If you’re like most drinkers, you’re likely starting to see a lot more non-alcoholic beer around. Last fall, The Wall Street Journal reported a jump of 32 percent in sales of non-alcoholic beer from a year earlier and an average of 31 percent growth over the previous four years, citing data from NielsenIQ.

Although booze-free beer is most often found in cans, draft versions are starting to spread. Leading producer Athletic Brewing began selling its kegs to bars and restaurants in 2023, while also offering fresh-pulled pints at “pop-up taproom experiences” at its brewery in Milford, Conn. Small producers are following suit, serving their own NA beer in craft taprooms.

That’s a bit of good news for an industry that has gone through a tough couple of years, with overall beer sales dropping 5.1 percent last year, according to the Brewers Association (BA), an industry group for craft producers. But as non-alcoholic beer becomes more common, questions are surfacing about its safety on draft (or “draught,” as the BA and many in the industry prefer to spell it). In January, the BA tried to answer its own question with a report titled “Non-Alcohol Beer on Draught – Is It Safe?”

The TL;DR: a solid maybe.

An Unclear Picture

In its statement, the BA said there simply wasn’t enough evidence to understand the risks involved. Nor was there enough available “knowledge or experience” for it to be able to recommend best practices that could guarantee the safety of non-alcoholic beer served on draft.

While there isn’t enough information yet to say for sure, some facts are starting to emerge. The BA announcement came on the heels of a headline-grabbing study from researchers at Cornell University, “Survival of Foodborne Pathogens in Low and Nonalcoholic Craft Beer,” published in the Journal of Food Protection last December. As The New York Post, Newsweek, Men’s Journal, and other outlets quickly reported, that study found that common bacteria like E. coli and salmonella can actually survive — and thrive — in non-alcoholic beer. Since alcohol kills bacteria, non-alcoholic beer doesn’t have one of the key features that usually keeps regular beer safe, according to Randy Worobo, one of the scientists who worked on the study.

Although Worobo wasn’t exactly shocked by the results, he was surprised at how quickly the news got out.

“I did not expect it to get the splash it did, because we were just doing it to provide knowledge for the industry,” he says. “The media just ran with it.”

Sensational headlines get clicks, and most drinkers would willingly risk opening another browser tab for an article that claims beer is trying to kill you. But the reality is more nuanced, Worobo says. Yes, the study showed that E. coli and salmonella were shown to be able to grow at high rates — two log scales, in this case meaning 100x — in non-alcoholic beer. And while those two pathogens can be very dangerous for the young and the immunocompromised, in most cases they only lead to diarrhea and vomiting, not death.

In addition, there was some good news: At least one of the three bacteria studied did not create problems in non-alcoholic beer.

“Throughput is a real issue around draft beer, full stop, irrespective of whether it’s alcohol-free or conventional beer. The longer the beer is on tap, the more contaminated it potentially becomes.”

“Fortunately, in our study, listeria did not grow,” Worobo says. “There’s something, whether it be the pH or something else, that is actually killing it off listeria.”

But there were also indications of potential greater risks. The study tracked the growth of pathogens in non-alcoholic beer at various pH levels — effectively, how acidic the drink is, with low pH being more acidic than high. While the study included three bacteria that commonly cause food-borne pathogens, it did not include Clostridium botulinum, since that pathogen has very stringent requirements for researchers, Worobo notes, including certification as a Level 3 biohazard laboratory, one step higher than the Cornell lab’s Level 2 rating. However, the scientists did study the environment that is preferred by Clostridium botulinum — around 4.6 and 4.8 pH.

The results: Other pathogens clearly survived in non-alcoholic beer at the pH levels favored by botulism, which indicates that Clostridium botulinum could potentially show up in non-alcoholic beer under certain conditions, such as anaerobic storage at a temperature above 39.2 degrees Fahrenheit.

“That one kills you,” Worobo says. “I mean, it’s the most potent toxin on Earth.”

New Pathways for Contamination

Scary as that might sound, a possible danger is far from an actual threat, and it’s not like the news is filled with stories of folks who died after a few near beers on tap. But moving from cans to draft brings in a number of new pathways for contamination, says David Quain, the author of an earlier paper cited by the Cornell researchers, “The Enhanced Susceptibility of Alcohol-Free and Low-Alcohol beers to Microbiological Spoilage: Implications for Draught Dispense,” published by the Journal of the Institute of Brewing & Distilling in 2021.

“One of the issues with draft beer of course is hygiene,” Quain says. “There is always a background level of microbes in draft beer. And that’s perfectly fine, because they are low levels.”

Those levels only get really risky when they are allowed to increase. And one of the risk factors for microbial growth is time.

“The problem with alcohol-free beer is it will spoil significantly more readily than conventional beer, because of the lack of alcohol, and because of the high levels of sugars.”

