Bionade

thumb|Logo thumb|Product range in 2024 thumb|right|Various flavours of Bionade in 2007 Bionade [ˌbi.(j)oˈnaːdə] is a German range of non-alcoholic, organic fermented and carbonated beverages. It is manufactured in the Bavarian town of Ostheim vor der Rhön by the Peter beer brewery. Sales started in 1995 and Bionade is now available in most European countries. Until 2018 Bionade GmbH was a subsidiary of Radeberger, a group of breweries which is a division of Dr. Oetker. Now Bionade is part of the Hassia Group.

==History== Dieter Leipold was the master brewer at Privatbrauerei Peter in Ostheim, a small town in northern Bavaria, and a relation by marriage of the Kowalsky family, owners of the brewery. Worried about the future of the company, which was facing bankruptcy, he had the idea of producing a nonalcoholic drink by fermentation, on the same principles and under the same purity laws as German beer: the drink would consist only of the natural ingredients malt, water, sugar, and fruit essences, and would not contain corn syrup or other artificial additives. He experimented for eight years in a bathroom laboratory, spending €1.5 million of the brewery owner Peter Kowalsky's money. He isolated a strain of bacteria capable of converting the sugar that normally becomes alcohol into nonalcoholic gluconic acid, which he used to ferment the new drink.