Making nonalcoholic (NA) beer requires different techniques from traditional brewing, especially when using maltose-negative yeast (e.g., Berkeley Yeast’s NA Classic or NA Cabana), which ferments simple sugars but leaves maltose and maltotriose unfermented. Here’s a simplified guide to best practices for brewing NA beer.

Food Safety and Risk Mitigation
You need to treat NA beer like a perishable food product because NA beer lacks the natural protection against spoilage and pathogens that comes from alcohol production. The fermentation process produces less CO2 and less pH reduction and leaves more nutrients for unwanted microbes. From the time you cool your wort to the time you pasteurize, you are at an elevated risk.

pH: Ensure the final beer pH is below 4.6 (even better if you are below 4.2; lower is always better, especially if pasteurization isn’t an option).
Good Manufacturing Practices: Follow good manufacturing practices (GMP) and implement a robust sanitation program to limit contamination.
Pasteurization: The gold standard is to pasteurize after packaging.
Handling: Minimize the number of steps post-fermentation (e.g., dry hopping, fruit additions) to reduce contamination risk.
Preservatives: Consider using typical food preservatives. They can be helpful against some, but not all, organisms.
Temperature: As with many foods, low temperature reduces the food safety risk. Ferment quickly and chill quickly. Make additions (including hops) at cold temperatures. Do not harvest and repitch yeast, as this can carry over contaminants.

NA Yeast and NA Beer Are Different
Outside of providing food safety, ethanol not only contributes its own flavor, but it also influences the perception of other flavors in beer, both desirable and undesirable. A shift in ethanol levels alters the overall flavor balance. Couple that with unfermented maltose and maltotriose, and you have an altogether different product. This requires careful reconsideration of the remaining components and necessitates adjustments to the recipe and process to maintain the desired sensory characteristics.

Curious about how NA yeast work? Talk to an expert at Berkeley Yeast.

Yeast Selection
The yeasts in Berkeley Yeast’s NA series are the first and only Saccharomyces strains bioengineered to make NA beer that tastes like beer. These strains have been engineered to be maltose and maltotriose negative, which limits the production of alcohol. They’re also engineered to overproduce the key beer-flavor compounds at the levels you get from full-strength fermentation. So the beer actually tastes like beer and not like partially fermented wort.

Berkeley’s NA Classic is designed to be highly versatile, so you can use it to make a complete beer or a base layer for a flavor-forward product.
Berkeley’s NA Cabana amplifies tropical notes and provides a solid foundation for both clear and hazy IPAs.

Targets
Start with an original gravity (OG) of 5–7°P (1.020–1.028) and target a real degree of fermentation (RDF) of 10–20 percent. A 5°P OG with a typical two-row-malt bill should yield a 0.5 percent ABV product. Higher RDF typically means more fermentation character, but also higher ABV.

Finished beer pH needs to be below 4.6 at a minimum, and ideally below 4.2.

Recipe Considerations
Mouthfeel & Foam: Use ingredients such as wheat, maltodextrin, or dextrin malt to improve mouthfeel and foam stability. Consider tetrahydro-iso-alpha acids or hexahydro-iso-alpha acids to help with foam stability.
Color: Design your malt bill for flavor first. Color can be adjusted downstream with malt-derived color additives.
Acid Addition: Adjusting pH with food-grade acids will improve sensory qualities. There are blends available commercially, but consider experimenting with different acids on your own. Use them at different parts of the process. Hot-side additions can help reduce your IBUs and put you in the food-safe zone as soon as you cool your wort.
Hops: Aim for a lower IBU target. Without ethanol, high IBUs can come off harsh. Focus on late hot-side hop additions for authentic hop character and consider hop extracts for flavor and aroma. Start with a lower dry-hop amount than you typically do for standard beer.
Sweeteners: There are many different ways to impact the perception of sweetness—too many to list. Experiment with different sweeteners to help with balance. Note: if you are tunnel pasteurizing, you can use glucose or fructose in post-fermentation chilled product; you will inactivate the yeast through pasteurization.
CO2: Aim for higher CO2 levels during packaging to enhance sensory quality and safety.
Benchtop tests: Early in your NA journey, it is incredibly helpful to conduct benchtop tests with different downstream additives (e.g., acids, sweeteners, colorants, mouthfeel, flavorings). You can quickly increase your experience understanding how to balance NA beer by benchtopping hundreds of different variations from a single brew.

