Super Lite Beer Ideas

[base2aau]

my best mate has been told by his doctor that he can no longer drink any alcohol.

He has always loved a beer so obviously this is pretty upsetting news.

I would like to be able to brew brew him a super low alcohol beer, I mean less than 1%.

I have a kegging system so I have the idea of boiling up some LDME with some hopps, chilling and carbonating it in the keg, but I am not sure what this would taste like.

maybe I could mix in 3 litres of real beer to make it taste a lttle more like beer?

Any other ideas?

Maybe use half a can of kit with extra hops and no extra fermentables?

What do you think?

 

[drsmurto]

Coopers Birell

 

[manticle]

There is a recipe on the coopers homebrew site for a lite that comes out at 2.9. I guess you could fiddle with the amounts of fermentables to drop it further but whatever you do I reckon it will be a poor substitute.

http://www.coopers.com.au/homebrew/makeBee...d=2&bid=109

Best of luck to your buddy.

PS: He should get a second opinion.

 

[Cube]

I know you can brew a very tasty beer at 3 odd percent from a kit. I think you will need to be brewing some sort of mini AG or BIAG to get a flavoursome beer at such a low %. Lots of steeping may be the answer also.

I guess if you use a full kit and brew it to 50 L it would be super low alc. Might be super thin pissy wishy-washy results. Kinda like Corona h34r: I'm sure someone here can crunch some numbers and formulate a beer to match. Be a great experiment.

Sorry bout your mate. Alcohol is not all there is in the world. How old is he/she . Just curious.....

 

[base2aau]

Coopers Birell

yes this is what he is drinking now but after you have been homebrewering for so many years it is a bit hard to start paying $9 a six pack when you you are used to making it for 9 cents for a tallie

 

[base2aau]

I know you can brew a very tasty beer at 3 odd percent from a kit. I think you will need to be brewing some sort of mini AG or BIAG to get a flavoursome beer at such a low %. Lots of steeping may be the answer also.

I guess if you use a full kit and brew it to 50 L it would be super low alc. Might be super thin pissy wishy-washy results. Kinda like Corona h34r: I'm sure someone here can crunch some numbers and formulate a beer to match. Be a great experiment.

Sorry bout your mate. Alcohol is not all there is in the world. How old is he/she . Just curious.....

That is a good idea I have done a bit of BIAB I might do a partial but not ferment it?

he is the same age as me 37yo.

It think I will brew out 1/2 a can of kit, and boil up a couple of a couple of kilo of grain with some hops and throw it in the keg just before I carbonate to give it some body.

I would really like to get it under 1% if I can.

 

[manticle]

I know you can brew a very tasty beer at 3 odd percent from a kit. I think you will need to be brewing some sort of mini AG or BIAG to get a flavoursome beer at such a low %. Lots of steeping may be the answer also.

Good thinking. Go the Coopers low alc recipe, drop the dex and add some specialty malts and unmalted roast barley and hops. Add a bit more water and a bit of maltodextrin to up the body and you might have a drinkable dark ale/stout??

Not fermented might taste a bit greenish or maybe just like milo breakfast cereal and hops??

 

[Adamt]

One of the ways commercial breweries make low alcohol beers is by boiling off the alcohol post-fermentation... If I were to do this, I would make an un-hopped or very low hopped, full bodied beer, filter after fermentation before boiling, and hop it after or while boiling off the alcohol.

Edit: Spilling.

 

[base2aau]

One of the ways commercial breweries make low alcohol beers is by boiling off the alcohol post-fermentation... If I were to do this, I would make an un-hopped or very low hopped, full bodied beer, filter after fermentation before boiling, and hop it after or while boiling off the alcohol.

Edit: Spilling.

i like this idea.

I will try this

 

[manticle]

Style: English Light Mild
Type: Extract + specialty
Size: 23 liters
Color: 7 HCU (~5 SRM)
Bitterness: 56 IBU
OG: 1.017 FG: 1.005
Alcohol: 1.5% v/v (1.2% w/w)

Mash: 70% efficiency (not really applicable)
Boil: 60 minutes
SG 1.016
25 liters
1kg Light liquid malt extract

Grain:
200g crystal 60L
200g Dextrine malt (Cara-Pils)

Hops:

30g Fuggles (4.75% AA, 60 min.)
30g Kent Goldings (5% AA, 60 min.)
30g Kent Goldings (5% AA, 30 min.)
20g Kent Goldings (aroma)

Ale yeast
Maltodextrin to up the body

Add 500 1 kg of unmalted roast barley to make dark ale or stout.
Adjust hops additions to suit.


Please note I have absolutely no idea how this would taste but if your mate likes homebrew it should be a bucketload better than coopers birrell.

 

[drsmurto]

yes this is what he is drinking now but after you have been homebrewering for so many years it is a bit hard to start paying $9 a six pack when you you are used to making it for 9 cents for a tallie

9 cents a tallie?