“Throughput is a real issue around draft beer, full stop, irrespective of whether it’s alcohol-free or conventional beer,” he says. “The longer the beer is on tap, the more contaminated it potentially becomes.”

Another risk comes from complex and often unsanitary draft systems, both in the U.K. and the U.S. Regular line cleaning can help keep beer safe to drink, but it’s not always something bar owners and employees love to do.

“Line cleaning is a pain,” he says. “It’s a tedious, frustrating, messy activity. But it is so critical.”

Chris McClellan has been posting a regular reminder to “clean your damn draught lines” on social media for so long, he’s forgotten when he started. An Advanced Cicerone and the founder of The Draught Shop, he says that there is a real gap in knowledge about draft quality here in the U.S.

“I post that because it is a message that needs to be heard,” he says. “This is probably my 13th or 14th year.”

Many bars, pubs, and even breweries have real sanitation issues, from aging beer lines to dirty foam-on-beer detectors, or FOBs.

“I mean, I’ve seen inches of biofilm inside of FOBs. I’ve taken apart couplers and looked into the plungers inside of traditional faucets, and I’ve seen nothing but black mold and yeast growth,” he says. “You break open the trunk line and you realize that it’s molding and mildewy, because it hasn’t been replaced in 20 years.”

“There’s not a lot of information out there. There are possibilities down the road that could be very viable. But in the short term, that work simply hasn’t been done.”

That certainly sounds gross, but the alcohol, pH level, and other aspects of traditional beer are generally enough to keep it safe, if possibly sour and off-flavored. Draft non-alcoholic beer might not have the same luck.

“The problem with alcohol-free beer is it will spoil significantly more readily than conventional beer, because of the lack of alcohol, and because of the high levels of sugars,” Quain says.

The current situation has created a balancing act: Brewers need to be made aware of the potential risks, but no one wants to create a panic. Quain says he’s deeply afraid of the potential “pathogens in non-alcoholic beer” making its way into the U.K. tabloids. But as Worobo notes, the last thing the faltering brewing industry needs is an actual beer contamination story.

“This is honestly why we did the research, just to bring it to the attention of the brewers that are making non-alcoholic beer,” he says. “They’ve taken those intrinsic factors and modified them, and now it supports the growth of certain food-borne pathogens.”

More Information Coming Soon

Looking forward, Quain suggests that potential dangers could be overcome by using special standalone systems for draft non-alcoholic beer, instead of sharing the same systems as traditional kegs, as well as smaller keg formats, which would reduce the amount of time on draft. He credits the BA for its leadership in addressing the issue, and for recommending craft brewers stick to small packages — meaning cans and bottles, not draft — when it comes to non-alcoholic beer.

Chuck Skypeck, the BA’s technical brewing projects director, says that another piece of the draft NA puzzle is pasteurization, though most of the research on non-alcoholic beer and pasteurization has been done by industrial breweries, which generally keep what they’ve learned to themselves. Preservatives might also be a solution at some point.

“There’s not a lot of information out there,” Skypeck says. “There are possibilities down the road that could be very viable. But in the short term, that work simply hasn’t been done.”

To increase understanding, the BA is funding an upcoming study at Oregon State University to follow up on the research from Cornell.

“More research is needed by the industry for how non-alcoholic beer will behave on draft, how it’s going to behave with pathogens, and the potential efficacy of different preservatives,” Skypeck says.

At Athletic Brewing, director of global QA and compliance Zoe Riccio cites pasteurization, vendor management, routine site inspections, process validation, and end-to-end tracing essential parts of the safety picture for draft non-alcoholic beer.

“Establishing proper food safety and quality protocols is paramount,” she says in a written statement to VinePair. “We’re excited to be pioneering non-alcoholic draft beer in the U.S. and abroad, and firmly believe that anyone producing non-alcoholic beer should establish robust food safety and operational plans.”

While draft is growing, pasteurized cans still account for “the overwhelming majority” of Athletic’s sales.

“Although we believe that more bars and restaurants will look to serve non-alcoholic beer on draft over time, in general, most on-premise operators are not ready to dedicate even one of their draft lines to non-alcoholic beer,” she says. “We expect the adoption of non-alcoholic draft beer to continue to be an uphill climb for several years.”

That might give the industry time to improve its hygiene practices. McClellan and Skypeck point to the complex web of overlapping state and federal regulations, as well as the way beer has been sold in the U.S. since Prohibition. In the three-tiered system, both regular and non-alcoholic beer suffer from a situation whereby the people who serve the beer on draft usually aren’t the same folks who make it.

“A box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch is going to taste the same everywhere. But beer is different,” McClellan says. “Draft beer is dependent on the delivery mechanism and on the dispensing system. It requires everybody to participate. And if you don’t participate, then you don’t get a good result.”

The article Draft Non-Alcoholic Beer Is Growing. So Are Questions About Its Safety. appeared first on VinePair.