MUNICH — The head brewer at Weihenstephan, the world’s oldest brewing company, has a secret: He loves alcohol-free beer.
Although he’s quick to say he prefers real beer, Tobias Zollo says he prefers alcohol-free beer when he’s working or eating lunch. He said it tastes similar to a soft drink but has fewer calories, thanks to the brewery’s process of evaporating the alcohol.
“Unfortunately you can’t drink beer every day,” he joked last week at the Bavarian state brewery in the German city of Freising, about 31 kilometers north of Munich.
Zollo isn’t the only one who appreciates this cool beverage. Alcohol-free beer has been growing in popularity in recent years as beer consumption is declining.
In Weihenstephan, founded in 1040 as a brewery by Benedictine monks, non-alcoholic wheat beer and lager now account for 10% of the brewing volume. The growth over the past few years since the brewing of alcohol-free drinks began in the 1990s mirrors the statistics for the rest of Germany’s beer industry.
“Unfortunately people — I have to say this as a brewer — are unfortunately drinking less beer,” Zollo said Friday, the day before Oktoberfest officially begins. “If there is an option to get the crisp and refreshing taste from a typical Weihenstephan beer, but only as a non-alcoholic version, we would like to do that.”
Even at Octoberfest – probably the world’s most famous celebration of alcohol – non-alcoholic beer is on the menu.
The drink is available for 16 days in all but two of the festival’s 18 large tents. This cool beverage will cost drinkers the same as an alcoholic beer – between 13.60 and 15.30 euros for a 1-liter mug – but it will save them from a hangover.
“For people who don’t like to drink and still want to enjoy Oktoberfest, I think it’s a good option,” Michael Caslitz, 24, from Munich, said inside a tent on Saturday. “Sometimes people think they have more fun with alcohol, which is not a good thing because you can have fun without alcohol.”
He added: “If you want to drink alcohol-free beer, no one will judge you.”
The first alcohol-free beer garden opened in Munich this year. “Die Nul”, which means “the zero” in German, served non-alcoholic beer, mocktails and other alcohol-free drinks near the city’s main train station this summer, but was scheduled to close a few days before Octoberfest began.
Researchers have had to breed special hops varieties for alcohol-free beers, said Walter König, managing director of the Society of Hop Research north of Munich. If brewers use normal hops for alcohol-free beers, the distinctive aroma is lost when the alcohol is reduced during the brewing process.
But customers don’t care, Koenig said Friday as he prepared for Oktoberfest.
“They just want to know that what they’re tasting is just as good as traditional beer with alcohol,” he said.
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