A standard 23L batch produces 30 tallies, give or take.

So we are talking $2.70 per batch?

Exactly what are you making for $2.70 a batch?

 

[base2aau]

i like this idea.

I will try this

I wonder how long I would boil it for and I wonder if there is a way i can test the alcohol content before it is served.

 

[base2aau]

9 cents a tallie?

A standard 23L batch produces 30 tallies, give or take.

So we are talking $2.70 per batch?

Exactly what are you making for $2.70 a batch?

out of date homebrand draught with aldi white table sugar

 

[base2aau]

Style: English Light Mild
Type: Extract + specialty
Size: 23 liters
Color: 7 HCU (~5 SRM)
Bitterness: 56 IBU
OG: 1.017 FG: 1.005
Alcohol: 1.5% v/v (1.2% w/w)

Mash: 70% efficiency (not really applicable)
Boil: 60 minutes
SG 1.016
25 liters
1kg Light liquid malt extract

Grain:
200g crystal 60L
200g Dextrine malt (Cara-Pils)

Hops:

30g Fuggles (4.75% AA, 60 min.)
30g Kent Goldings (5% AA, 60 min.)
30g Kent Goldings (5% AA, 30 min.)
20g Kent Goldings (aroma)

Ale yeast
Maltodextrin to up the body

Add 500 1 kg of unmalted roast barley to make dark ale or stout.
Adjust hops additions to suit.


Please note I have absolutely no idea how this would taste but if your mate likes homebrew it should be a bucketload better than coopers birrell.

This sound so nice I might even make this up for myself.

 

[jonocarroll]

One of the ways commercial breweries make low alcohol beers is by boiling off the alcohol post-fermentation... If I were to do this, I would make an un-hopped or very low hopped, full bodied beer, filter after fermentation before boiling, and hop it after or while boiling off the alcohol.

Edit: Spilling.

I've had this idea also - so far the only person I am aware of trying to do this is buttersd70, and IIRC the results were less than satisfactory. I'm not 100% sure what his process was.

Also remember - you want to boil off the alcohol only (B.P. of ethanol is 78.4C). I've heard that you'll boil off a lot of nice flavours by that point.

I have however wondered whether or not you could do the opposite of making eisbier - partially freeze the fermented beer, but instead of throwing away the ice, keep only the ice, then thaw that out, leaving behind the majority of the alcohol. This would require a much larger initial batch, but could it work? Or would the ice be mainly water, rather than frozen beery goodness?

 

[drsmurto]

out of date homebrand draught with aldi white table sugar

Possibly the root of the medical condition........ :lol:

 

[geoffi]

If the medical advice is NO alcohol, I'm afraid standard 'light' beer strength (~2.7% IIRC) will surely be too high. I think you really have to be aiming for <1%. That's a tough ask for home brewing.

The idea of using heat to remove alcohol isn't a bad one in concept. I believe alcohol boils at 80c, so you wouldn't have to 'boil' the beer. However, I looked into this a while back and the word was that it is actually quite hard to get it down below 2%. But it's definitely worth a go, maybe by brewing a fairly light beer to begin with.

BTW, a pretty good commercial ultra-light is Schlossgold.

 

[manticle]

I have however wondered whether or not you could do the opposite of making eisbier - partially freeze the fermented beer, but instead of throwing away the ice, keep only the ice, then thaw that out, leaving behind the majority of the alcohol.

I wondered that but I'm fairly certain that it's the water only that freezes off leaving concentrated all other things behind - ie alcohol + yeasty, malty goodness.

I'm happy to be proven wrong - only ever drunk an eisbock, never made one.

 

[buttersd70]

As QB mentioned, thats something that I've been playing around with, using a jump mash technique; however, the absolute lowest I've gotten was 2.1%.

edit: theres an article floating around somewhere on the net, written by some yank who has tried boiling and freezing, to produce the low alc....he found, from memory, that the frozen beer on it's own was just thin and watery, and that the boiled beer became too bitter. What he ended up doing iirc was doing the freeze, then boiling the portion that didn't freeze, and adding that back to what did freeze.....he considered that this was the best of the 3 techniques. Cant remember the addy though....but google is your friend.

 

[Muggus]

I reckon the idea behind boiling off the alcohol may just work.

You'll probably have to take into account that you're essentially concertrating the beer, but if you were to treat it like you treat an eisbock (but doing the opposite), you start off with a relatively low flavoured, in bitterness/roasted malts/etc, and those flavours are intensified.
Then you may as well give the liquid a try and see if it's too intense/not intense enough, I guess you could always add additional hops whilst boiling off the alcohol.
If it's too intense, you could always water it down to make up for the loss of liquid and alcohol.
Then pitch another yeast for bottle fermentation, and Bob's your dads brother!
Even if it doesn't work, it would be a fun experiment!