Recipes
We've put together a couple of recipes to highlight the ingredients and process to brew a delicious NA beer at your brewery:

Recipe: Tim Sciascia’s NA West Coast IPA: Brewing a tasty nonalcoholic beer is dramatically different from brewing one of normal strength—but this recipe provides a great jumping-off point for making something pleasurably hoppy but without the alcohol.
Recipe: Tim Sciascia’s NA Light “Lager”: NA beer production’s shortened fermentation can move this “lager” from grain to glass in as little as one week.
Process Tips
Mash: Use a higher mash temperature (160–165°F/71–74°C) and shorter rest times (~5–10 minutes) to limit fermentability and control RDF. Increase your liquor-to-grist ratio and consider increased acid additions to avoid high pH through lautering.
Lautering: Use rice hulls if your lauter bed is too shallow.
Cooling: Be mindful of freezing risks in the cooling process, as NA beer may freeze at higher temperatures than regular beer.
Filtration: Always use clean filters to prevent contamination. Removing yeast before pasteurizing will lead to improved finished beer flavor.
Packaging and Pasteurization
Bottles and Cans: The best format for packaging your beer is in bottles and cans. Kegs and draft lines have a much higher risk of contamination and are not recommended.
Packaging Process: Compared to traditional beer packaging, NA packaging should occur at higher beer temperatures, higher carbonation levels, and lower foamability. Adjust your packaging line accordingly to reduce beer waste and decrease dissolved-oxygen (DO) pick up.
Pasteurization: Tunnel pasteurization is the best way to ensure your beverage is free from spoilage and pathogenic organisms.
Testing and QA/QC
Routine testing for pH, flavor, and microbial contamination is crucial throughout the process. Work with a process authority (recommended, although not required for NA beer) to validate safety and quality.

Adopting these best practices can help minimize risks and improve the sensory characteristics of your NA beer.

Have questions? Reach out!

About the Authors
Anthony Bledsoe is an experienced leader with a diverse background in quality, process improvement, brewing, operations, and innovation. After graduating from the UC Davis Master Brewers Program, he worked across small craft breweries such as Kona Brewing (as the director of brewing ops), regional breweries such as Craft Brew Alliance and Tilray, and global operations with AB InBev (as the innovation manager).

In January 2024, Anthony became Berkeley Yeast’s VP of product strategy. He works closely with all departments to help us continually push the technology of fermentation forward, and he helps our customers identify opportunities and provide solutions informed by working at breweries of every conceivable scale.

Tim Sciascia was hired in 2008 as a cellar person at Marin Brewing Co. north of San Francisco. Over five years, he moved up through the cellar and filtration positions, finally becoming the assistant brewer.

In 2013, Tim cofounded Cellarmaker Brewing Co. as the director of brewing and blending. Over 11 years, he helped grow Cellarmaker to nearly 6,000 barrels on dual 15- and 20-barrel systems. Hops and barrel-aged strong ales have always been of particular interest to him, and he has fermented award-winning beers with Berkeley Yeast strains for more than five years. Tim is now brand ambassador at Berkeley Yeast.
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Recipe: Tim Sciascia’s NA Light “Lager”
Drinkers who are familiar with American light lager will be impressed by this crisp nonalcoholic version. Even more amazing, nonalcoholic beer production’s shortened fermentation can move this “lager” from grain to glass in as little as one week.If this is your first attempt at brewing NA beer, we suggest sticking closely to the recipe. Get the basics down first, then tweak from there. For more tips, see “Nonalcoholic Brewing Best Practices.”

In this recipe, fermentation with Berkeley Yeast’s NA Classic strain substantially minimizes the wort-like character typically remaining after fermentation with other NA yeast strains; a large dilution with water in the kettle before boiling creates a smooth beer with a very clean profile. Remember: Following key food-safety measures—especially important in a no-/low-alcohol beer—will result in a safe product.

