Hasta La Ideas

A brewery in Neuzelle, Germany says they have developed powdered beer and will start market-testing it in September.

After two years of research, and with funding from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, the Klosterbrauerei Neuzelle (“Neuzelle Monastery Brewery”) says they’ve nailed the science. Just add water, and “looks like beer! Tastes like beer! Is beer! With a real head of foam!”

A rendering, obviously

One of the monastery’s actual beers, for illustrative purposes

“This is a dextrin-rich beer specially brewed by the monastery brewery using conventional technology, which has been processed and prepared into a water-soluble beer powder/granulate,” the company writes. And if you’re wondering why this development was underwritten by a government body dedicated to climate action, consider the shipping and packaging implications:

“Billions of liters of water are transported to consumers worldwide, because beer consists of up to 90 percent water,” says Klosterbrauerei Neuzelle executive Helmut Fritsche. By only needing to ship powder, “from an environmental point of view, we [will be] saving on transport, but not yet on the use of resources and the costs of production.” The company is working on reducing the production costs.

Early market testers may be disappointed by one factor: There’s no actual alcohol in this powdered beer—yet. Managing Director Stefan Fritsche, however, insists that “after a few things happen” in the lab they’ll be able to get the actual hooch in there.

The company’s plan is not to disrupt the German beer market—they’ve concluded that the local beer-drinking base “will be skeptical about our product at first”—but to target global regions that lack brewing know-how and have high transportation costs. “Geographically, we are targeting transport-intensive export markets, such as countries in Asia and Africa,” Fritsche says.

For you German-speakers out there, here’s the German-language news report on the technology. (English speakers can hit the “CC” button and change the settings to auto-translate, it does a pretty good job.)