There are a lot more non-alcoholic drinks on the market now that mocktails and non-alcoholic spirits are popular.

But how does vodka with no alcohol still taste like vodka? How does non-alcoholic beer still have that typical hop taste?

This is a good start to learning how non-alcoholic drinks and beer are made!

How do you make booze with no proof?

Things that were used

Alcohol with no proof is made with the same ingredients as alcohol with booze! The only thing that changes is the process. The ingredients stay the same whether the drink being made is rum, gin, whiskey, tequila, or vodka.

Liquors with no proof start with a base ingredient that is fermented and then distilled with flavorings to make the end taste. There isn't much ethanol left in the booze, but the flavors are still there, and the spirit even has some of the qualities of the base ingredient. If we do say so ourselves, it's pretty cool!

Making alcohol

Distillation is the main way that zero-proof spirits are made. If you know how other types of spirits are made, you know that this is also how the alcohol level of a spirit goes up!

Mash fruits or grains into a liquid and let yeasts eat on the natural sugars in the liquid that has been drained. When yeast eats sugar, it makes ethanol as a result. It is the ethanol that makes a drink alcoholic.

But a beverage that has been fermented can only have about 15-20% ethanol before the yeast starts to die. Then, distillers put the liquid into a still and heat it up enough to turn the ethanol into vapor. They can then compress the vapor back into a liquid that has a lot more ethanol in it.

But this is where the roads split. That stuff with more ethanol is used to make drinking spirits. That stuff with less ethanol is used to make non-alcoholic spirits. Distillation takes away almost all of the alcohol, leaving behind only small amounts that add up to less than 0.5% ABV. You can add more water to bring the ABV down to 0%, which will make the drink truly zero-proof.

The finished item will taste like the fermented liquid, but it won't have any booze in it!

Adding and mashing

Adding natural tastes like herbs, fruits, or spices to a liquid is another common way to make spirits that don't contain alcohol. Most of the time, the liquid is the zero-proof stuff that has already been distilled. This means that it is zero-proof before the tastes are added.

Distillation and maceration are the two main ways to add taste to water that has already been distilled.

To use vapor infusion, you heat water until it turns into a vapor and then let the vapor pass through a variety of natural ingredients. As it goes through the ingredients, it picks up flavor and then cools down and condenses back into a liquid. In maceration, on the other hand, loose leaf tea is used to make a cup of tea. Natural flavorings are added directly to the water, which is then left to steep. Once the desired level of strength is reached, the tea is squeezed out.

The percolation process is the same one you use to make coffee every morning, so you already know what it is!

Distilled water is pushed through a cone-shaped filter that is filled with ground-up flavoring ingredients. Using an extract or mash instead of raw ingredients makes the water move more slowly, which brings out more flavor from the natural oils. Because of this, spirits made by percolation are generally more flavorful than spirits made by infusion.

Pressing cold

What's the link between zero-proof drinks and sustainable cooking oils? The cold-press method can be used to make both of them!

Making cold press is really easy. Fruit, herbs, and spices that are used to add flavor are slowly pressed under a strong presser to get the delicious oils out. These oils are then added to the distilled zero-proof spirit.

How water-based beer is made

Even though beer isn't always a drink, it's still worth putting it on this list!

In the end, there are three ways to make beer with no alcohol: controlled fermentation, dealcoholization, and diluting.

In controlled fermentation, the temperatures are kept low enough so that the yeast doesn't turn too much sugar into alcohol during the fermentation process. The end result is a beer with very little or no alcohol! Some types of yeast naturally make less alcohol, so using those types of yeast makes the beer even less strong!

In the second step, the alcohol is taken out of alcoholic beer that has already been made. Some ways to do this are to distill it and let the alcohol burn off, pump it full of nitrogen and let the bubbles catch the alcohol molecules, or use reverse osmosis to put the alcohol behind a thin screen and let the beer pass through.

The last way to make beer that isn't alcoholic is to add enough water or flavorings to get the ABV low enough.

Zero-proof liquor and non-alcoholic spirits are becoming more popular and easier to find. This makes the world of non-alcoholic drinks and cocktails more interesting and tasty. Try switching out your favorite full-proof drink for a mocktail with no alcohol and see how you like it.