What are the differences between alcohol-free beer and 0.0 beer?

Both on store shelves and in bars, we’re used to seeing alcohol-free and 0.0 beer. We turn to them when we have to drive or simply prefer to stay sober, but do we know the difference between these terms? There is one, according to Royal Decree 678/2016 of 16 December, which approves the quality standard for beer and malt beverages. Under this law, for a beer to be labeled “alcohol-free”, its alcohol content must be below 1%.

In the case of 0.0 beer, there is no specific regulation that defines it, but the industry classifies these beers as those with less than 0.05% alcohol, since if this limit is exceeded, rounding would take us to 0.1%. And was it really necessary to create two categories for such a small difference? The truth is yes, because, as the OCU (Consumers and Users Organization) reminds us, drinking two-thirds of a non-alcoholic beer is equivalent to the same volume of alcohol as a regular small draft beer.

At first glance it may not seem like a significant difference, but those tenths are crucial for at-risk groups who cannot consume alcohol, such as pregnant women, and can even be counterproductive for alcoholics trying to overcome their addiction. As for the nutritional value of both drinks, there are no appreciable differences, beyond the fact that 0.0 contains up to a third fewer calories than its “alcohol-free” sister, with around 22 kilocalories per 100 milliliters.

They also differ in their production process. To obtain a low-alcohol beer, fermentation is carefully controlled with very short times compared to a “normal” beer. In contrast, to obtain a 0.0% beer, the alcohol is removed using a dealcoholization machine. Since alcohol has a lower evaporation temperature than water, it is easy to remove by applying heat to the beer. However, some of its organoleptic properties inevitably change during this process.

In any case, Spain proudly holds the title of being both Europe’s largest producer and largest consumer of non-alcoholic beer, with a rate that accounts for 16.6% of all beer. That’s 2.4 million hectoliters a year. However, the latest socioeconomic report from Cerveceros de España warns that the pandemic had a negative impact on non-alcoholic beer consumption. With limited opportunities to visit bars, consumers chose to indulge in traditional beer instead. We can expect that the positive trend for non-alcoholic beer will not be derailed by this one-off circumstance.