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Synthesising volatile aroma compounds to make alcohol-free beer taste better

A Danish startup is using synthetic biology to produce the volatile aroma compounds that are lost when brewers make low- and no-alcohol beer.

The processes used to lower the alcohol content in no- and low-alcohol beer also strip the volatile flavours derived from hops, which reduces the flavour complexity, according to the Danish scientists, who have created a startup to commercialise the ingredients. They say their process to produce aroma compounds will help alcohol-free beer rival conventional beer in the flavour stakes.

Led by Sotirios Kampranis, professor of biochemical engineering at the University of Copenhagen’s department of plant and environmental sciences, the scientists have engineered baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, to produce geranyl diphosphate, a precursor of many high-value fragrance and flavours used in the food and cosmetics industries, according to an article published in Nature Biotechnology.

Kampranis and his colleague Simon Dusséaux co-founded a biotech company, EvodiaBio, to commercialise their findings. Dusséaux is the startup’s chief scientific officer while Kampranis holds a board member position.

Kampranis said: “When you remove the alcohol from the beer, for example by heating it up, you also kill the aroma that comes from hops. Other methods for making alcohol-free beer by minimizing fermentation also lead to poor aroma because alcohol is needed for hops to pass their unique flavour to the beer.”

“When the hop aroma molecules are released from yeast, we collect them and put them into the beer, giving back the taste of regular beer that so many of us know and love. It actually makes the use of aroma hops in brewing redundant, because we only need the molecules passing on the scent and flavour and not the actual hops.”

EvodiaBio’s method is already being tested in some Danish breweries in Denmark and the startup hopes to scale up its production to serve the global brewing industry in October 2022.


‘Rescuing’ non-alcoholic beer

The low- and no-alcohol category has exploded in recent years . Four percent of all beers and spirits launched globally in 2021 contained no alcohol at all, according to Innova Market Insight, rising to 7% among flavoured alcoholic beverages. Innova estimates that as much as one third of Generation Z consumers aged 18 to 25 never drink alcohol.

However, taste issues are holding the category back. Nearly one in five UK drinkers who have tried low- or no-alcohol drinks miss the intense and complex flavours of alcohol, according to Mintel.

Tony Hunter, food futurist consultant at Australia-headquartered Future Cubed said EvodiaBio’s synthetic biology process had the potential to “rescue” non-alcoholic beer.

“Non-alcoholic beer rarely tastes like conventionally brewed beer,” he wrote in a recent LinkedIn post. “This is mainly due to the loss of volatile hop flavours from dealcoholisation or lack of a full fermentation to extract hop flavours.

“Now synbio has come to the rescue by genetic engineering yeast to produce ‘small molecules called monoterpenoids’. These are the ingredients which provide the hop flavour in conventional beer. By adding them after the brewing process they add back the flavour lost in dealcoholisation or short fermentation.

“Synthetic biology will fundamentally change our world. From beer to food ingredients to cheese making we’ve barely scratched the surface of what synbio is capable of achieving,” Hunter said.

A more sustainable pint

The Denmark-based researchers say their ingredients could improve the sustainable credentials of beer by reducing the carbon emissions associated with transporting the commodity long distances and related refrigeration needs, and by removing the crop from the equation.

Farmers need around need 2,7 tons of water to grow one kilogram of hops, EvodiaBio said.

“With our method, we skip aroma hops altogether and thereby also the water and the transportation. This means that one kilogram of hops aroma can be produced with more than 10,000 times less water and more than 100 times less CO2,” said Kampranis.

According to data from the FAOSTAT database published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), three company dominate world production of hops. Ethiopia was the biggest global hops producer in 2020, with a production quantity of 47,323 tonnes, closely followed by the US (47,090t) and Germany (46,900t).