Another low alcohol beer thread, advice required

[hop-a-long]

Do you really need to kill the yeast by pasturising or is it enouch to cold crash your beer so that the yeast drops out of suspension and form a solid yeastcake at the bottom of the the bottle.
Also;
Can an infection occur if there's only CO2 present?

 

[MashBag]

Do you really need to kill the yeast by pasturising or is it enouch to cold crash your beer so that the yeast drops out of suspension and form a solid yeastcake at the bottom of the the bottle.
Also;
Can an infection occur if there's only CO2 present?

Or just bottle it clear.

I understood alcohol doesn't have a preservative effect until it gets over 10%. Which is why beers use hops for their antibacterial properties.

Flash Pasteurisation is for commercial reasons. Nothing to do with beer?

 

[MashBag]

After a bit of research it seems like I had it wrong in my above post.

If you don't get the beer above 2 - 2.5% your beer MUST be pasteurized. If not there is no protection from pouring a nice glass of E.coli & salmonella down your neck. Hops do play their part, but % is important.

I have tried food poisoning and I have to say it is not an experience for the faint hearted

On the subject of experiences... How do you absolutely know you have got down to 0.5% (say).
“No ociffer, your blowy jobby snot right, my hydromonimetery definitely shed 1.010“
Also not on my list of FOMO experiences

I am sticking with IPA.

 

[Steveski]

After a bit of research it seems like I had it wrong in my above post.

If you don't get the beer above 2 - 2.5% your beer MUST be pasteurized. If not there is no protection from pouring a nice glass of E.coli & salmonella down your neck. Hops do play their part, but % is important.

I have tried food poisoning and I have to say it is not an experience for the faint hearted

On the subject of experiences... How do you absolutely know you have got down to 0.5% (say).
“No ociffer, your blowy jobby snot right, my hydromonimetery definitely shed 1.010“
Also not on my list of FOMO experiences

I am sticking with IPA.

I actually think you would be very unlikely (unlucky) if you managed to bottle up a brew containing e-coli or salmonella. That would have to entail a pretty poor hygiene regime. Also, I think the alcohol tolerance of those bacteria is much higher than the levels of alcohol in what we typically brew so we would all be at risk if that happened, not just low ABV brewers.

I have now done two 25L batches of low ABV IPA using recipes similar to the David Heath video. Both attained around 0.8% after fermentation and were bottle conditioned to ~2.4 Vols CO2 giving a final ABV of just over 1%. However that still sounds too high an ABV for the OP. I had a few bottles in the last batch that did not carb up and stayed cloudy. I'm not sure why that was but I still drank them with no ill effect! The other 85 odd bottles were good.

The last batch was bottled end of October and drunk this January/February so only a couple to three months old. Maybe my bottle cleaning process could be improved otherwise I'm not sure why a few did not carb up as they were all treated the same. Hopefully the alcohol calculations were correct as I called the brew "5 N Drive" although that does come with a disclaimer!

 

[MashBag]

I agree you would be unlucky. That's my point*
Without pasteurising there is no protection.

*In fact it's not my point... that's me repeating a very reliable source

 

[Steveski]

If you don't get the beer above 2 - 2.5% your beer MUST be pasteurized.

Can you share a link to this information please?

 

[MashBag]

This is the way the commercial chaps are doing it, with flash pasteurization, for those reasons.

 

[Steveski]

Are you sure it is for bacterial reasons though as I don't think many bacteria would care with a 2% beer or a 0.5% one, they would still survive. Certainly e-coli and salmonella would survive and that may be have been a bad example.

More likely is to ensure there is no yeast that can continue to ferment a beer that is likely around the 1.020 mark and could make a nice bottle bomb.

 

[MashBag]

I am not a microbiologist, I can only repeat what I learned in conversation.