How go you make a zero alcohol APA?

[New_guy]

My dad can't drink alcohol anymore but loves a good beer

Would be great to brew up a decent 0% APA

Anyone able to suggest how it's done ?

I was going to do a test batch with a FWK
1) add water to drop the SG down to 1.015
2) use 1/4 teaspoon yeast to get it to 1.010
Then dry hop

This should give me a 0.6% beer

I know it will be thin

Any suggestions???
I

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

I would tast ...um....not that good.

You would need to also drop the hop amounts. It will be a tastless un balanced mess.

If he cant drink alc, try Coopers Birrell. Its actually pretty good.

 

[Sully]

FWK is expensive for an experiment exercise ~$50. I have been doing FWK over the last 6 months and I wouldn't want to water them down any further. They are already atvthe starting SG and all you'd be achieving unfortunately is very watered down beer.
Try a single tin of goop without any extra sugars first made up to the 21L - 23L and see were you end up. You can always throw more hops into boost flavour & aroma. Take an SG reading before pitching and adjust the water, at a guess you'd be around the 1020 mark, so you shouldn't need too much more. All the flavour will still be there and not watered down as significantly as the FWK would.


I must say i have been impressed with the quality of kits & bits I have been tasting lately, they have come along way since I first started brewing.


Food for thought...

 

[warra48]

I agree Coopers Birrell is actually pretty good.

The thing we can't do at home is to remove the alcohol from our brews in the same manner is the commercial guys do it, that is under vacuum.

 

[New_guy]

Points taken
We have both tried most of the no/low alcohol beer
Not meaning to be rude but they taste like shite
My theory was a low starting OG only 10 points from the FG to generate just enough ferment for taste
Does this not work in practice??
Also do you carb and bottle it? Will this bump up the ABV??

 

[peas_and_corn]

Good no alcohol beer is virtually impossible to make, and even with the right equipment is really hard. Most breweries use ro to get the alcohol out nowadays, but it still has drawbacks

 

[law-of-ohms]

Low alc will be subseptible to infection. How about fermenting a stanard brew and then boiling off the alc in a cooking pot on the stove?

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

You can always throw more hops into boost flavour & aroma.

No no no no no

You need to go the opposite. The malt balances the hops.

Have you ever tasted hop tea without much sugar/malt.

I have brewed down to 2.5-3%..hard to get it to taste decent

 

[Lecterfan]

I am compiling info to start a thread on this based on several (non scientific, totally anecdotal, but aesthetically rigorous) experiments that are currently still underway as I have had unpleasant trips to the gastroenterologist lately and my alcohol intake has been heavily reduced - down to virtually nothing for about 3 long boring weeks haha. I see no reason to let one of my favourite hobbies be ruined.

Holston, Coopers Birrell, Weihenstaphaner Hefe are three non-alcoholic beers that are available at my local Dans that are easily drinkable (and have helped me survive xmas and NYE without wanting to stab someone in the eye)…one to avoid is Clausthaler - friggin awful. Bitburger 'drive' is quaffable - a half decent gully washer that smells like beer but tastes like water.

While there are always going to be those who dismiss these beers, just like a lot of people will poo-poo gluten free beers or light beers or mid strength beers, that is simply a mind set and they should count themselves lucky that they aren't forced to consider alternatives. Sure it won't taste the same, but I found the social and behavioural aspect of non-alc beers has been great for me. Still has less calories than many soft drinks, is nice and dry and bitter and you can drink a heap of them without causing crippling agony - sounds ok to me.

I'm not yet convinced that it is a total write-off making extremely low to no-alcohol beers at home, but it certainly adds a lot of effort and time and thought to the process. I'm also not convinced that many (if any) of the advice available on the internet is offered by people who have actually done it/tried it for themselves… That's why I'm holding off starting a thread until I've tried about 4 different recipes (first batch is just being carbonated so won't report back for a few weeks as I am comparing the 'full strength' bottled carbonated %3 to the cooked and kegged version).

Anyway - as long as he likes bland lagers then there are plenty of half decent non-alc beers he can smash through. Good luck with whatever you do.


edit - turned an L into a K


edit again - I've also found that rather than buy light beer (you know, for those heavy nights when I REALLY want to feel some hellfire in my gullet) I now just put a squirt of AIPA into a glass then fill it with one of the non-alc beers for a %2ish beer that is NOT a boring old lager haha.

 

[Bridges]

Secondary ferment for carbonation is generally adding about 0.5% alcohol. My wife went through this when pregnant and wanted a beer minus the alcohol. The Germans all make them as they have 0% blood alcohol for driving. Becks I seem to remember being ok. But budvar, erdinger, and many others are around.
http://www.alcofree.com.au/collections/beers
Maybe start here...
Good luck, sharing a beer with my old man is something I'd hate to lose.

 

[mckenry]

Secondary ferment for carbonation is generally adding about 0.5% alcohol. My wife went through this when pregnant and wanted a beer minus the alcohol. The Germans all make them as they have 0% blood alcohol for driving. Becks I seem to remember being ok. But budvar, erdinger, and many others are around.
http://www.alcofree.com.au/collections/beers
Maybe start here...
Good luck, sharing a beer with my old man is something I'd hate to lose.