ALL-GRAIN

OG Pre Dilution: 1.021 (5.3°P)
OG Post Dilution: 1.016 (4.1°P)
FG: 1.013 (3°P)
IBUs: 10
FINAL pH: ≤ 4.2
ABV: 0.5% or lower

MALT/GRAIN BILL
70% North American 2-row
15% Vienna malt
15% Dextrin malt

HOPS SCHEDULE
0.25 lbs (113 g)/bbl Crystal T90 at 30 minutes

YEAST
Berkeley Yeast NA Classic

DIRECTIONS
Mash in at 160°F (71°C). Rest for 10 minutes, then mash off. Target a mash pH of 5.1. Vorlauf as usual, but before beginning the sparge and lauter, you need to find a way to keep the wort runnings’ pH from elevating. With so little grain to buffer the pH rise from the sparge, you will very quickly begin to extract harsh tannins from the grain. Either adjust your sparge water with a hefty dose of acid or add some acid to the top of the mash (and continue to add it over and over during sparging). Don’t worry if your start-of-boil pH is lower than you are used to. You want a pH of 5.0 or lower going into the fermentor to help slow growth of any microbes (if any) besides the yeast.

Your wort should be at a concentration of 1.021 (5.3°P). Dilute it by about 23 percent to achieve a start-of-boil gravity just under 1.016 (4.1°P). Boil and concentrate to 1.016 (4.1°P) over an hour. Once you reach the correct concentration, boil for 60 minutes or more depending on how vigorous your boil is, adding hops according to the schedule. Check your wort pH before KO. Lower it to 4.9–5.0 with food-grade acid. Low pH on the cold side will slow the growth of pathogens.

Chill the wort to 68°F (20°C), aerate to 8–10 ppm, pitch your NA Classic yeast (pitch rate: 1.5 million/ml/°P), and set your tank to 68°F (20°C). A large pitch rate will result in a faster fermentation of about 1–3 days, which is a good thing. As we mentioned before, less time warm is better! We also advise you to add a small amount of ALDC enzyme at the beginning of fermentation to reduce tank residence time. At the end of fermentation, remove the yeast. Do not repitch. Microbial carryover to a second batch can result in a product that could spoil your beer or make people sick. Adjust your pH even lower to further safeguard against pathogens: a pH of 4.0 is safe, 3.7 pH is safer.

Set your tank to 36°F (2°C), but no lower or you may freeze your beer, resulting in an increase of alcohol in the liquid fraction. Continue to shave off settled hops and yeast daily. Adjust sweetness and body with brewer’s crystals and/or maltodextrin.

Carbonate as high as your packaging line or your packaging medium allows you to (or your pasteurizing process allows). Filter your beer if it is going to undergo pasteurization, then tunnel or batch pasteurize. Bottle or can your beer.

BREWER’S NOTES
Mash
Mash in as you would with normal strength beer. Depending on the diameter of your mash tun and because there is so little grain in a recipe of this gravity, you may need to add more grain to fully cover the bed. If that is the case, cut off your lauter early and water back in your kettle to keep your gravity in spec. You can also add rice hulls and keep the grist the same. Both of Berkeley Yeast’s NA strains are Saccharomyces strains from which the ability to ferment maltose and maltotriose has been removed. With this in mind, we are looking for extract from our mash that contains very little glucose to ensure a very small amount of fermentation.

Purge the Fermentor
Use CO2 or Nitrogen to remove the air from the headspace of the fermentor after wort transfer. Due to the low degree of fermentation the headspace may not be fully scrubbed of Oxygen by the fermentation’s CO2 production resulting in premature oxidation of the beer.

Lauter Process
Each brew house is different so it may take some trial and error to get the wort concentration right. Why not use less grain and forego the dilution? There is already so little grain in the recipe that a further decrease in grist size may be impossible to lauter properly and may also lead to higher astringency.

Hot-Side Hopping
Any NA beer should be carefully hopped. Because of the low ethanol, over-hopping will quickly overwhelm the beer. This easy-drinker isn’t relying on hops, but some presence will help mimic the character of normal-strength beer. The single hop addition gives us the bitterness we need after dilution and builds in a hint of hop flavor.

Fermentation
As you start fermentation, you are leaving the safety of the hot side. It is imperative from this point on to minimize process touches and transfer distances. Make sure your beer leaves the danger zone of fermentation temperature as soon as possible, especially if you are dry hopping or adding any nonsanitary ingredients. Once the beer is cold, the growth of pathogens will be slowed.

Cold Conditioning and Flavor Enhancement
Now that the beer is cold, you have some time to experiment. The NA space provides a new playground for brewers to trial new techniques and additives to improve the flavor, body, and perception of this style. If you are going to diverge from this recipe, now would be a good time to do some bench-top trials and see what works for your brewery and brand. Keep bench trials to only a few days and always get to final processes as soon as possible.

