Here are two ways to make a beer that stays under 0.5% ABV. The first is a shortcut. You skip fermentation, mix malt extract with water and add carbonation. The problem is that fermentation is where beer gets its character: the esters, the depth and the roundness. If you skip it, you get sweet malt water.
The second way takes longer. You brew the beer properly, with a full mash, a full boil and a real fermentation with brewer's yeast. That is what we do. The important choice is the yeast.
Here is how it works, without the textbook detail. When you mash malted barley, you get wort, a sweet liquid whose main sugar is maltose. Ordinary brewer's yeast eats maltose readily, and the maltose it eats turns into alcohol. That is how a regular beer ends up at 5% ABV.
SOMA is fermented with a maltose-negative yeast. It is a real brewer's yeast with one difference: it cannot eat maltose. It ferments the simple sugars in the wort and leaves the maltose alone. So the yeast still does everything you want yeast to do. It builds esters, adds depth and roundness, and turns wort into beer. It runs out of food early, and the batch finishes under 0.5% ABV. That is the international threshold for non-alcoholic beer, and it is the same trace range you will find in kombucha, some fruit juices and a very ripe banana.
This matters because nothing is done to the beer afterwards to lower the alcohol. The hop aromas and the delicate esters stay in the beer.
Every batch is then pasteurised, which stops the yeast for good and keeps the beer stable in the can. Before it ships, every batch is lab-tested to confirm it is under 0.5% ABV. It is also tested for harmful microbes, and a taste panel compares it with our reference batch. If a batch fails any of these checks, it does not leave.
There is also a third way to make non-alcoholic beer. Some producers ferment the beer all the way, like a regular beer, and then separate the alcohol out afterwards. Most of the big-brand 0.0% lagers sold in India are made this way. It is a legitimate method, and it needs specialised equipment, but it is not ours. SOMA uses the yeast method from start to finish.
In short, SOMA is brewed and fermented as a real beer, and our yeast keeps the alcohol under 0.5% ABV.
Brewed bold. No hangovers.
Production starts after December 2026. The fifty people on our Founding Fifty list will taste the first batch before anyone else. Joining the list is free, and there is nothing to pay today.
18+ · Under 0.5% ABV, lab-tested every batch
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