The birth of alcohol-free beer!

How did alcohol-free beer actually come about? And you probably have even more questions like:

• How long have we known it?
• When did it come to the Netherlands?
• What is it actually good for?
• Can you combine it with sport?

These are all questions that you have, which we hope to answer for you with this blog post.

How did alcohol-free beer come about?

Over the years, the demand for non-alcoholic beers has increased. Sales of non-alcoholic beers increased by 8.5% in 2020. This is remarkable, considering the fact that the beer consumption market is also in decline! Now that we know this, it is of course fun to find out where this Alcohol-Free Beer actually originated.

You might think that the birth of alcohol-free beer is recent, but nothing could be further from the truth! Alcohol-free beer was already being consumed in the Middle Ages. Lower-class workers were often given beer mixed with water. This was seen at the time as a form of salary and the 'alcohol-free' beer was considered a nutritious drink. This provided a solution to compensate for the lack of decent drinking water. The people of the higher class, such as the nobility, often only drank wine. So in other words, the lower you were in the ''class'', the faster you came into contact with the alcohol-free beer. You could say that the poor workers in the Middle Ages were the first to drink alcohol-free beer!

In the Middle Ages, they were not yet consciously brewing alcohol-free beer. The conscious brewing of alcohol-free beer happened about 100 years ago. And where was alcohol-free beer first brewed? In our little country, of course! In 1918 the first alcohol-free beer appeared on the market: Malto. This alcohol-free beer was intended for sportsmen and young people. But why was that?

It was thus claimed at the time that the alcohol-free beer had a stimulating effect on learning and that you could therefore learn more sharply and soberly (not bad, of course, if you compare it with drinking the alcoholic counterpart). It was also possible for sportsmen to enjoy a non-alcoholic beer without impairing their sporting performance. The alcohol-free beer 'Malto' did not remain on the market for long, but the idea of drinking alcohol-free beer never disappeared.

Do you know now?

Now that you know about the origins of non-alcoholic beer, what are you waiting for? Enjoy our extensive and challenging range of products and pick out some goodies!