Body Enhancements
Only employ these additives if you are going to sterile filter and/or pasteurize the product. We highly recommend tunnel or batch pasteurization for microbial stability. Undergo bench-top trialing to find your proper blend and amounts. The dilution may have attained a spot-on color and clean, lager-like aroma, but you may need to build back in some body so as to not be too thin and watery.

Carbonation
Good news! Recent research suggests that carbonic acid has bacteriostatic properties against major pathogens. Higher carbonation can increase the “normal-strength beer” perception of NA beer.

Clarification
We recommend that you filter your beer if it is going to undergo pasteurization because leftover organic material and yeast can form staling and autolysed flavors from the elevated temperatures during pasteurization.

Pasteurization
The gold standard to protect your customers from potentially unsafe beverage conditions is tunnel pasteurization. You can reach out to us at support@berkeleyyeast.com for a list of regional co-packing facilities that have pasteurizing technology. If tunnel pasteurization is not an option, please refer to the video below for further information on safeguarding your beer or email us for further food-safety and recipe tips and tricks.

Packaging
Only bottle or can your beer. Draft beer provides many points within and outside of the brewery atmosphere for bacterial pick up.
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Recipe: Tim Sciascia’s NA West Coast IPA
Brewing a tasty nonalcoholic beer is dramatically different from brewing one of normal strength—but this recipe provides a great jumping-off point for making something pleasurably hoppy but without the alcohol.

By: Tim Sciascia Jan 15, 2025

If this is your first attempt at brewing NA beer, we suggest sticking closely to the recipe. Get the basics down first, then tweak from there. For more tips, see “Nonalcoholic Brewing Best Practices.”

In this recipe, Berkeley Yeast’s NA Classic strain makes it easy to restrain the ABV while creating the characteristics of a normal-strength beer. Meanwhile, judicious hopping and an addition of Abstrax extracts and natural flavors make for an aromatic, properly balanced IPA character. Remember: Following key food-safety measures—especially important in a no-/low-alcohol beer—will result in a safe product.

ALL-GRAIN

OG: 1.024 (6°P)
FG: 1.020 (5°P)
IBUs: 35
FINAL pH: ≤ 4.2
ABV: 0.5% or lower

MALT/GRAIN BILL
70% North American 2-row
20% Malted wheat
10% Dextrin malt

HOPS & ADDITIONS SCHEDULE
Your favorite IPA bittering hop to make up what you don’t get from the whirlpool addition at end of boil
0.75 lb (340 g)/bbl Citra T90 at whirlpool
0.75 lb (340 g)/bbl Mosaic T90 at dry hop
0.5 oz (14 g)/bbl Abstrax SIM Quantum Brite (extracted from Simcoe) post crashing
0.2 oz (6 g)/bbl Abstrax CHIX447—Omni Hop Profiles (mimics the profile of Chinook) post crashing
0.15 oz (4 g)/bbl Abstrax Pineapple—Skyfarm Series post crashing
0.15 oz (4 g)/bbl Abstrax Mango—Skyfarm Series post crashing

YEAST
Berkeley Yeast NA Classic

DIRECTIONS
Mash in at 160°F (71°C). Rest for 10 minutes, then mash off. Target a mash pH of 5.1. Vorlauf as usual, but before beginning the sparge and lauter, you need to find a way to keep the wort runnings’ pH from elevating. With so little grain to buffer the pH rise from the sparge, you will very quickly begin to extract harsh tannins from the grain. Either adjust your sparge water with a hefty dose of acid or add some acid to the top of the mash (and continue to add it over and over during sparging). Don’t worry if your start-of-boil pH is lower than you are used to. You want a pH of 5.0 or lower going into the fermentor to help slow growth of any microbes (if any) besides the yeast.

Boil for 60 minutes or more depending on how vigorous your boil is. At the end of the boil, bring your wort temperature down below 200°F (93°C) either by running it through a heat exchanger or adding city water or cold liquor. A good target is between 190° and 200°F (88° and 93°C). Then add your whirlpool hops. Ignore the desire to go lower in temperature even if you regularly do so with normal-strength IPA. Hops are vectors for bacteria, so letting the heat kill any microbes before fermentation is essential. Check your wort pH before you knock out. Lower it to 4.9–5.0 with food-grade acid. Low pH on the cold side will slow the growth of pathogens.

