eli5: Why does non-alcoholic beer taste so much sweeter than normal beer?
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Some non-alcoholic beer is made by stopping the fermentation shortly after it’s started, which means the yeast doesn’t get to eat all the sugar, which means there’s way more sugar left in the beer.
Theory: sugar is what turns to alcohol. When you arrest that process early, you get less alcohol and more sugar.
Another contributing factor is that alcohol and also the various compounds that are created when fermenting alcohol are bitter. That bitterness balances the sweetness in the drink, so a lot of non alcoholic drinks end up tasting more sweet.
I think that might explain partly why the good 0 alcohol beers still often taste quite light – they don’t have that balance of alcohol and sugar in them.
Alcohol has a flavor profile that is missed after NA beer is produced, can’t replace the flavor and makes NA taste sweeter.
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