How Yesa is made

How is non-alcoholic beer made?

There are three ways, and the one a brewery picks decides almost everything you taste.

Heat. Brew a full-strength beer, then drive the alcohol off with heat, usually under vacuum so it evaporates at a lower temperature. It is quick and it scales, and the aromatics that made the beer worth drinking leave with the alcohol. Sugar or syrup often goes back in to fill the gap, which is where the sweetness comes from.

Arrested fermentation. Stop the yeast early, or use a yeast that cannot ferment much, so the alcohol never forms. It is the cheapest route and the beer arrives thin and a little worty, because the sugars were never converted. Heavy hopping usually covers it. That is why so much craft non-alcoholic beer is a hazy, bitter ale.

Cold separation. Ferment the beer all the way, then take the alcohol out at low temperature and leave everything else behind. The flavour that a full fermentation built stays in the glass. It is the slowest and the most expensive of the three. It is what Yesa does.

What does dealcoholised mean?

Dealcoholised means the beer was finished as beer first, and the alcohol was taken out afterwards. The opposite approach is to stop the alcohol from forming in the first place, which is arrested fermentation.

The distinction matters more than the label on the front of the can suggests. A dealcoholised beer has already been through a complete fermentation, so it carries everything fermentation creates. A beer that never fermented properly does not have those compounds to begin with, and no amount of later processing puts them back.

Yesa is dealcoholised, and it is dealcoholised cold. Heat is the other way to do it, and heat is what does the damage.

Is Yesa made by arrested fermentation?

No. Yesa ferments all the way through, the same as a full-strength lager. Nothing is stopped early and no low-attenuating yeast is used to keep the alcohol down.

This is the question worth asking of any non-alcoholic beer, because the answer explains the taste. If a beer is thin, or tastes faintly of raw wort, or leans hard on hop bitterness to cover something, arrested fermentation is usually the reason.

Why does non-alcoholic beer so often taste sweet, or thin?

They are two different faults with two different causes, and both come from the method.

Sweet usually means heat. Stripping alcohol with heat takes the aroma with it and flattens the finish, so sugar or syrup goes back in to give the beer something to be. You end up with a drink that reads closer to a soft drink than to beer.

Thin usually means arrested fermentation. The sugars were never converted, so the body and the dryness that fermentation produces are simply absent. Hops can cover the gap and often do, but bitterness is not the same as structure.

Neither fault is inevitable. Both are the price of a faster process.

Why take the alcohol out cold?

Because heat is what does the damage. The compounds that make a beer smell and taste like beer are volatile, which is precisely why heat carries them off alongside the alcohol.

Separating the alcohol at low temperature leaves those compounds where they are. Nothing has to be added back, because nothing was driven off. That is the whole argument for doing it the hard way, and it took more than a year of development with an equipment partner in China to get right.

We publish what the process does and not the kit that does it. The outcome is the part you can taste and check.

Is Yesa a lager or an ale?

A lager. Most craft non-alcoholic beer is an ale, and usually a hop-forward one, because hops are the most effective way to cover what arrested fermentation leaves behind.

A lager gives you nowhere to hide. It is clean and it is dry, and any fault in the process shows up immediately in the glass. It is also what most of Asia actually drinks, which is the more important reason. A non-alcoholic beer that only works as a hazy IPA is not much use at a dinner where everyone else is drinking lager.

How much alcohol is in Yesa?

Under 0.5% ABV. In Singapore, 0.5% is the threshold for calling a beer non-alcoholic.

We say non-alcoholic rather than alcohol-free, and never 0.0. Those words describe something else, and being precise about it is part of the point. A dealcoholised beer that has been through a full fermentation is not the same product as one built to hit zero, and it should not borrow the word.

Where is Yesa brewed?

In the Greater Bay Area in southern China, where we are building our own brewery. It is under construction now and opens late in 2026.

When it opens it will be the first brewery in Asia built only for non-alcoholic lager made this way, fermented in full and then dealcoholised cold. Until then Yesa is poured at invite-only tastings, mostly in Singapore.