Why are we not talking about booze on a Booze Tuesday post? This is just more of a curiosity thing for me. I figured it probably wasn’t a complicated process, but I never thought to do any research on it. So how do they remove the alcohol from beer?

The alcohol in beer is formed naturally by yeast during the brewing process, a process that also entails the formation of thousands of other chemical compounds, such as aldehydes and esters, which are essential to the flavor of beer. Accordingly, the fermentation step can’t really be bypassed if you want the final product to taste like beer. So, making nonalcoholic beer starts with the same raw ingredients as regular beer and uses the same basic method: Grain is cooked into a liquidy mash and then fermented.

There are two general approaches to making beer nonalcoholic: Either remove the alcohol from beer, or limit the creation of alcohol in the first place.

One Approach: Remove the Alcohol

The first approach, known as dealcoholization, can be done in various ways, but the most common is vacuum distillation. The alcohol in beer evaporates at 173° Fahrenheit under normal conditions; but in a vacuum, it evaporates at much lower temperatures. So, the alcohol can be “cooked off” from the beer without bringing it far above room temperature, thus avoiding the unpleasant off-flavors caused by heating beer.

Evaporating alcohol also evaporates valuable volatile flavor compounds from the beer, so those are captured at the start and added back into the beer after the alcohol has been removed.

Evaporation, even under a vacuum, can only reduce the alcohol content, but it can’t eliminate it completely. That’s why beers made with this method have that lingering half a percent of alcohol. In order to remove all the alcohol, other methods are used, commonly involving a membrane filter that selectively allows alcohol to pass through, thus filtering it out of the beer. Filtration-based methods can be more effective, but they’re also significantly more expensive.

A Second Approach: Brew Without Forming Alcohol

The other way to make nonalcoholic beer is to limit the creation of alcohol. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the species known as brewer’s yeast, invariably converts sugar into alcohol, but it is possible to control the process so less alcohol is produced.

To do that, brewers start with a mash containing a smaller amount of fermentable sugar so that the yeast has less to work with. Fermenting this mash at a low temperature, just a couple of degrees above freezing, alters the yeast’s metabolism so that it produces a full complement of the tasty esters and other desirable flavor compounds, while producing scarcely any alcohol. (The same approach is used in bread recipes where the dough is refrigerated overnight or longer to allow the yeast to produce a lot of flavor but less carbon dioxide.)

The behavior of yeast can also be controlled by limiting the amount of oxygen in the mash (traditional beer making often involves aeration) and stopping the fermentation early, before the yeast produce much alcohol.

There are also methods that involve using entirely different species of yeast, which are unable to convert some types of sugar to alcohol. Fermenting with those produces a beer with the complexity of flavor of classic beer but without the proof.

The various methods are commonly used in combination, first biological approaches to limiting the production of alcohol, followed by physical techniques for stripping out the alcohol that’s present. The result is surprisingly good.

Happy Booze Tuesday! Today we will discuss the $20 case of beer vs the $125 case of beer. Some of you are already confused by this and can’t understand why or how anyone would spend 5+ times the amount on a case of beer. I can understand both sides of the story and hence….there is a time and place for both in my opinion.

I sometimes hit the big discount liquor store in Delaware which is basically a Home Depot size warehouse filled with booze. It’s fantastic. I wheel my shopping cart to the back corner and load up with about 7-8 cases of Molson Canadian cans for $19.99 a case. I then bring these to either drink or disperse among my hockey brothers as they are great post game beers or something light, cheap, and fairly flavorful to sip on when you aren’t in the mood for a thick and hazy double IPA. Have a few of these while you’re at it….they are pretty light.

But then on a Friday or Saturday night, I like to sip on a couple super flavorful, hoppy, bold IPAs while watching a game, hanging with friends, etc. Best part of these are the 16oz cans which are perfect for splitting/sampling with a buddy. These cases (and I just had a buddy bring me some Treehouse and Trillium) run from about $100-$125 a case.

So the cost breakdown here is about 83 cents a can vs just over $5 a can. But the craft beer cans are 16 oz vs 12 oz…so there is a built in bargain and it slightly drops the price per oz. (@ 7 cents an oz vs about 32 cents an oz)

When I was younger, I couldn’t imagine spending that on a case of beer. I wanted cheap and as much volume as I could get. But I’m not a 21 year old college student anymore. Nothing wrong if you are….there is just a time and a place for every beer. Enjoy whatever you’re sipping (or pounding) this week!

I love running scenarios and giving them to my friends with children younger than mine. Especially the ones that are waiting for the “dip”. You don’t need to wait for a dip when you’re investing in a growth fund for a 5 year old then holding it for 55 years!! That is the exact scenario. I advised them to put some money in an S & P growth fund, maybe even contribute a little each month until they turn 18 and see what happens.

Let’s carry your exact plan forward and see what it becomes by age 60.

📌 Recap of what you’re doing

• $10,000 initial investment into SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 Growth ETF (SPYG) at age 5
• $50/month until age 18 (13 years total contributions)
• Then no more contributions, just compounding
• Total invested: $17,800

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📈 Value at Age 60

🔹 Conservative (7% return)

• Value at 18: ~$31K
• Value at 60: ~$530,000

🔹 Moderate (9% return)

• Value at 18: ~$35.5K
• Value at 60: ~$1.3 million

🔹 Strong (10% return)

• Value at 18: ~$38K
• Value at 60: ~$2.1 million

So why are we waiting??