Warning as Low and Alcohol-Free Beers Vulnerable to Microbes

What happens when you take the booze out of beer? It might not all be good news.

The global alcohol-free beer market is worth over $20 billion, and is expected to more than double by 2032, according to a 2022 survey by Future Market Insights. The drinks allow you to enjoy yourself at the bar while avoiding the negative health impacts associated with alcohol.

However, new research from Cornell University found that non-alcoholic beers may bring other health hazards into play further down the line. It was published in the Journal of Food Protection.

“When you remove the alcohol, it’s really no longer a traditional beer,” Randy Worobo, a professor of food science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and a senior author on the study, said in a statement. “We suspected that food-borne pathogens would be able to grow without the presence of alcohol. We were correct.”

The conditions inside alcoholic beer are fairly inhospitable to most microbes: it’s acidic, very low on oxygen, and contains a high concentration of ethanol—the same alcohol used in hand sanitizer. However, the conditions are very different in non-alcoholic beverages.

“Craft manufacturers of nonalcoholic beer sometimes follow a traditional beer making process,” co-author Ann Charles Vegdahl, an extension associate in the Department of Food Science at Cornell AgriTech in Geneva, New York, said in the statement. “But in the end, brewers add additional material for flavoring and aroma— like hops—to nonalcoholic beers, which could potentially introduce contamination.”

These hops do not typically undergo a sterilization process, making them a potential introductory source of disease-causing microbes.

To investigate how these microbes might survive in a non-alcoholic beverage, the team exposed samples of non-alcoholic beers to three different common types of disease-causing bacteria found in food: E. coli, Salmonella enterica and Listeria monocytogenes. The beers were then stored at 39 and 57 degrees Fahrenheit.

The researchers saw that, in the 57-degree samples—which might represent the temperature of a cool indoor storage room or garage—both Salmonella and E. coli populations doubled in size after just two months of storage. So, when it comes to alcohol-free beer, a chilled beverage is not a preference, it’s a necessity.

The team also speculated that serving the beers on draft could also make them vulnerable to microbial contamination, highlighting a need for sterilization and the regular cleaning of any serving machinery.

“Without alcohol in beer, you’re removing a lot of the safety net against food-borne pathogens,” Worobo said. “Without that protection that alcohol provides, manufacturers must take into consideration how pathogens may be incorporated from raw products during the processing.

“You must consider non-alcoholic beer like food and make sure that all parameters are met guaranteeing product safety.”

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