Estrella Levante Alcohol-Free Beers

Estrella Levante: Murcia’s beer since 1963

Estrella de Levante has brewed in Espinardo, on the edge of Murcia, since 1963 — its founding recipe was created by German master brewer Karl Martin Weber, and the brewery’s origin story centres on striking water beneath the site, ‘el agua de Espinardo’. Today it’s the beer of the Murcia region, brewed with barley largely from Murcia and Albacete, with its own maltings, and part of the Damm family of Spanish brewers.

Like most Spanish brewers it took alcohol-free seriously early: its first Sin Alcohol launched back in 1996, decades before the UK caught up — part of why Spain’s AF culture is Europe’s most established.

The brewery is woven into Murcian life in a way UK drinkers would recognise from their own regional brewers — festivals, gastronomy, football — and its first-year production of eight million litres in 1963 has grown to over a hundred million. The Tostada’s toasted-malt style, incidentally, is a very Spanish tradition that barely exists in the UK’s AF market: one more reason the Spanish shelf is worth exploring.

Estrella Levante on Unhopped

We list two true zeros: Estrella Levante 0.0, a smooth, dry Murcian lager, and Estrella Levante Tostada — a toasted-malt amber that’s one of the more characterful 0.0s in the Spanish canon, all caramel and roasted cereal. Both feature in our Spanish round-up.