Brewed Non-Alcoholic Beer vs Malt Drinks: How to Tell Them Apart

On any non-alcoholic beer shelf in India, you will find two different products that look alike. Both say "beer" on the can, and both are cold, fizzy and malt-coloured. But one of them was brewed and the other was mixed, and nothing on the front of the can tells you which is which.

The difference is fermentation. Beer is made when yeast eats the sugars in malt. The yeast makes alcohol, but it also makes the esters (fruity flavour compounds), the depth and the roundness that make beer taste like beer. A brewed non-alcoholic beer goes through all of that and is kept under 0.5% ABV. This is done either with a yeast that stops early on its own or, as some breweries do, by removing the alcohol afterwards.

A malt-based soft drink skips fermentation completely. It is made from malt extract, water, carbon dioxide and sweeteners. It is a legitimate product, but it is not a brewed one, and you can taste the difference even when the shelf does not tell you.

Here are three checks that take about ten seconds in total.

Check one: find the yeast

Read the ingredient list. On a brewed beer, it reads like a brewing recipe: water, barley malt, hops and yeast. If there is no yeast anywhere on the label, that is the clearest sign of all. Without yeast there is no fermentation, and without fermentation the drink is a malt-flavoured soft drink. A list that starts with sugar and preservatives is another sign of the same thing.

Check two: find the process words

Brands that ferment their drinks say so. Words like "fermented" or "brewed" appear on their labels, and a serious brand explains how it keeps the alcohol under 0.5%. Fermenting is the more expensive way to make the drink, so brands that do it make sure to mention it. If a label says nothing about how the drink was made, that usually means it was not brewed.

Check three: find the number

In India, non-alcoholic means at or under 0.5% ABV. A serious brand prints its ABV clearly on the front of the can. If you cannot find an ABV figure anywhere, put the can back and choose one that prints the number.

We are not naming any brands here, and that is on purpose. Shelves and recipes change, and this post is not meant to criticise anyone. The point is that you can run these three checks on any can in your own fridge, tonight, in less time than it took to read this paragraph.

Every SOMA ingredient list includes water, barley malt, hops, yeast and natural flavours. SOMA is fermented with a maltose-negative yeast that leaves the alcohol under 0.5% ABV. The full process is explained in how we keep the alcohol under 0.5%, and the legal limits for the category are on the numbers page.

The two drinks may sit under the same shelf label, but now you can tell them apart.