Alcohol free beer

[Tim Hunt]

Tim,

I'll look it out and send it on condition that you tweak it and let me know how it turns out. First taste, it obviously lacks a bit of flavour, then once you've had a few sips it starts to feel refreshing and pretty nice, but if you can find a way of adding a touch more body, that would be great. A lot of the flavour comes from the yeast, definite hint of banana which you get from overmatching Weihenstephan.

Hi Graelish,

That would be good cheers. I was looking at ways to improve the body of the nanny state beer but I may try my theory on your recipe instead. I was thinking of adding maltodextrin in, probably quite a bit, say 500g in a 4 gallon batch to try and give it some oomph. It would up the calories by 60 a pint but may be worth it if it makes it much more like an alcoholic beer. I may make a smaller 1 gallon batch and experiment with oats or flaked barley to see what effect they have.

 

[Tim Hunt]

oops, posted twice by mistake

 

[prog99]

Brewdog did a low profile release of a 0.5% hazy ipa this month. Not found it yet but heard its not bad. I have however seen the recipe and it has a high percentage of lactose in it.

 

[peebee]

Hi Graelish,

That would be good cheers. I was looking at ways to improve the body of the nanny state beer but I may try my theory on your recipe instead. I was thinking of adding maltodextrin in, probably quite a bit, say 500g in a 4 gallon batch to try and give it some oomph. It would up the calories by 60 a pint but may be worth it if it makes it much more like an alcoholic beer. I may make a smaller 1 gallon batch and experiment with oats or flaked barley to see what effect they have.

Maltodextrin would be good, but adds no more flavour. High temperature mashes are a better way of getting maltodextrins and means you can add more grain for limited increase in fermentables. Oats could be good as adds "mouthfeel" ("beta-glucan", a glucose polymer, disastrous in "normal" mashes but a benefit in low-alcohol beer), rye malt might be better.

Check out https://www.themadfermentationist.com/2018/07/rye-neipa-with-mosaic-and-hallertau.html?m=1. Be warned, coming from brewing Nanny State can lead you to overdo the hops (it lead me astray!). Even with that linked Mad Fermentationist one I could get away with half those hops.

 

[Tim Hunt]

Maltodextrin would be good, but adds no more flavour. High temperature mashes are a better way of getting maltodextrins and means you can add more grain for limited increase in fermentables. Oats could be good as adds "mouthfeel" ("beta-glucan", a glucose polymer, disastrous in "normal" mashes but a benefit in low-alcohol beer), rye malt might be better.

Check out https://www.themadfermentationist.com/2018/07/rye-neipa-with-mosaic-and-hallertau.html?m=1. Be warned, coming from brewing Nanny State can lead you to overdo the hops (it lead me astray!). Even with that linked Mad Fermentationist one I could get away with half those hops.

I like the sound of the rye rather than just throwing maltodextrin in. Never really used rye but reading up on it sounds promising. I’d dial the malt bill back to bring it under 1%abv though. I think the most curios thing about that link is the speaker he had playing 80hz noise into the fermenter for a day to aid dry hop extraction; what’s that about!

In regards to improving body in a wheat beer would you add rye to that too as opposed to standard pale malt? Looks like a biab affair with the quantity of oats in the mash.

 

[BassoonBrew]

I've been drinking Adnam's take on low-alcohol - Ghost Ship Low Alcohol. They apparently use reverse osmosis to remove the alcohol. It seems to lack the "twang" of most other low- or zero-alcohol beers, and even has a passing resemblance to the standard version of Ghost Ship. Best of all it comes in 500ml bottles, so can avoid the scorn of your fellow drinkers who think you should be drinking pints ;-)

 

[SteveH]

I'm currently drinking a St Peters "without" and it's a pleasant surprise, albeit slightly weird.

Very bready/malty aroma, almost like they carbonated post boil wort and bottled it!

Tempted to get a couple more and stick some yeast in to see what happens!

Edit: actually couldn't finish it, too sweet after half a pint.

 

[BrannBrew]

The topic of low alcohol beer has been of interest to me recently, I wouldnt necessarily have complete faith to if it was low alcohol do you could take a growler round a friends and still be under the limit. But like others have said having a week day beer without the sins is a big draw.

 

[Madhouse]

I’d like to brew one just to see if I could and then give it to someone without them knowing - success would be them not thinking it was any different to an alcoholic beer.

Would much rather brew it properly rather than take the alcohol out of a perfectly good beer.

 

[Grealish]

I’d like to brew one just to see if I could and then give it to someone without them knowing - success would be them not thinking it was any different to an alcoholic beer.

Would much rather brew it properly rather than take the alcohol out of a perfectly good beer.

That is the difficulty, the only way to keep ABV low is to put less malt in, so it's a challenge to find ways to maximise flavour other ways.

 

[Duxuk]

Isn't "alcohol free beer" an oxymoron?

 

[peebee]

Isn't "alcohol free beer" an oxymoron?

