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Nonalcoholic beer sales spiking

Demand likely bolstered by new traffic law, brewers say

By Michael Heitmann
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
September 5th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
The taste of nonalcoholic beer has improved in the past few years, thanks to new production techniques.
Last year was good for the beer industry, as an ocean of 1.6 billion liters (422.7 million gallons) of lager opened up to swallow drinkers domestically, helping the country retain its title as the world’s largest consumer of beer per capita.
But while sales have shown slight improvement, the domestic demand for beer has remained fairly static in recent years, apart from one notable exception: Consumption of nonalcoholic beer jumped 37 percent in 2006 and has nearly tripled since 2000, according to the Czech Beer and Malt Association. Last year the country bought some 20 million liters of nonalcoholic beer, chosen from a growing selection of 20 domestic brands.
“The dynamics are incredible,” said Alexej Bechtin, spokesman for Plzeňský Prazdroj, the country’s largest brewer.
One possible explanation for the spike in nonalcoholic beer sales could be the penalty point system that was introduced last year, the breweries said. If caught, drunk drivers can receive up to seven penalty points, a fine of 20,000 Kč ($988) and a one year ban from driving.
“Now customers are beginning to pay more attention to nonalcoholic beer,” said Budvar spokesman Petr Samec. “And this comes at a time when its quality and taste have reached a much higher level than the nonalcoholic beer many of us remember as a beverage we’d have only in times of need, as a substitute.”
Many consumers are discouraged by the memory of Pito, a wishy-washy nonalcoholic beer produced during the late 1970s. Since then, production technology has made great strides.
Plzeňský Prazdroj uses specialized yeast in the brewing of its nonalcoholic beer, called Radegast Birell. It naturally stops fermentation once alcohol levels have reached 0.4 percent, when the alcohol concentration becomes toxic for the yeast. All brewer’s yeasts eventually succumb to alcohol at higher strengths, but tolerance varies across species.
Even Pito is recovering from its watery past. Josef Tolar, the Budvar brewmaster who was part of the original Pito design team, now has access to the same high-quality ingredients used in the company’s other beers, including hops from the Žatec region in north Bohemia.
While consumption is rising, nonalcoholic beer has not yet forged a career of its own. Brewmasters suffer the pain of constant comparisons to regular beer and are searching for ways to account for that magic missing ingredient. “The sensory input of alcohol is missing,” Samec said. “We try to compensate this by adding carbon dioxide.”
Conservative market
Other companies are trying to bridge the gap between nonalcoholic beers and regular lagers in different ways. Some smaller breweries have added “light” beer to their product mix, including Bernard, the successful small brewer based in Humpolec, halfway between Prague and Brno.
Stanislav Bernard, the general manager and co-owner of Bernard, even makes an appearance on ads supporting the company’s new light beer, which has a strength of 2.2 percent and is only available as a draft. He sports a Reggae headband and makes a peace sign. His mugshot already appears on bottles of Bernard’s nonalcoholic beer across the country.
“When the ad agency proposed putting my face on the bottle, I almost kicked them out,” Bernard said. “But then they persuaded me, of course. Because there is a sense of self-irony, it’s fine with me.”
Bernard’s much-larger rivals remain skeptical. Budvar’s Samec doesn’t expect any growth in the light-beer market, and neither does Prazdroj’s Bechtin. These beers are popular abroad and could theoretically be imported into the Czech Republic if there were demand, Bechtin said. However, there is not much room for innovation in the country.
Czechs are rather conservative when it comes to choosing a brand, said Tomáš Erlich, chairman of the Czech Beer Consumers Union.
“They aren’t interested in choosing the right beer for the right occasion or to go with the right food,” he said, a habit that he deplores. “Drinking the same type of beer — or even the same brand and type — all the time and on all occasions is not the best thing to do.”
The major breweries are following Erlich’s advice, to a certain extent, with their marketing, trying to expand the frontiers of beer drinking to people in situations where having a pint was previously unacceptable: the lifestyle-conscious jogger or students who fancy a pre-lecture pint, for example. Who could object to having a nonalcoholic beer then?
What remains uncertain is whether the rise of nonalcoholic beer will help the country tackle its alcoholism problem, which presents challenges that are too often ignored by most Czechs, said Václav Dvořák, physician-in-chief of the addiction treatment center for women at Prague’s Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital.
“It would be a good sign if nonalcoholic beer could increase its market share at the cost of alcoholic beer,” he said.

Michael Heitmann can be reached at mheitmann@praguepost.com


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