Bionade

Bionade is a trademark of Bionade GmbH for an organic fermented and carbonated beverage, which is made in Germany. It is manufactured in a Bavarian town Ostheim vor der Rhön at the former beer brewery owned by Dieter Leipold - the creator of this drink.

"One of the goals was to make a drink for children that didn't have any artificial additives and that followed the purity requirements traditionally used to make beer." That meant a product with natural ingredients only: malt, water, sugar, fruit essences. No corn syrup, nothing artificial. And he'd use the same fermentation process he used to make beer — the trick would be leaving out the alcohol.

It took Leipold eight years and all €1.5 million of the family's money to perfect the recipe. Leipold found a way to ferment a nonalcoholic drink by converting the sugar that normally becomes alcohol into nonalcoholic gluconic acid. And because the acid strengthened the taste of sugar, Leipold only needed a fraction of the sugar found in a normal soft drink. Then came the flavors — elderberry, lychee, orange-ginger and herb — plus a spritz of carbonation.

Since its creation in 1995 it became popular in Germany as an alcohol-free organic soda, which is similar to lemonade in taste, but is prepared by fermenting malt, similar to beer. The fermentation process is followed by filtering, carbonation, addition of natural flavors and fortification with calcium and magnesium.

Bionade is available in 0,33 and rarely in 0,5 liter bottles. The main four available sorts are Holunder (Elderberry), Litschi (Lychee), Kräuter (Herbs), Ingwer-Orange (Ginger & Orange), and a new fifth variety is Forte.

73 millions bottles were sold in 2006. Bionade is already present in Austria, Switzerland, Scandinavia, the Benelux countries, Italy, Spain and Portugal, and is going to be present in Ireland, and one day also in the USA.

Links

 * www.bionade.com - international site (in English)
 * www.bionade.de - german site (in German)
 * www.flickr.com - 200+ photos posted by Bionade fans

Bionade Bionade