Tried And Proven Low Carb Lager.

[Lindsay Dive]

Have any members created an all grain Low Carb Lager that they are happy with and prepared to share their recipe. I have just ordered some Low Carb Enzyme to kick off my endeavour to produce something that is Low Carb and has some decent flavour profile.

 

[garage_life]

Have any members created an all grain Low Carb Lager that they are happy with and prepared to share their recipe. I have just ordered some Low Carb Enzyme to kick off my endeavour to produce something that is Low Carb and has some decent flavour profile.

I haven't but I'm also keen to have a good everyday beer that is a bit healthier. Save the good stuff for Friday and the weekend. I think the lowcarb enzyme works by converting more of the unfermentable sugars so I assume you will loose body.

 

[brewgasm]

Definitely lose body and mouthfeel. Probably lose flavour too.

I'm also looking at using dry enzymes too

 

[chesl73]

Can someone tell me, is 'normal' beer really that high carb or is it just marketing?
How do you define 'high carb'? compared to what?
And when you say you'd like to make an everyday beer that is 'a bit healthier'. Why would it be healthier? Is it not just a dietary thing, ie, you want to ingest less carbs so for you it fits in with your choices. Ingesting a few more carbs is not necessarily less healthy is it?

I'm not asking these questions to be 'difficult', just to be informed as sometimes some of this stuff feels like marketing - you know, they define that something is a problem and then low-and-behold, they have the solution.

 

[Fro-Daddy]

I looked up a beer calorie calculator and then converted that to carbs, so this only shows the carbs in the alcohol itself.

570mL @ 5.5% = 264 calories
570mL @ 3.5% = 168 calories

1 carb = 4 calories

264 / 4 = 66 carbs
168 / 4 = 42 carbs

How low can you get with the enzyme?

 

[goatchop41]

I looked up a beer calorie calculator and then converted that to carbs, so this only shows the carbs in the alcohol itself.

570mL @ 5.5% = 264 calories
570mL @ 3.5% = 168 calories

1 carb = 4 calories

264 / 4 = 66 carbs
168 / 4 = 42 carbs

How low can you get with the enzyme?

That's not how it works...alcohol gets broken down in to acetate in your liver, not sugar. Therefore it is not adding carbs. It's adding energy, but not carbs!

 

[goatchop41]

I haven't but I'm also keen to have a good everyday beer that is a bit healthier. Save the good stuff for Friday and the weekend. I think the lowcarb enzyme works by converting more of the unfermentable sugars so I assume you will loose body.

You'll find that most of the energy/calories that come from the average beer are from the alcohol. The average beer has very few actual carbs (6-9g). Lower alcohol beers that have a decent body will usually have a higher carb content due to the residual sugars in them (maybe 12-15g).

A low alcohol, low FG beer (therefore low residual sugars AKA carbs) will be the only truly 'healthy' beer, if you want to believe that any beer is healthy! But that sort of beer would likely be quite unpalatable

 

[garage_life]

I resisted using the word "healthy" but for lack or a less ambiguous term...

I've overshot my Citra pale / xpa mash (hit 80 almost) before and ended up with a low ABV (3%, may have even pumped it up with dex) but it was really too sweet, still, didn't have much harsh criticism being a fail and a pretty drinkable session IPA for lack of a better term. I guess the extreme hopping leveled it out somewhat, ended up about 250g in total. It was really "too heavy" sugars wise to be a good beer, even compared to say an actual production session IPA style.

I feel something like this with enzyme may be viable but also not be any less low carb / sugar etc than a decent low ABV pale lager or pale ale of your favourite persuasion as a final product. A session Brut IPA would be achievable I suppose but I'm not a big fan of the styles. I guess if I expected a dry, low ABV Hoppy ale and not an "IPA" I'd prefer that over something claiming to be "IPA" or a standardised style.

Thinking of doing a dragon fruit gose at around 3% which I'm sure will be more palletable, brewer dependant. First suck of the sav for me on K sours.

Edit. Can't type or read.

 

[Markbeer]

If you want a better tasting low carb beer, just simply aim for yeasts with high attenuation.

Think saison.

Belle Saison for me always goes to 1.000.

 

[garage_life]

Can someone tell me, is 'normal' beer really that high carb or is it just marketing?
How do you define 'high carb'? compared to what?
And when you say you'd like to make an everyday beer that is 'a bit healthier'. Why would it be healthier? Is it not just a dietary thing, ie, you want to ingest less carbs so for you it fits in with your choices. Ingesting a few more carbs is not necessarily less healthy is it?

I'm not asking these questions to be 'difficult', just to be informed as sometimes some of this stuff feels like marketing - you know, they define that something is a problem and then low-and-behold, they have the solution.

Bet is not high carb as such, but when you use a full bodied delicious beer as a baseline low carb beer is lower carbs than "normal" beer as it says, and generally tastes like bad.

Large amounts of anything high in sugar or carbs are not great if you don't burn this energy off as it basically makes you fat. Fruit juice and all bread is high carb / sugar but you don't have a sesh on the OJ and eat a loaf. Usually. I'm not going into nutritional crap, this is just a common example.

Generally only low carb beers have the nutritional value chart on the packaging for touting their greatness but most common beers that dont you can Google and find the values and roughly compare a beer to a similar one for your own curiosity if you can't find the numbers.

If you drink 20 low carb beers you obviously will consume carbs and if you had 10 regular beers with half the carbs you've consumed the same amount of carbs.

You're not being difficult, it's the beer carb advertising sprukers that create the disinformation causing the confusion.

 

[garage_life]

That's not how it works...alcohol gets broken down in to acetate in your liver, not sugar. Therefore it is not adding carbs. It's adding energy, but not carbs!

Might not be carbs, which is what we are talking about, but the energy if unused it rapidly ends up converting to stored body.

 

[garage_life]

You'll find that most of the energy/calories that come from the average beer are from the alcohol. The average beer has very few actual carbs (6-9g). Lower alcohol beers that have a decent body will usually have a higher carb content due to the residual sugars in them (maybe 12-15g).

A low alcohol, low FG beer (therefore low residual sugars AKA carbs) will be the only truly 'healthy' beer, if you want to believe that any beer is healthy! But that sort of beer would likely be quite unpalatable

Any thoughts on the sweet FG for a pale ale that's "healthy" and decent? I haven't fooled with this enough or measured any commercials to get an idea.

 

[goatchop41]

I guess that it depends on exactly what you're defining 'healthy' to mean. Are you talking simply low carb, or low kilojoule/calorie? Or something else entirely?

 

[labels]

I make them, they end up low FG. Basically a simple pilsner/lager beer but sub out 20-25% of the malt and add plain old white table sugar, it will ferment out leaving nothing behind except alcohol. Use a high mash temp to compensate for loss of body, sugar really thins out the beer (by adding only alcohol and by substitution of malt which means less malt which = less of everything). Use a yeast which attenuates high.

 

[Lindsay Dive]

I have purchased some Low Carb Enzyme and I followed this up by talking to a chemist where this stuff is distributed. We worked out that I need 50 grams of this enzyme per mash (4.750 kgs of grain) and mix it in at the normal temperature (I use 66 degrees) and go from there. The chemist said that I will finish up with a beer that has a higher ABV, however, the beer will lose a little mouth feel.

I will have to wait and see as I plan to brew next week.