Breweries tap thirst for alcohol-free beer

Germany has confirmed plans to build a state-owned natural gas reserve for crisis situations, with costs estimated at €1.2 billion to €1.5 billion ($1.37 billion to $1.71 billion).

The reserve would not be funded directly from the federal budget, but through a levy on gas consumers.

The plan foresees a reserve of around 24 terawatt-hours (TWh), equivalent to about 10% of Germany’s gas storage capacity. To avoid distorting the market, the gas would be bought over two to three years, with the first filling planned for summer 2027.

Economics Minister Katherina Reiche has previously described such a reserve as an emergency tool for the Federal Network Agency, which regulates public utilities. The ministry said it could help prevent shutdowns of individual industrial customers and buy time for repairs or alternative imports.

According to the Reuters news agency, the reserve is designed to cover a 30-day outage at Dornum, the main landing point for Norwegian gas. It could also bridge around 40 days of disrupted LNG imports or cover household and commercial supply for 10 days during an extreme winter.

Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has begun reviewing Bavaria‘s contested police law and whether officers can act before a concrete threat exists.

Judges in Karlsruhe opened a two-day hearing on Tuesday into the state’s 2017 and 2018 changes that expanded police powers in cases of a merely “impending threat.”

The law lowered the threshold for action in cases involving threats to state security, life and health. It allows police to use tools that include covert searches of phones and computers, undercover officers, drones, and surveillance to determine whether a concrete threat may emerge.

In this respect, the Bavarian law is “unparalleled nationwide,” the reporting judge, Constitutional Court Justice Yvonne Ott, said at the start of the hearing.

Bavaria amended the law in response to the threat posed by terrorism and extremism, which was considered high at the time. Legislative records cited the 2016 racist attack on a Munich shopping mall and a 2016 Islamist attack on a Berlin Christmas market.

The case was brought by lawmakers from the Green Party, the socialist Left Party and the business-focused Free Democrats (FDP), along with civil society groups and the Society for Civil Rights (GFF). They argue the law risks violating the basic rights of people not suspected of wrongdoing.

GFF lawyer David Werdermann said before the hearing that the law placed citizens “under general suspicion” and allowed police to interfere with basic rights with few limits.

A ruling is not expected during the hearing and will likely follow in several weeks or months.

Germany produced more than 616 million liters (163 million gallons) of non-alcoholic beer in 2025, as demand for lower- and no-alcohol drinks continues to grow.

The Federal Statistical Office said output was worth about €696 million ($796 million), up 6.5% from just under 579 million liters in 2024.

Alcoholic beer still dominates German brewing. Breweries produced around 6.8 billion liters in 2025, worth about €6.4 billion, but output fell 5.8% from roughly 7.2 billion liters the year before.

For every liter of non-alcoholic beer, German breweries produced about 11.1 liters of alcoholic beer. In 2024, the ratio had been around 12.5 to one.

The production of beer-based mixed drinks such as Radler, a popular beer-and-lemon-soda mix, also declined, falling 5.7% to around 343 million liters from nearly 364 million liters in 2024.

The German Brewers’ Association says the country’s 1,500 breweries are offering a huge variety of alcohol-free brands, with smaller and craft breweries helping to push the range forward.

Guten Morgen from the DW newsroom in Bonn, as Germany’s thirst for non-alcoholic beer keeps growing.

Brewers produced more than 616 million liters last year, even as traditional beer output fell, narrowing the gap between alcoholic and alcohol-free production.

In other news, Germany’s top court is looking at how far Bavarian police can go before a specific threat has emerged. The case centers on whether officers may intervene at an earlier stage, based on the risk of possible future danger.

Stay with us here for these stories and more of the things that Germany is talking about today.