The investment Adnams made to get Ghost Ship 0.5% off the ground

Ghost Ship 0.5% ABV is far from being simply a token gesture to the low & no trend, the rapidly growing market has to be taken seriously and Adnams’ final product shows it certainly is.

Production director at the Suffolk brewery Fergus Fitzgerald said: “We needed to be sure we could stand behind Ghost Ship 0.5% pale ale.

“After all, it was going to be representing our biggest brand. We were therefore wholly committed to making it the best it could be.

“That led us to investing in the additional equipment required to de-alcoholise it and the supporting development work to get it just right.

“That same was principle applied to its various formats and when we looked at kegging the beer, we wanted to get it to a place where we were confident our low & no beer could be treated just like any other keg beer by our trade customers.

“There wasn't a great deal of research on the topic of quality control in low alcohol products, so we funded that research, so we could be confident that the quality of the keg version stands up.

“It makes a real difference for customers to be able to have that continuity of experience across all occasions and being able to order it on draught at the bar was of vital importance for the brand and the future of the category.”

Long journey​

The original version of Ghost Ship is a 4.5% ABV beer and recreating this on a virtually alcohol-free basis was a long journey and took a group of plucky people to get there.

Adnams explained to make a low-alcohol beer, it begins with the same method as making an alcoholic beer, with water, malt and hops but they take different routes towards the end of the process.

With choices like dilution, or distillation, and interrupting or restricting fermentation, there are many different paths you can follow. When it began its low and no journey, Adnams didn’t feel like restricting fermentation was the right choice.

Head brewer Dan Gooderham said: “Fermentation is beautiful. It is not just about the alcohol, there’s lots of secondary flavours that come out from the yeast, and it also contributes to things like body and mouthfeel.

“It affects how that beer is perceived in the taste. So, by having that full fermentation, you can still create all those lovely fermentation characteristics from the yeast. We wanted to harness that and then gently remove the alcohol later.”

Later, chairman Jonathan Adnams and Fitzgerald met engineering business GEA, which was showing a reverse-osmosis de-alcoholising unit.

“We were excited by what we saw and so we started talking,” said Gooderham.

“They sent us some sample brews from a brewery that was using it – called Andechs, just outside Munich in Bavaria. We were blown away by what this kit could achieve.”

No-brainer​

Ghost Ship 0.5% was made this way and Gooderham said: “After tasting the results, it was simply a no-brainer.

“We could brew in the normal way – adding the lovely fruity flavours you get from a full fermentation – before removing the alcohol. So Adnams invested in a de-alcoholiser specifically to make this beer.”

Investigating all the options and working out how to integrate its final choice into the brewery took about a year and then came installation.

However, the quest to meet everyone’s expectations didn’t end there. Removing alcohol from a beer alters the balance between the hops and the malt so it still took months of tinkering to get it tasting exactly how Adnams wanted.

“Once we were up and running, it took about three months of trials to get things right,” Gooderham added.

“Since our first installation, Ghost Ship 0.5% has down gone so well that we’ve had to double the capacity of our de-alcoholiser.

“With innovation, all our expertise, the finest East Anglian malt and bold American hops, we’ve created a low-alcohol beer that tastes frighteningly good and it’s now our second most popular brew.”