Small Beer

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Has anyone had any success brewing a tasty lower (2-3%) alcohol beer - had a request from a mate for his wedding anniversary party.

Obvs not too hard to reduce the fermentable sugars (less base grain, mash short/high/low, possibly liquor back) but I'm concerned I'll just end up with something the consistency of fairy pee...

Funnily enough a different friend posted me a picture of this in the week and said it was surprisingly good...

 

[clib]

There's plenty of really good British cask ales around 3.5/3.6% but very little below that, and I think there's an obvious reason for that. I've been reasonably successful at around 3% but 3.5% is better and my suggestion would be to do that.

 

[Sadfield]

I've gone as low as 0.5%, but have a regular 2.5% Earl Grey pale that do. 2-3% doesn't require much change to a recipe IMHO. A healthy percentage of munich malt adds body and a boost in malt flavour. Using Lallemand Windsor, London or Fermentis S-33, that can't ferment maltotiose would help further.

 

[grooves]

I did a 2.8% Quarter IPA that came out pretty good -

2kg Vienna malt
240g Carapils
270g Caramunich
170g Wheat malt

dough in at 55c
mash
69c 45min
72c 15min
77c 10min

it's important to mash high to limit fermentability and increase body

First Wort Hops
17g CTZ
17g Galaxy
17g Mosaic

Whirlpool/hopstand
6g CTZ
7g Galaxy
7g Mosaic

Dry Hop
20g CTZ
20g Galaxy
20g Mosaic

I used WLP028 (it's a favourite of mine) and fermented at 19c

I'd make it again but probably bump up the hops a little bit.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

I've gone as low as 0.5%, but have a regular 2.5% Earl Grey pale that do. 2-3% doesn't require much change to a recipe IMHO. A healthy percentage of munich malt adds body and a boost in malt flavour. Using Lallemand Windsor, London or Fermentis S-33, that can't ferment maltotiose would help further.

Ta - Good tip on the Munich.
Funnily enough I've used Lallemand London on a couple of brews and while they all initially finished quite high, they all seemed to carry on dropping for a long time and FG was around normal... don't know if that's the expected behaviour....

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

I did a 2.8% Quarter IPA that came out pretty good -

2kg Vienna malt
240g Carapils
270g Caramunich
170g Wheat malt

dough in at 55c
mash
69c 45min
72c 15min
77c 10min

it's important to mash high to limit fermentability and increase body

First Wort Hops
17g CTZ
17g Galaxy
17g Mosaic

Whirlpool/hopstand
6g CTZ
7g Galaxy
7g Mosaic

Dry Hop
20g CTZ
20g Galaxy
20g Mosaic

I used WLP028 (it's a favourite of mine) and fermented at 19c

I'd make it again but probably bump up the hops a little bit.

Ta - is that for a 23L batch please, and what sort of mash efficiency do you normally get from your system?

 

[grooves]

That was on my old setup - so aiming for 78% mash efficiency and ending up at 19l out of the fermentor. So you'll need to tweak it - the only things different to a normal brew were no normal base malt - I used Vienna for body - and mashing high. The end result was certainly drinkable - I was going for something along the lines of Siren Brew's Half Mast which is easily the best sub 3% beer I've had.

 

[grooves]

OG 1.029 IBU 29 - aiming for 1:1 GU/BU ratio

 

[Sadfield]

I did a 2.8% Quarter IPA that came out pretty good -

2kg Vienna malt
240g Carapils
270g Caramunich
170g Wheat malt

dough in at 55c
mash
69c 45min
72c 15min
77c 10min

it's important to mash high to limit fermentability and increase body

First Wort Hops
17g CTZ
17g Galaxy
17g Mosaic

Whirlpool/hopstand
6g CTZ
7g Galaxy
7g Mosaic

Dry Hop
20g CTZ
20g Galaxy
20g Mosaic

I used WLP028 (it's a favourite of mine) and fermented at 19c

I'd make it again but probably bump up the hops a little bit.

Nice. I used WLP028 for a house strain for a while, I always found that, although it attenuates quite well, it still gave the perception of sweetness. Great yeast and very versatile.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Nice. I used WLP028 for a house strain for a while, I always found that, although it attenuates quite well, it still gave the perception of sweetness. Great yeast and very versatile.

"underlying esters of pear and melon", allegedly - although who comes up with those comparisons I don't know ;-)

 

[Jim Brewster]

Mine turned out fine, 2% but tasted like a non-alcoholic beer, but it's still pleasant. Only issue is the dry hop was slightly too much for the thinner body, I should have known.

Main process difference was mashing pretty hot at 75C and used a lower attenuation yeast. I used David Heath's video minus the lactose and used S33 instead of Windsor, and upped the ABV a touch

 

[Birdsnestbrewery]

I have not tried a low ABV brew yet but the comments here got me searching out of curiosity and I found this: WLP618 NA All Day | White Labs
There are a number of links to advice pages on that page too.

 

[crescent city Mike]

Give this a read.
https://crescentcitybrewtalk.com/small-beer-recipes-a-g/

 

[Cwrw666]

I did the Greg Hughes recipe for southern brown - basically a Mann's brown ale clone- a couple of months ago. Messed up my volumes so I got about 22 L instead of the 18 I was aiming for. Came out at 2.8% and was surprisingly good, pretty spot on for Mann's actually.
I'll be doing it again soon but will get my volumes right so it ends up about 3.5% which will be even better.