Guinness Joins Growing List Of New Nonalcoholic Beer Brands

Guinness is the latest brewer to add a nonalcoholic beer to its line up with the Guinness 0.0 beer.

According to the beer maker, Guinness 0.0 has all the features of its traditional Guinness beer, including taste, flavor, and color, but without the alcohol.

Guinness developed the nonalcoholic beer over four years at its St. James Gate facility in Dublin, Ireland. The company said the process involved brewing traditional Guinness beer, using the same ingredients, which include water, barley, hops, and yeast.

It then said it “gently” removed the alcohol using a cold filtration method, which took the alcohol out without adding any thermal stress to the beer or affecting the taste or character.

To ensure the beer stayed true to its Guinness flavor, brewers then blended and balanced the flavors to provide the distinctive profile and taste that is characteristic of the beer.

Guinness said the beer has the “same dark, ruby red liquid and creamy head, hints of chocolate and coffee and smoothly balanced bitter, sweet and roasted notes.”

“Guinness has always had an unwavering commitment to quality and our entire brewing team is hugely proud of the care and effort that has been put into the four-year development process for Guinness 0.0,” Aisling Ryan, innovation brewer at St James’s Gate, said in a statement. “We have created a taste experience that we believe is truly unrivaled in the world of nonalcoholic beer and we can’t wait for people to finally be able to try it!”

Guinness previously produced a nonalcoholic lager in Ireland and a nonalcoholic malt-based beer in Indonesia, MarketWatch reported. Guinness 0.0 will initially be rolled out in the U.K. and Ireland and will be available in more global markets later in 2021.

Guinness, which has a long-standing 261-year history that dates back to 1759, is not the only brewery that has turned toward the nonalcoholic beer market recently. Samuel Adam’s launched a nonalcoholic hazy IPA called Just the Haze that will arrive on store shelves in 2021, while U.K.-brewer Beavertown entered the nonalcoholic craft beer market with its Lazer Crush brew in October, The Grocer reported.

Brewery Athletic Brewing Company only produces nonalcoholic beer and Labatt Breweries added the nonalcoholic Budweiser Zero to its family of beers in Canada in September, according to the Brewers Journal.