Chill the wort to 68°F (20°C), aerate to 8–10 ppm, pitch your NA Classic yeast (pitch rate: 1.5 million/ml/°P), and set your tank to 68°F (20°C). A large pitch rate will result in a faster fermentation of about 1–3 days, which is a good thing. As we mentioned before, less time warm is better! We also advise you to add a small amount of ALDC enzyme at the beginning of fermentation to reduce tank residence time. At the end of fermentation, remove the yeast. Do not repitch. Microbial carryover to a second batch can result in a product that could spoil your beer or make people sick. Adjust your pH even lower to further safeguard against pathogens: a pH of 4.0 is safe, 3.7 pH is safer.

Dry hop, then crash the tank immediately for two reasons: 1) any hop creep can put your beer out of spec; 2) adding hops can add some bacterial load, so getting cold fast is advantageous.

Cold condition, but do not set your tank temperature lower than 36°F (2°C) or you may freeze your beer, resulting in an increase of alcohol in the liquid fraction. Continue to shave off settled hops and yeast daily. To add more hop aroma and top notes to this NA IPA, use Abstrax brand extracts and flavors. Adjust sweetness and body with brewer’s crystals and/or maltodextrin.

Carbonate as high as your packaging line or your packaging medium allows you to (or your pasteurizing process allows). Filter your beer if it is going to undergo pasteurization, then tunnel or batch pasteurize. Bottle or can your beer.

BREWER’S NOTES
Mash
Mash in as you would with normal-strength beer. Depending on the diameter of your mash tun and because there is so little grain in a recipe of this gravity, you may need to add more grain to fully cover the bed. If that is the case, cut off your lauter early and water back in your kettle to keep your gravity in spec. You can also add rice hulls and keep the grist the same. Both of Berkeley Yeast’s NA strains are Saccharomyces strains from which the ability to ferment maltose and maltotriose has been removed. With this in mind, we are looking for extract from our mash that contains very little glucose to ensure a very small amount of fermentation.

Purge the Fermentor
Use CO2 or Nitrogen to remove the air from the headspace of the fermentor after wort transfer. Due to the low degree of fermentation the headspace may not be fully scrubbed of Oxygen by the fermentation’s CO2 production resulting in premature oxidation of the beer.

Hot-Side Hopping
Because of the lack of ethanol and low starting gravity of this beer, you will need to keep overall hopping low. That being said, hot-side-hopping flavor carries over to the final product in a recognizably authentic way, so experimentation with kettle hops is a great method to make your beer stand out. The suggestions under “Hops & Additions Schedule” above is a good starting point. Target 35 IBUs.

Fermentation
As you head into fermentation, you are leaving the safety of the hot side. It is imperative from this point on to minimize process touches and transfer distances. Make sure your beer leaves the danger zone of fermentation temperature as soon as possible, especially if you are dry hopping or adding any nonsanitary ingredients. Once the beer is cold, the growth of pathogens will be slowed.

Dry Hopping
NA beers have so little ethanol and minimal body that the bitterness and astringency from dry hopping can quickly overwhelm the beer. For this reason, the dry-hop rate is way lower than for a traditional IPA. However, there is nothing like the real thing, so a small addition of Mosaic gives you authentic dank aroma and flavor. We increase our aroma once the beer is cold with extracts and natural flavors.

Extract and Flavor Additions
Once the beer is cold, you have some time to experiment. The NA space provides a new playground for brewers to trial new techniques and additives to improve the flavor, body, and perception of this style. If you are going to diverge from this recipe, now would be a good time to do some bench-top trials and see what works for your brewery and brand. Keep bench trials to only a few days and always get to final processes as soon as possible.

We use Abstrax brand extracts and flavors. Minimizing the vegetative matter in this recipe provides a smoother drinking experience. If using “natural flavors” isn’t your thing, consider that NA beer production could be more closely associated with beverage production as opposed to traditional beer brewing.

Be mindful of any of the flavors you use. They might be alcohol based, so alcohol pick up from their addition needs to be calculated. The Abstrax products here are 100 percent alcohol-free. Adjust sweetness and body with brewer’s crystals and/or maltodextrin.

Body Enhancements
Only employ these additives if you are going to sterile filter and/or pasteurize the product. We highly recommend tunnel or batch pasteurization for microbial stability. Undergo bench-top trialing to find your proper blend and amounts.

