It might seem like a trick question, but beers that are labelled “non-alcoholic” actually do contain small amounts of alcohol. 

“Near beers” are, of course, way lower in alcohol content than regular beers, and there are legal specifications to ensure that the trace amounts of alcohol in them are kept below certain limits.

However, these limits are not always absolute zero. Plus, they vary by country, and depend on how the beer is labelled and sold. 

So if you are specifically choosing an NA beer and expecting it to be completely free of alcohol, it’s worth knowing that according to labelling laws, “non-alcoholic” doesn’t necessarily mean what it says.

Here’s our guide to what non-alcoholic labelling on NA beers actually means.

How much alcohol is actually in non-alcoholic beers?

That depends what term you use. 

Even though you might think terms like low-alcohol beer, non-alcoholic beer and zero-alcohol beer can be used interchangeably, the United States’ Code of Federal Regulations and the Food and Drug Association both specify that they do not mean the same thing. 

Here are the differences:

Non-alcoholic

The legal limit of alcohol that manufacturers are allowed to include in beer labelled as “non-alcoholic” is 0.5% alcohol by volume (ABV). Anything higher than that cannot be labelled as non-alcoholic. This is compared to regular alcoholic beer, which usually contains around 5% ABV.

In some states, this is considered so close to zero that the sale of 0.5% ABV beers and other drinks are not even regulated. 

The figure 0.5% goes back to Prohibition, when it was first legally declared that any drink containing more alcohol than this was considered to be intoxicating and banned from production, importation and sale. This was really the spur for the development of 0.5% beers.

Low-alcohol

“Low-alcohol” or “reduced-alcohol” beers can contain up to 2.5% ABV.

Alcohol-free 

When it comes to beer, “alcohol-free” or “zero-alcohol” can only be claimed on products that contain no (0.0%) detectable alcohol. 

If you want to make sure that the beer you’re buying contains absolutely no alcohol, this is the most reliable label to look out for.

Does “non-alcoholic” mean different things in different countries?

To make things extra confusing, yes. Non-alcoholic can mean different things in different countries. 

Each country regulates their own beer industry differently and sets their own maximum limits for what manufacturers are allowed to call “non-alcoholic” or “low-alcohol”. 

Canada

In Canada, for example, producers aren’t meant to use the term “non-alcoholic” for beers at all. Instead, they use “low-alcohol”, and this applies to beers containing 0.4% ABV or less. They also have an “extra-light” category for beers with alcohol levels between 1.1-2.5%, while “light” beer can contain anything between 2.6-4.0% ABV.

So a low-alcohol beer in the United States could contain almost five times as much alcohol as a low-alcohol beer just across the border.

UK

In the UK, the equivalent of non-alcoholic beer is called “alcohol-free beer”. This is allowed much less than non-alcoholic beer in the U.S.: only 0.05% ABV, compared to 0.5%. 

Beers with up to 0.5% ABV are called “de-alcoholised”. Catchy.

“Low alcohol” beer in the U.K. can contain up to 1.2%.

To add even more confusion to the mix, if you’re someone who travels across the pond a lot, the term “non-alcoholic” is not allowed to be used on any type of drink that is normally associated with alcohol, such as beer, even if it is completely non-alcoholic. It can only be used on soft drinks (with the exception of de-alcoholised religious wines).

Other places

In Australia, the distinction “light” beer can contain up to 3.5% ABV, while in the European Union, there is a range of limits:

• “Alcohol-free” or “Non-alcoholic” beer: up to 0.5% ABV

• “Low-alcohol”: 2.2% to 2.8% – 3.2%, depending on the country

• “Alcoholic”: Anything over 2.8% – 3.2%, depending on the country.

Why do “non-alcoholic” beers still contain alcohol?

It’s all down to chemistry and a little economics.

Regular beer isn’t made by brewing the barley, water, hops and yeast — and then artificially adding the alcohol in afterwards. Rather, the alcohol in beer is a product of the brewing process. It’s the fermentation of the sugars contained in the barley by the yeast that makes the beer, and this process naturally gives off alcohol. All sugars can be fermented like this, so you could even find trace elements of alcohol in all sorts of things, such as fruit juice for example.

That means that to make non-alcoholic beer, the process is not as straightforward as simply not putting in the alcohol. It has to be chemically removed after the beer has been made, which, it turns out, is a pretty complicated process.

The first alcohol-free beers were made non-alcoholic by heating them to a high enough temperature to boil off the ethanol, the chemical basis of alcohol. However, heating distorts the flavour, making traditional non-alcoholic beers famously unpleasant to drink.

Today, the demand for good-tasting near beers has rocketed, as people’s concerns about their health and wellbeing rise. This has incentivised brewers to come up with much more sophisticated methods of making NA beers, that can now match regular beers for flavour, colour and variety. 

For example, some manufacturers use a vacuum process to distill the beer first, meaning it doesn’t have to be heated as much for the alcohol to boil off, so the taste is not as affected.

Others use reverse osmosis to filter the beer through a super-fine mesh at high pressure, which then allows the alcohol to be separated out, and others still have found ways to reduce the alcohol by experimenting with different grains to barley, such as rice or maize, which ferment less.

This injection of creativity into the non-alcoholic beer market has meant that there are now dozens, if not hundreds of great-tasting, rich, golden, light and dark craft beers with very little alcohol left in them, made around the world. 

But getting these beers from just a little alcohol to no alcohol at all would make these processes expensive and difficult for most producers, and likely take us back to a boring, unpleasant and very limited range of NA beers. 

Can non-alcoholic beer get you drunk?

No, non-alcoholic beer can’t get you drunk.

The feeling of becoming drunk comes from drinking alcohol at a faster rate than your liver can process it. It starts to build up in your bloodstream, which then has at first a subtle, and then not-so-subtle effect on your body’s functioning and your behaviour.

Scientists have shown that alcoholic drinks containing 0.5% ABV do not contain enough alcohol for a normal adult not to be able to process and so regardless of the quantity drunk, getting drunk is not possible.

This doesn’t mean however that there aren’t psychological effects to drinking non-alcoholic beers, which can be important to be aware of. 

For more information, check out:

• Non-alcoholic beers make me feel drunk. Why?

• The dangers of non-alcoholic beer