Why Your Non-Alcoholic Beer Might Be a Bacterial Playground: A Sobering Study
Published in the Journal of Food Protection, the study zeroes in on the vulnerability of low- and non-alcoholic beers to bacterial invasion. Alcohol content and storage temperature stand as the linchpins in bacterial growth. Simply put: low-alcohol beers fend off pathogens, while their non-alcoholic counterparts roll out the welcome mat.
Researchers took a deep dive into antimicrobial factors like storage temperatures, pH levels, and ethanol concentrations. They pumped non-alcoholic beers with five bacterial strains, keeping tabs on bacterial communities over a 63-day span.
Traditional beers with normal alcohol levels generally give pathogens the cold shoulder due to a host of factors: ethanol, hops, low sugar, carbon dioxide, and a rigorous production regimen that includes boiling, filtration, and refrigeration. However, beers with less than 3.5% ABV may not escape bacterial clutches so easily, as research has mostly turned a blind eye to these lower-alcohol options.
The study aimed to fill this knowledge void, scrutinizing how ethanol concentration, storage temperature, and pH levels impacted the growth of E. coli, Salmonella enterica, and Listeria monocytigenes in low- to no-alcohol brews.
Cans of non-alcoholic beer were spiked with these bacterial strains and stored at 4°C and 14°C for 63 days. Sampling ensued to examine any bacterial partying. While E. coli and S. enterica thrived across the board, L. monocytogenes tapped out early. Higher temperatures sped up the bacterial decline, except for E. coli and S. enterica, which proved resilient.
With the UK Government currently re-evaluating the ‘alcohol-free’ label, potentially shifting the ABV boundary from 0.0% to 0.5%, this research couldn’t be timelier.
