Lowlander Alcohol-Free Beers

Lowlander: botanical brewing, now entirely no and low

Lowlander was founded in Amsterdam in 2015 by Frederik Kampman — a ‘Chief Botanical Officer’ who came to beer from the gin world, where he’d worked with the herbs, spices and fruits that give gin its flavour. His idea was to brew with botanicals instead of relying on alcohol as the flavour-carrier, reviving a genuinely old Dutch tradition from the days when Dutch trading ships returned laden with spices.

That botanical logic led somewhere radical: because herbs, citrus and spice do the flavour work, alcohol becomes optional — and Lowlander now brews only no- and low-alcohol beers. It does it sustainably too, brewing with reclaimed ingredients like leftover orange peel and spruce needles from discarded Christmas trees, donating 1% of sales to nature causes, and running its own Botanical Bar & Restaurant in Amsterdam-Noord. A 2023 joint venture with the Nolet family (the Schiedam distillers) has backed the next stage of growth while the team stays independent.

Kampman’s conviction is that alcohol-free needn’t be a compromise at all — in the brewery’s blind tastings, drinkers often can’t tell the difference, and sometimes prefer the no-alcohol version. When botanicals carry the flavour, there’s simply less for the missing alcohol to leave behind.

Lowlander on Unhopped

We list Lowlander 0.00 Wit — a bright, zesty witbier brewed with botanicals including lemongrass and ginger, just 35 kcal — and the seasonal Pumpkin Weizen, a spiced wheat beer that’s genuinely unlike anything else in the directory. Both star in our Dutch alcohol-free beer guide.