The Rise of Low Alcohol Beers

To coincide with the launch of our second low alcohol beer, Inkling, the Directors' Diary in this month's newsletter takes a look at the rise of low and no alcohol beers.

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There’s no escaping it, the popularity of non alcoholic drinks is on the rise. Be it gin, wine, prosecco or beer, there are a growing number of people who choose, on a regular basis, to opt for the ‘low/no’ option. 

In part due to a generational culture shift in which ‘millenials’ and gen z are choosing to limit/avoid alcohol for health reasons and in part due to the increase in the availability of non/low alcoholic beverages across all sectors.

It is also significant that a lot of these beverages are being bought as alternatives to traditional soft drinks as well as an alternative to their alcoholic counterparts. The choice here being to move away from overly sweet flavours and high sugar content. 

As it’s become more socially acceptable to choose a low/no option, sales have boomed.

According to the Drink Aware website, there are 3 categories for what we would refer to as ‘non alcoholic’ drinks.

       1. Alcohol Free - less than 0.05% abv

       2. Dealcoholised - less than 0.5% abv

       3. Low Alcohol - less than 1.2% abv

But across Europe and in the USA, ‘alcohol-free’ means anything under 0.5% ABV, so imported products can be labelled differently. 

Here at Wold Top we couldn’t ignore this trend, so towards the end of 2020 we started researching and investigating how to produce our own low alcohol beer. We refer to Intuition and Inkling as ‘low alcohol’ as we don’t have the technology or facilities available to create a product that is either dealcoholised or considered alcohol free. 

Our main aim was to create a beer that still tasted like beer! Many we tried during our research were just so sweet that we felt they didn’t really qualify for the ‘beer’ label. 

We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the reception for Intuition since its launch in February 2021 and are hoping that Inkling will be as well-received this coming year. 

Having a low alcohol alternative to hand has definitely changed our drinking habits here at WT HQ too….! (Not that we had a problem!)

Did you know that certain foods contain small amounts of alcohol and that a very ripe banana can contain 0.4% ABV? Find out more in this article based on a University of Kaiserslautern study.

Kate and Alex