Ultra Light Beer

[Finite]

Hey guys I would like to brew a beer for my dad but at the moment for health and medical reasons is cutting back on alcohol. He loves his beer so i sudgested the coopers ultra light beer which he has been drinking.

Hes not really as much of a craft beer man as me, so where I would be enjoying a weinenstephaner heffe. He would be content with a VB. So imaculate taste isnt as much of an issue, however I still would prefer if it tasted semi decent. (as ultra light beer can)

At the moment I have only used kits and extracts. I havnt moved into all grain yet so if thats the only way I can get this beer then I would be prepared to give it a try if anyone had any links i could read up on (a site with pictures would be nice too).

Anyway. Does anyone have or know of an ultra light beer recipe? ABV from 0.1 - 0.4.

 

[T.D.]

I think this is a very difficult thing to do. I don't know too much about how ultra-light beer is made but I would guess that it involves some kind of technology to aid the process. Maybe heating the beer above the boiling point of alcohol, but below the boiling point of water??? I have no idea, but I would be pretty confident in saying that any beer brewed the conventional way that had an alcohol content between 0.1 and 0.4% would, for all intents and purposes, be water.

The only advice I could possible offer would be to brew such a beer with darker malts. I don't know what a 0.4% beer made entirely out of crystal malt would taste like, but personally I wouldn't use light malts in such a beer. Take what I have said with a grain of salt though - I don't know a hell of a lot about this ultra-light stuff. Good luck though! :beer:

 

[Sean]

"Technology Brewing & Malting" lists the following as ways of producing Alcohol Free (ie < 0.5%) beers:

Removal of alcohol by one of:
1) Reverse osmosis
2) Dialysis
3) Falling steam evaporation
4) Vacuum distillation
5) Vacuum evaporation
6) Centrifugal evaporation

Suppression of alcohol formation by one of:
7) Fementation with Saccharomyccodes ludwigii instead of brewers yeast
8) Yeast cold contact process
9) Interuption of fermentation at an alcohol content of less than 0.5% by removal of the yeast (centrifuging, filtering or pasturising)
10) Fermentation with an immobilized yeast

Of those only 7, 8 and 9 sound remotely plausible for homebrewing.

Perhaps a recipe for a really weak Belgian tablebeer would be more practical.

 

[Finite]

think ill just get normal beer before I try that. Thanks for the info mate! The old man might be buying it for a while longer. Although number 9 sounds achevable

 

[Sean]

think ill just get normal beer before I try that. Thanks for the info mate! The old man might be buying it for a while longer. Although number 9 sounds achevable

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There's is some more information on each if you actually decide to give it a try, including on how to get some of the flavour without being left with a ridiculously high final gravity (and rather sickly-sweet beer).