Glossary
Arrested fermentation
Deliberately halting fermentation early — by chilling, filtering or pasteurising — so that little alcohol is produced.
Also called limited fermentation, stopped fermentation.
The full record
Arrested fermentation has its own catalogue entry with the detail this page summarises — causes, thresholds, related styles and evidence.
Arrested fermentation — Stop fermentation deliberately and early — by chilling, filtering or pasteurising — so little alcohol is produced.
The simplest route to low-alcohol beer and the one with the most characteristic flaw: stopping early leaves substantial unfermented wort sugar, so the beer tends to taste sweet and worty. Modern producers counter this with careful mash design, souring, or by choosing yeasts that cannot ferment the sugars in question.
Related
- De-alcoholisation — The removal-based alternative.
- Maltose-negative yeast — The yeast-selection route.
More vocabulary
Barrel ageing · Batch sparging · Biotransformation · Blending · Bottle conditioning · Bottom fermentation · Burtonisation · Cask conditioning · Centrifugation · Cold break
See every term on the glossary index.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.