dealcoholisation
Vacuum distillation
Remove alcohol from finished beer by distilling under reduced pressure, so ethanol boils off at a temperature low enough not to cook the beer.
Also called how alcohol free beer is made, alcohol free beer production, making non alcoholic beer, alcohol removal.
What is actually happening
Lowering the pressure lowers ethanol’s boiling point from 78 °C to around 35 °C. The beer can then be stripped of alcohol without the cooked, bready character that atmospheric distillation would produce.
Aroma compounds are volatile too and leave alongside the ethanol. The better implementations capture that aroma fraction and return it to the de-alcoholised beer afterwards, which is much of what separates a good alcohol-free beer from a thin one.
Typical conditions
| Temperature | 30–45°C |
|---|---|
| Scale | A commercial-scale operation |
Ranges, not targets. These describe what is usual across the styles and breweries that use this step, and a value outside the range is a decision rather than an error.
Styles where this step is decisive
- Alcohol-free pale lager
A pale lager produced at or near zero alcohol, now the largest and most refined part of the no-alcohol category.
- Alcohol-free IPA
An alcohol-free beer built around heavy dry hopping, since hop aroma is added after fermentation and survives the process intact.
- Alcohol-free wheat beer
An alcohol-free wheat beer — often the most convincing of the category, because wheat body and yeast esters survive dealcoholisation well.
- Alcohol-free stout
An alcohol-free dark beer where roasted grain does most of the work — one of the more successful conversions in the category.
Related steps and concepts
- Reverse osmosis — The membrane-based alternative.
- Arrested fermentation — The approach that avoids removal entirely.
- De-alcoholisation — The vocabulary.
Also at the dealcoholisation stage
Arrested fermentation · Maltose-negative fermentation · Reverse osmosis · Spinning cone column
See the whole process in order on how beer is made.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.
Evidence
What BeerHQ knows about this, and how. Every statement carries the state of the evidence behind it rather than being presented flatly as fact.
Volatile aroma compounds are stripped alongside ethanol during de-alcoholisation, so capturing and returning that aroma fraction is much of what separates a good alcohol-free beer from a thin one.
Backed by a source
Sources: Technology Brewing and Malting — print; Institute of Brewing & Distilling technical publications
Reducing pressure lowers the temperature at which ethanol boils — from about 78 °C at atmospheric pressure to roughly 35 °C at the reduced pressures used commercially — allowing alcohol to be distilled out of beer without the cooked character that boiling it at atmospheric pressure would produce.
Backed by a source
Sources: Technology Brewing and Malting — print; Brewing: Science and Practice — print