Carbonation
Good news! Recent research suggests that carbonic acid has bacteriostatic properties against major pathogens. Higher carbonation can increase the “normal-strength beer” perception of NA beer.

Clarification
We recommend that you filter your beer if it is going to undergo pasteurization because leftover organic material and yeast can form staling and autolysed flavors from the elevated temperatures during pasteurization.

Pasteurization
The gold standard to protect your customers from potentially unsafe beverage conditions is tunnel pasteurization. You can reach out to us at support@berkeleyyeast.com for a list of regional co-packing facilities that have pasteurizing technology. If tunnel pasteurization is not an option, please refer to the video below for further information on safeguarding your beer or email us for further food-safety and recipe tips and tricks.

Packaging
Only bottle or can your beer. Draft beer provides many points within and outside of the brewery atmosphere for bacterial pick up.


Hey, y'all, I'm Tim Shasha with Berkeley Yeast. This is my first video in a series about brewing non-alcoholic beer that is going to give you a head start on getting a high quality product to market. Craft beer is pretty new to the non-alcohol world, so I'm here to help us preserve our reputation as leaders of innovation. Unfortunately, due to the load and non-existent alcohol content of NABIR, it's susceptible to growth of dangerous pathogens. Berkeley Yeast is here to help you not tarnish your track record. So in this first video, we'll discuss the two best controls for brewing and packaging safe non-alcoholic beer. First is pasteurization, and the second is pH control. Stay tuned for future videos where we will discuss further safety during brewing and salaring foundational NA recipe development as well as flavor enhancement of the final product. Okay, safety. I am really not here to try and scare you. I'm here to pump you up. So the first thing I want to ask you is, who has two thumbs? It is on your team. This guy. So let's start with the gold standard for eliminating bacteria, tunnel pasteurization. Once a beer is packaged, sealed, and it's no longer accessible by outside influences, it is passed through the heated tunnel pasteurizer killing off the life forms within the beer. I cannot overstate that Berkeley Yeast believes that tunnel pasteurization is by far the best technology for keeping your beer safe. We recommend pasteurizing to a level of at least 50 pasteurization units or PEUs for short. Let's be clear, not all pasteurization is the same. Flash pasteurization as opposed to tunnel hot kills the beverage before packaging, but unfortunately the product has exposure points after it's heated as it passes through the hoses, pipes, valves, and enters the packaging process. Any of these points are possible vectors for infection. So we prefer tunnel over flash pasteurization, but that's not to say flash pasteurization is bad. It is actually a good alternative to tunnel and needless to say it's better than not pasteurizing. Batch pasteurization should also be considered as effective as tunnel. The cost of entry to batch pasteurizing will be much lower than tunnel, but there will be much higher associated costs with labor and processing time. By the way, if you are looking to pasteurize any of your products, not just NA, please reach out to us. We have a list of partner breweries and different regions that could possibly pasteurize and cope back for you. Its pasteurizing is not in the picture for you, then be sure to watch these videos for safety tips or just reach out to us at Break Lease and we can help you construct a safe, standard operating procedure. Why does Berkeley Yees believe so wholeheartedly in pasteurization? When your beer is below about 2.5% alcohol by volume, your beer is no longer a bacterial side. So precipitous drop down to 0.5%, means we are far inside the danger zone of where microbes can grow. D-G-Z-O-N! Did you hear that? With the proliferation of under-atttenuating yees from various labs that are geared towards craft brewers, trying to make sub 0.5% beer, we find ourselves a new, densely sugary territory for microbes to metabolize, grow, and exist at a level that can be harmful to health. Add sectors like a very hospitable temperature during fermentation, a pH that isn't low enough to inhibit those microbes as well as numerous other points, and you might be throwing yourself a pathogen party. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Where's the beer? I'm going to reign on those little suckers parade because our next strongest weapon against deadly microbes is something most bears already understand and manipulate on a daily basis. pH. Low pH is an incredibly powerful tool used to halt the growth of pathogens. In fact, for non-out beer production, the lower your beer sensory allows your pH to go the better. We recommend lowering the pH of the word coming out of your brew house to sub 5.0. Give yourself a little extra buffer against microbes during fermentation, and then immediately adding more acid after fermentation to further safeguard the beer. The data show that 4.0 pH is a good starting point, but if you can get down to 3.7, then you are in a much better zone. Even if pasteurization is part of your process, lowering your pH before and after fermentation should be highly considered. For example, just because E. coli has been killed via heat, doesn't mean it didn't already have enough time to grow and produce a dangerous level of endotoxid in your beverage. With this in mind, minimizing microbial growth until pasteurization is essential. We are off to a good start with control and monitoring of pH as well as pasteurization you've best guarded yourself against the growth of microorganisms in your non-out beer. However, there are more best practices that you should thoroughly understand and consider. Dangerous of dry hopping. Not that danger. The addition of preservatives in time and temperature will be just some of the points I will discuss in a future video. Speaking of, if you've been enjoying this video, please press that like button and consider subscribing to our channel. If you are stoked on non-alcoholic as I am and don't want to wait until my next video, then feel free to reach out to us here at Berkeley East and we will be more than happy to discuss non-alcoholic best practices and work with you on your process and recipe design. Brewing flavorful and safe non-alcoholic beer can seem a bit overwhelming at first, but with attention to the right details, you'll be brewing a successful product right from the beginning. Stay tuned to our YouTube channel and Instagram for future videos and tips on how to get a head start in the non-alcoholic space. Until then, I'm Tim Schacher with Berkeley East. I'll see you next time.


