keeping the finished liquid microbiologically stable, the absence of alcohol has implications at almost every stage of production. Non-alcoholic spirits are still finding their feet Available market data on non-alcoholic spirits is, in Giersiepen's words, “blurry” and heavily focused on Western markets. The category is also much younger than its beer and wine counterparts. Alcohol-free beer has had decades to develop. Germany's first major non-alcoholic beer was launched in 1979, mea

by WSETglobal · source ↗