Damn. Every time I see that word I have to look it up! For anyone else afflicted by non-understanding:

An oxymoron is a rhetorical device that uses an ostensible self-contradiction to illustrate a rhetorical point or to reveal a paradox. A more general meaning of "contradiction in terms" is recorded by the OED for 1902. Wikipedia

Yeap, dead right. That is why I always refer to "low-alcohol beer".

(There's even more words in that quote that I've got to look up now … thanks Wikipedia!). (BTW "thanks" could be an "oxymoron" in the preceding sentence's context!).

 

[BrannBrew]

Check out https://www.themadfermentationist.com/2018/07/rye-neipa-with-mosaic-and-hallertau.html?m=1. Be warned, coming from brewing Nanny State can lead you to overdo the hops (it lead me astray!). Even with that linked Mad Fermentationist one I could get away with half those hops.

I did, thank you for pointing the blog out to me, some great and interesting posts, the recipes look interesting too.
I've been looking into the CAMRA's Essential Home Brewing book too and they gave a tip on the siren brew yu lu recipe if you drop the lemon & Earl Grey it would give a good table beer. Off hand I think that was around 3.6/8%
I love stagginerly goods trapped in Amber which is roughly the same strength so I'm definitely going to look into the low strength recipes more, starting from the ones on the site.
Like some have already stated its probably better to get/do a proper low strength recipe rather than trying to adjust/boil down a standard recipe.
It'll be nice maybe not to have a 0.5% beer but definitely something that is of low strength to have on the go for all occasions/sessions

 

[Tim Hunt]

So I brewed a low alcohol wheat beer yesterday having taken inspiration from what was said around using Rye and Oats and ended up with the following:

5 gallon batch, overshot the gravity quite a bit with an OG of 1014 (Was aiming for 1010) but I just kept putting a little bit more of everything in.... hopefully the FG wont be so low.

Recipe was:

Crisp Pale Rye Malt 500g
Wheat Malt 400g
Carapils 200g
Flaked Wheat 400g
Rolled Oats 400g
Crystal Rye Malt 100g

Mash 68C - 1 hour (Probably could have been less)

50g Hallertauer Mittelfruh (start)
50g Saaz Flame out

Yeast WLP380 Hefweizen IV

I'll let you know how it turns out in a few weeks once it's kegged

 

[BrannBrew]

So I brewed a low alcohol wheat beer yesterday having taken inspiration from what was said around using Rye and Oats and ended up with the following:

5 gallon batch, overshot the gravity quite a bit with an OG of 1014 (Was aiming for 1010) but I just kept putting a little bit more of everything in.... hopefully the FG wont be so low.

Recipe was:

Crisp Pale Rye Malt 500g
Wheat Malt 400g
Carapils 200g
Flaked Wheat 400g
Rolled Oats 400g
Crystal Rye Malt 100g

Mash 68C - 1 hour (Probably could have been less)

50g Hallertauer Mittelfruh (start)
50g Saaz Flame out

Yeast WLP380 Hefweizen IV

I'll let you know how it turns out in a few weeks once it's kegged

What is your target abv? I am in similar minds to use rye and oats, and even some lactose I have left over from a brew in Nov as I have a low ipa/neipa style beer in mind. May use golden promise as the base malt with some munch ii or light Munich,with the rye, oats and lactose.. Will post somekind of recipe when I've stopped for the day and have a notepad at hand.

 

[BrannBrew]

STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.033
Final Gravity: 1.011
ABV (standard): 2.82%
IBU (tinseth): 0
SRM (morey): 3.81
Mash pH: 5.65

FERMENTABLES:
800 g - United Kingdom - Maris Otter Pale (25.8%)
350 g - American - Rye (11.3%)
200 g - American - Munich - Light 10L (6.5%)
800 g - United Kingdom - Golden Promise (25.8%)
500 g - United Kingdom - Malted Naked Oats (16.1%)
250 g - Lactose (Milk Sugar) - (late addition) (8.1%)
200 g - American - Carapils (Dextrine Malt) (6.5%)

I'm still working on the hops & it isn't going to be alcohol free but very low. Table beer strength

 

[MyQul]

I tried some of Sam Brooks, Cheeky Half which is 1% earlier. Just tasted like someone had watered down a pint of normal beer

http://www.the-masons-arms.co.uk/beers/single-listing-beer.html.php?s=2019-01-25-cheeky-half

 

[Ghillie]

We have a form of "tipation" in the UK as well.

Sleep and/or death.

 

[phildo79]

... and tastes crap?

BTW I love the advert for Heineken 0% alcohol beer! (The advert, not the beer!)

In fairness, it is one of the better alco free beers available. I don't drink alco free beers as I really don't see the point but my wife was pregnant in 2017 and we bought a few. Some of them (Cobra) are horrendous. There seems to be quite a bit of choice nowadays. Never used to be. Used to be either Kaliber (shyte) or Tennent's LA (also shyte). Now you have BrewDog, Cobra, Franziskaner, Erdinger, Heineken, Becks etc.

 

[Llamaman]

Big Drop also do a good range of 0.5% beers, including some dark ones.