Non‑alcoholic beers (NABs) are a rapidly expanding market. However, producing high‑quality products remains challenging because ethanol strongly shapes beer flavor and mouthfeel. Biological production methods, which restrict alcohol formation during fermentation, offer advantages over physical methods, which remove alcohol after fermentation. However, they are limited by the performance and diversity of available yeasts. Recent advances in bioprospecting, breeding, hybridization, adaptive evolution, and genetic engineering reveal how different yeast lineages and trait-development strategies can balance reduced ethanol production with desirable aromatic complexity. Yeasts with naturally limited sugar utilization and favorable aroma‑forming capacities are emerging as promising foundations for next‑generation NAB production. Progress in this field will depend on integrating biological strategies with standardized phenotyping, deeper exploration of natural diversity, and emerging computational tools for predicting flavor and guiding targeted strain improvement. Together, these developments outline a path toward rational, data‑driven design of superior yeasts tailored for NAB production.
Cibin et al. (2026) studied this question.