UK: Alcohol-free Guinness to be rolled out again in the next few months

Alcohol-free Guinness is to be rolled out again - and UK consumers may not have long to wait, the Evening Standard reported on January 28.

Diageo’s UK managing director, Dayalan Nayager, told the Standard that the company is looking to re-launch Guinness 0.0 in the next few months as it has made sure that the "production process is tighter”.

The FTSE 100 drinks giant owns the Irish stout brand. After four years of development, and after being described as Guinness’ “biggest innovation in decades”, the zero percent brew made headlines when it was pulled just weeks after its launch in the UK in October last year, and has not been on sale since.

Diageo voluntarily recalled all cans saying there had been “a microbiological contamination which may make some cans unsafe to consume”, and the Food Standards Agency said the “product may contain mould”. There were no reports of anyone getting sick as a result of drinking the brew.

Nagayer said: “If you look at Guinness 0.0, we conducted a voluntary product recall as the quality of some of the initial batches that we launched was not up to the standards that we expect, or that we think our consumers expect.

“So we put in place additional measures thereafter to make sure that the production process is tighter. The brand will come back to the market and we are looking at re-launching it in the spring.”

The alcohol-free brew was launched in packs of four 440ml cans into branches of Waitrose, Sainsbury's and Morrisons. The original idea had been to follow the initial release by launching kegs of the low-alcohol beer into pubs in the UK and Ireland in 2021.

Diageo - which offered refunds to all customers who bought the cans - made it clear at the time that the contamination issue did not affect normal Guinness or any of its other brands.

28 January, 2021