Oh, hello again. I'm Tim Shasha with Berkeley yeast and I'd like to welcome you to our second video on making safe and flavorful non-alcoholic beer. If you missed our first video, I would suggest clicking on the link to it in the notes below so you can hear about the two best tools for helping prevent the growth of pathogens and spoilage bacteria in your beer. Pastorization and low pH. In this current video, we will discuss other considerations of brewing now beer that will help ensure a low microbial load going into the packaging and pasteurization processes. There's a lot to discuss, so let's get to it. After your work has left the safety of the hot side of brewing, not only do you need to be very cautious of preventing contamination, but you'll want to crush your tank as soon as possible. That's why Berkeley yeast suggests pitching our maltose negative yeast strains at a rate of at least 1.5 million cells per milliliter per degree playtow. We want to rip through fermentation a day or two and get the tank cold. Imagine the period of warm fermentation and cellarine as like sitting at the DMV. You have to do it, but the sooner you leave, the better. Whether the beer is warm or cold, minimizing touches will help decrease the chances of microbes contaminating your beer. Keep your transfer distances as short as possible. Move the beer from tank to tank as few times as you can. I think this is a great opportunity to review with your team SOPs on CIP, SIP, Gaskin and Clamp Cleanliness, the way you store your clean butterfly valves and other parts. Swiggles and carpstones are notorious for hovering bacteria. How about reviewing techniques on spritzing sanitizer at the connection points is every employee getting thorough coverage from the spray bottle. Underperforming the basics of brewing could make any drinker sicker let spoilage bacteria into your product. It should go without saying that cleanliness and proper sanitation are instrumental to making great non-up beer. At the end of fermentation, decrease your pH to further protect your beer. Watch my first video non-up safety for more information about that. Now, at this point, we are accelerating some brewers at preservatives to stabilize their NA beer. The use of preservatives in non-up beer has not been studied at length, so we cannot speak to their efficacy against pathogenetic bacteria. All we can say is that we do know some breweries that believe preservatives help keep the product safe and at a minimum we know they can help prevent re-fermentation by saccharomyces and some other spoilage microbes. I will say though, be very cautious if you are relying on preservatives alone. We recommend professional laboratory support to make sure your controls are validated a little more on that later. How do we think about unsanitary cold side ingredients? We are at a point in brewing where customers have come to expect these authentic flares. So let's set down a general rule. The less your work or beer has physical interaction with non-stereo ingredients, the better. If your recipe calls for such additions, then it is advised to infuse secondary ingredients and adjuncts once the beer is already cold. Cold temperatures slow the growth of bacteria and yeast you may be introducing. Try hopping is probably the most common vector for increasing bacterial loads, so let's talk about this process specifically. You may be tempted to approach try hopping your NAB with the same techniques as scheduled that you work so hard to perfect with normal strength beer. Unfortunately, hopping beer when in this warm has two things going against it. First, as previously stated, hops are not a sanitary ingredient, and second, they contain sugar-releasing amylase enzymes. Any yeast that is present at this stage, if the beer is warm, will most likely begin to re-fermentation aka hop creep. So not only is dry hopping introduced in bacteria, but it is increasing fermentability, which can put you above the legal 0.5% ABV limit. For these reasons, you will want to add all your dry hops at the same time as you crash your tank. The beer will be warm long enough to extract some aroma, but will get cold soon enough to prevent fermentation and growth of microbes. Let's say your beer is now crashed. It is recommended that you get the packaging sooner than later, so don't stay cold for more than a week before your package tape. That being said, this cold beer gives you a little time to experiment with bench top trials to dial in things like aromas and flavors, sweetness and body, color, A's, etc. This is an important step because layering flavors into a non-off beer does not parallel the same for normal strength beer. Looking for tips on how to