How Do You Make Non-Alcoholic Wine? - Wine Making and Beer Brewing Blog

How do you make non alcohol wine? I am interested in doing this. Do you have information that can tell me how to do this?
Thank You!
Lloyd
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Dear Lloyd,
Unfortunately, making non-alcohol wine is something that requires special equipment and a little technical know-how.
You could mix up some Welch’s grape concentrate and call that non-alcohol wine, but the non-alcoholic wines you buy at the store are different. They aren’t syrupy sweet. The sugars have been removed allowing the body and tannins to come forth and be the core of the juices character – just like an alcoholic wine would.
By far, the easiest way to remove the sugars from the juice is to have a fermentation that will turn the sugars into alcohol. This is what the commercial producers of non-alcoholic wines do. They ferment the juice and start out with an actual wine. Then the alcohol is removed. So when you ask: how do you make non-alcoholic wine?, the answer is: start with some alcoholic wine.
Anyone can take a juice and turn it into wine. That’s not the hard part. You make the wine as you normally would. The hard part is removing the alcohol from the wine. There are a couple of ways that the commercial producers of non-alcoholic wines go about doing this. Unfortunately, neither of them are practical for the home winemaker:

Distillation
The first way is to distill the alcohol off the wine. Steam it away. This would work okay for the home winemaker except that heating up the wine causes it to oxidize and turn brown very quickly. The wine becomes caramelized to an extent. Commercial producers have learned how to get around this by putting the wine in a very strong vacuum. As the vacuum increase, the steaming or boiling temperature of the alcohol becomes lower. They create a vacuum that is so strong that the boiling point of the alcohol is down into the 70°F. In effect, they can distill the alcohol off the wine without ever heating it up and causing the wine to oxidize.

Filtration
The second way commercial producers make non-alcohol wine is through filtration. The wine is forced under high pressure against a membrane that is so fine that only the water and alcohol can seep through it. The wine is ran past the membrane over and over again until the wine becomes a concentrate. Water is then added back to bring the wine to its original concentration – only now, there is little to no alcohol present.

So as you can see, when you ask” how do you make non-alcohol wine?, there is no simple answer for the individual home winemaker. It requires both extensive apparatus and inside knowledge. It is technology that is way beyond the realm of what the typical home winemaker could accomplish at home.
Happy Wine Making,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

0 thoughts on “How Do You Make Non-Alcoholic Wine?”

what if you mix grape juice don’t firmament it and add Tannic acid would it still be non alcoholic? regular grape juice with the benefits of Tannic acid ?

Ed Kraus on March 18, 2017 at 4:53 pm said:

Darnell, you can certainly try that but you are still left with a very sweet liquid because you have no other way to remove the sugar.

What if you pasteurise the alcoholic wine , can it turn into non alcoholic?

Nathan Freundl on October 25, 2018 at 9:00 am said:

The alcohol in drinks isn’t a microorganism, it’s a chemical. More specifically, ethanol. While the yeast is a living organism, removing it beforehand will just yield grape juice, as it wouldn’t have had time to ferment and produce the ethanol and sugars that give the wine its taste.

How to make non alcohol vine

Something I might try is — either with homemade wine or a low priced commercial wine would be to heat it in an open pot to about 90f and try to evaporate the alchol, cool it and heat it again but never boil and you should get rid of the alcohol but I don’t know what it would taste like.

Nathan Freundl on October 25, 2018 at 9:04 am said:

You can do that, but the boiling point of ethanol, the alcohol in drinks, is 173.1°F. You’d be nowhere near the boiling point of alcohol, and it’s likely you would begin to simply caramelize the wine.

You can also freeze it, pour off the alcohol. Let 4th wine thaw, drink and enjoy.

Hello!
It seems to be two ways to make alcoholweak wine.
1. Distillation under vacuum
2. Reverse osmotic filtration
I have diabetes type 2 and am not interested in sugar nor in alcohol. But I would like to make an everyday beverage with good taste. Is there any way for a DIY:er to use any of these methods?
I would be very interested getting a hint how to!
Regards Sten-Åke Granberg
Sweden

Nathan Freundl on October 25, 2018 at 9:01 am said:

In this case, it seems you would just be looking for sugar-free grape juice.

If I could find a “wine tasting” non alcohol option in South Africa that I can obtain in the stores I would be over the moon.

You can freeze the wine…The alcohol won’t freeze but not sure it will separate completely..I have done this once with rum removed most of the alcohol in the process of trying to appease complete tee-totallers that wanted a rum cake without the alcohol.

Darnell on March 18, 2017 at 3:28 pm said:

what if you mix grape juice don’t firmament it and add Tannic acid would it still be non alcoholic? regular grape juice with the benefits of Tannic acid ?
- Ed Kraus on March 18, 2017 at 4:53 pm said:
  
  Darnell, you can certainly try that but you are still left with a very sweet liquid because you have no other way to remove the sugar.
Olivia on March 18, 2017 at 5:24 pm said:

What if you pasteurise the alcoholic wine , can it turn into non alcoholic?
- Nathan Freundl on October 25, 2018 at 9:00 am said:
  
  The alcohol in drinks isn’t a microorganism, it’s a chemical. More specifically, ethanol. While the yeast is a living organism, removing it beforehand will just yield grape juice, as it wouldn’t have had time to ferment and produce the ethanol and sugars that give the wine its taste.
Augustine Nazareth on March 18, 2017 at 6:46 pm said:

How to make non alcohol vine
Harry G on March 23, 2017 at 5:34 pm said:

Something I might try is — either with homemade wine or a low priced commercial wine would be to heat it in an open pot to about 90f and try to evaporate the alchol, cool it and heat it again but never boil and you should get rid of the alcohol but I don’t know what it would taste like.
- Nathan Freundl on October 25, 2018 at 9:04 am said:
  
  You can do that, but the boiling point of ethanol, the alcohol in drinks, is 173.1°F. You’d be nowhere near the boiling point of alcohol, and it’s likely you would begin to simply caramelize the wine.
Tony Corrice on March 24, 2017 at 5:25 am said:

You can also freeze it, pour off the alcohol. Let 4th wine thaw, drink and enjoy.
Sten-Åke Granberg on April 29, 2017 at 6:47 am said:

Hello!
It seems to be two ways to make alcoholweak wine.
1. Distillation under vacuum
2. Reverse osmotic filtration
I have diabetes type 2 and am not interested in sugar nor in alcohol. But I would like to make an everyday beverage with good taste. Is there any way for a DIY:er to use any of these methods?
I would be very interested getting a hint how to!
Regards Sten-Åke Granberg
Sweden
- Nathan Freundl on October 25, 2018 at 9:01 am said:
  
  In this case, it seems you would just be looking for sugar-free grape juice.
Gina on April 30, 2018 at 3:16 am said:

If I could find a “wine tasting” non alcohol option in South Africa that I can obtain in the stores I would be over the moon.
Brush Freeman on September 3, 2018 at 2:42 pm said:

You can freeze the wine…The alcohol won’t freeze but not sure it will separate completely..I have done this once with rum removed most of the alcohol in the process of trying to appease complete tee-totallers that wanted a rum cake without the alcohol.