Bridges - I'm not long back from Germany and hired a car while there. I made the appropriate enquiries as to BAC and its the same as here, 0.05. Its only zero for learners and all drivers in their first two years, plus anyone 18-21.

 

[Bridges]

My bad, that was what the dude in the local bottle shop told me when I asked why all the zero alc beers he had seemed to be German. He's a very knowledgeable bloke generally and I trust his opinions on beer. Cool now I can say I've learned something today!

 

[New_guy]

I am compiling info to start a thread on this based on several (non scientific, totally anecdotal, but aesthetically rigorous) experiments that are currently still underway as I have had unpleasant trips to the gastroenterologist lately and my alcohol intake has been heavily reduced - down to virtually nothing for about 3 long boring weeks haha. I see no reason to let one of my favourite hobbies be ruined.

Holston, Coopers Birrell, Weihenstaphaner Hefe are three non-alcoholic beers that are available at my local Dans that are easily drinkable (and have helped me survive xmas and NYE without wanting to stab someone in the eye)…one to avoid is Clausthaler - friggin awful. Bitburger 'drive' is quaffable - a half decent gully washer that smells like beer but tastes like water.

While there are always going to be those who dismiss these beers, just like a lot of people will poo-poo gluten free beers or light beers or mid strength beers, that is simply a mind set and they should count themselves lucky that they aren't forced to consider alternatives. Sure it won't taste the same, but I found the social and behavioural aspect of non-alc beers has been great for me. Still has less calories than many soft drinks, is nice and dry and bitter and you can drink a heap of them without causing crippling agony - sounds ok to me.

I'm not yet convinced that it is a total write-off making extremely low to no-alcohol beers at home, but it certainly adds a lot of effort and time and thought to the process. I'm also not convinced that many (if any) of the advice available on the internet is offered by people who have actually done it/tried it for themselves… That's why I'm holding off starting a thread until I've tried about 4 different recipes (first batch is just being carbonated so won't report back for a few weeks as I am comparing the 'full strength' bottled carbonated %3 to the cooked and kegged version).

Anyway - as long as he likes bland lagers then there are plenty of half decent non-alc beers he can smash through. Good luck with whatever you do.


edit - turned an L into a K


edit again - I've also found that rather than buy light beer (you know, for those heavy nights when I REALLY want to feel some hellfire in my gullet) I now just put a squirt of AIPA into a glass then fill it with one of the non-alc beers for a %2ish beer that is NOT a boring old lager haha.

Thanks Lecterfan
Your right the rest of us r bloody lucky
I have attached a photo of his current favourite ( from Aldi) not sure if you have had it

The goal of this thread was to find out if I can make a beer we can share as he has never tasted by home brew

 

[New_guy]

No no no no no

You need to go the opposite. The malt balances the hops.

Have you ever tasted hop tea without much sugar/malt.

I have brewed down to 2.5-3%..hard to get it to taste decent

My experience of drinking NAB is that it's like malty bubbly soft drink - not enough hop character - I wanted to make something that tasted much more hop forward

Is this even possible ??

 

[Mardoo]

I've been contemplating carbonated wort soft drinks for awhile now. Make wort, boil it or add something to kill beasties (perhaps campden tablets?), add flavorings and carbonate. Those flavorings could be hops in your case, but the hard flavors to get in would be those produced by the yeast during ferment.

Your short ferment with added campden might work. The other possibility that occurs to me is to make a starter but stop it before the alcohol production begins, decant off the starter wort and add to a separate sanitized wort. Or even make a full-batch and treat it like that starter, racking off wort before alcohol production begins and then sanitizing the wort. That's basically your idea I guess. Flavor is of course an issue as others have mentioned but you might find some success working from recipes like Manticle's Dark Mild.

Good luck. Very interesting challenge.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

It is...but its about getting the balance. Try to keep your SG:IBU ratio the same. I know brewers say you can never have to many hops....but get the balance wrong and it wont taste decent

 

[GrumpyPaul]

I asked the same question once before and did give it a go.

I cant find the thread i started but here i another one with good info.

aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/45730-is-it-possible-to-brew-a-non-alcoholic-beer/

i went with the cooking off the alcohol after fermentation method. Dont boil it.. You only need to go about 78degrees to cook off th alcohol.

The end result was ok...drinkable but not great beer. A few more attempts migt have improved it but i didnt bother.

Good luck with it.

 

[New_guy]

Cheers all
Nothing like a good challenge
Will come back to you when I have a result

 

[Dunkelbrau]

I've been curious about this as well, a nice refreshing brew for people I know who don't drink for health reasons might be a nice surprise on the keezer for them when they come around for dinner.

I'm thinking your want to go with a malt forward style rather than an IPA..

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

I actually went the route of brewing low-mid strenght beers...purely because I didnt like getting drunk drinking beers.

I found that keeping the flavour & aroma amounts low with a nice bitter background to be better.

ie..given an amount of hops, use more as a % for bittering then split the remander for flav & aroma

Say you want a beer to have 30ibu..first 20 as bittering...split the last 10 over flav an arom.