Lowering ABV on recipes

[The Baron]

Hi
what is the best way to lower the ABV to a more sessionable ABV from recipes?
is it ok to pro rata reduce the grain bill or will this affect the beer recipe too much
Thanks Pete

 

[Chrissparky]

I've just added bottled water to the fermentor before adding yeast. Always turns out ok

 

[Slid]

Hi
what is the best way to lower the ABV to a more sessionable ABV from recipes?
is it ok to pro rata reduce the grain bill or will this affect the beer recipe too much
Thanks Pete

You could just go 2 beers, 1 water (or squash)?

 

[The Baron]

Hi Chris
thanks for the reply but I probably did not explain myself properly I do not want to dilute the beer as I will have too much for my keg but want to try and reduce the grain bill on recipes to still produce the same amount of beer as in the original recipe but reduce the ABV. Would I need to reduce the hop bill as well?

 

[Simonh82]

In essence, yes just reduce pro-rata. If you have a beer which is reliant on particular speciality malt characteristics you may want to reduce the base malt slightly more than the speciality grain.

Brewers friend has recipe scaling tool which might help.

 

[chewie]

Hi Chris
thanks for the reply but I probably did not explain myself properly I do not want to dilute the beer as I will have too much for my keg but want to try and reduce the grain bill on recipes to still produce the same amount of beer as in the original recipe but reduce the ABV. Would I need to reduce the hop bill as well?

A general rule of thumb when brewing 23l batches is 1kg of base malt will give you 1% alcohol, adjuncts/priming etc will add very little to this, if you want circa 4% beer and the recipe is giving you 5% then just go with 1kg less of base malt, scaling down the adjuncts is up to you but remember you are still working with the same quantities of water so to maintain a similar flavour profile you will want to keep those at around the same weight as with the hops.

 

[Duxuk]

With my brewing system and I think in general, reducing grain will increase efficiency. So if 5kg of malt gave me 5%ABV then 4kg would give a bit more than 4%ABV. I have often used 4kg of Maris Otter but in the last few brews I've tried 3kg and 3.5kg to reduce ABV. Being honest the efficiency hasn't changed by much but the 3kg version is considerably thinner in mouth feel. Still good beer, though and I'm sure I could knock it back if that mattered!

 

[The Baron]

Thanks everybody for your input I think I will just reduce prorata and look at speciality grains with maybe not quite as much reduction.
Just to let everybody know what prompted this I had 2 kegs in my kegerator (fridge and freezer) and both me and the mrs had a few drinks she had 3 lagers and I had 6 IPA's. Both of us felt rather drunk which is not normal for this amount but I have found out why I think, the beers had partially frozen in the kegs and it had concentrated the alcohol by freeze distillation so now I have reduced the thermostat in the kegerator and want to only make session ABV beers. Has anybody else ever had this happen to them?