(Photo: EMBC)
DETROIT (FOX 2) - Whether you don't drink or you're taking a break for Dry January, Detroit's Eastern Market Brewing Co. is making sure you can still enjoy beer without the booze.
EMBC announced that a non-alcoholic beer line is hitting shelves this week. The brewery has been experimenting with non-alcoholic beers on draft, but this is the first time they will be canned.
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Four-packs of Grapefruit Sour and Tangerine Sour are both headed to stores soon.
According to the brewery, its journey toward making non-alcoholic brews started when it partnered with ABV Technology in 2021 and had an Equalizer machine installed at its production facility. This machine uses dual-stage vacuum separation to take one input, a beer with alcohol, and turn it into two outputs: a clear hard seltzer at the same alcohol by volume as the input product, and also, a near beer with most of the flavor of the input beer but with less than .5% alcohol by volume.
"When we began contemplating the NA market and learned about ABV Technology’s machine, my first reaction was that it sounded too good to be true. We could take any of our beers, run it through the machine, and not only get an NA version of the beer, but also a hard seltzer output," said Dayne Bartcht, the managing partner of Eastern Market Brewing. "So we loaded up a car with kegs, drove to Minnesota, and sure enough, it worked. It was the best NA beer I’ve tasted."
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EMBC said it started with gose-style sours because they provide the most flavor.
The new beers will be available at Busch’s, Total Wine, and other independent stores. You can also find them at EMBC in Detroit, Ferndale Project in Ferndale, and Lincoln Tap in Royal Oak.