create your first NA recipe? Check out the links in the notes below that will bring you to two recipes that posted on craft beer and brewing's website. Also, stay tuned for my next video that will walk you through NA recipe design in the various impactful ways to create a tasty end product. When your beer is flavored, stabilized and properly-sellered, it is time to filter and spin it if you have these capabilities. Are you pasteurizing your beer? If so, before you do, you will want to remove as much yeast in organic matter as possible to prevent, analyze, and stale flavors. Recent research shows that not only low pH, but also carbonation in your sealed product might inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria. I have attached a link in the description of this video to a great MBA podcast with Dr. Greg or Shown of Camped in BRI and what she shares to data from his experiment showing that pathogens like E. coli and salmonella to not grow in an NBA as long as the CO2 level is high. And the O2 level and pH are low. Okay, your NA beer is all carved up and it's ready for package. I would have fatically advised you to not put the beer in cakes, bottles and cans only folks. Draft beer lines, cake couplers and faucets are notoriously dirty. Maybe not a year, but definitely at many draft accounts. I know you already know this. If you're going to pour draft NA beer, proceed on a once a week basis to clean and sanitize from the coupler, beer nuts and washers through the tubing and in and out around the faucet. As good to consider this, the Brewers Association, they recommend cleaning normal strength beer draft lines every two weeks, but they believe that cadence is hardly ever fallout. I think it is a good time to once again remind you to watch my first video, which talks about the power of pasteurization. Tunnel and batch pasteurization are the best ways to protect your product. So take a few minutes and check out that video. And while you're hanging around our YouTube channel, why don't you go ahead and subscribe. This way you won't miss a single video. By the way, if you are forgoing pasteurization, then keep your beer cold at all times. Warm storage of an unout beer for reasons already stated could have hazardous repercussions. With or without pasteurization, you will want to consider microbiological testing of your beer as each batch journeys away from your brewery. If you're going to for to run internal PCR testing of various pathogens, then do it. This will help you detect the presence of pathogens, but beware these tests are qualitative, not quantitative, and also false negatives are common with PCR since beers are complex matrix and the concentration of pathogenic cells may be below the limit of detection. Also beware that PCR indicates the presence of DNA, so it may get a positive hit even after pasteurization. Plating for the most part is not recommended since you may be cultured pathogenic bacteria and your brewery is likely not equipped with biosafety level to equipment like biosafety cabinets to keep you and your co workers safe. If you do decide to use plates, don't open them after incubation and be sure to autoclave all plates and materials prior to disposal. Keep you, your team, and anyone handling your trash safe. I highly recommend outsourcing all microbial testing to any number of food safety focus laboratories or process authorities across the US. Work with them to come up with a testing protocol that works for your brewery. Stay safe and also decrease your liability by working with a third party that has expertise in this realm. I wish I could say that there is an affordable, widely available silver bullet to tackle testing, but the truth is you will need to assemble a multi-pronged approach. If you are interested in working with a process authority, email support at BerkeleyEast.com and we can help connect you. Wow, we have now spent two videos just on safety and for good reason. You have to carefully plan out your non-out brewing process to protect the safety of your customers. I'm not trying to be your dad, but you know brewers. Brewers, they are just a rebellious group. They are all into experimentation and like to mess around. So, you know, I'm just concerned. Don't worry. In my next video, we will turn up the fun meter to 11 and geek out about how to design dope recipes and brew rad non-out beer. Yeah! This beer slaps! In the meantime, if you'd like to speak to us here at BerkeleyEast directly about any of the information you have just seen and you assist us with recipe design sooner than later, then please do not hesitate to reach out to us. Our team of brewers and industry experts are here to help you make great beer. You