The description of Alcohol Free Beer by
LordOmar that "Beer that has had the
alcohol removed from it (or never put in it)" is not entirely correct. Alcohol isn't a separate ingredient added to nomal beer, but produced during
fermentation (
anaerobically) of mainly
malt and
hop by
brewers yeast (a specialized
Saccharomyces cerevisiae).
To produce "alcohol free beer", the manufacturer uses a
genetically modified brewers yeast
strain where the
metabolism for alcohol production is
suppressed.
I used the quotation marks, as alcohol free beer isn't entirely alcohol free: it still contains 0.3-1.5% alcohol, depending on the brand. Attempts to produce beer
really without alcohol failed because during the degradation of
starch to alcohol other
aroma components are produced as well (a linked metabolism). Without those specific processes, the beer didn't taste like the real stuff at all and therefore is never sold.
Although it isn't a complete
shame anymore to drink alcohol free beer, I wouldn't say it has status to do so. This may be because the
Dutch comedian Youp van 't Hek introduced the term
Bucklerlul (translated a Buckler
dickhead): only a
loser doesn't do what s/he really wants to do because of some lousy, unfounded reasons.
"Be a
man, drink real
beer and get pissed, or stick with the
soft drinks."