Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Alcohol Free Homebrew

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Alcohol Free Homebrew

    Good morning everyone! So this weekend was a weekend just like any other, with some beers here and there (and a few very good Gilroys as well, but that's off topic), and again the topic came up of alcohol free beer. Now we all know it - beer brewed and boiled to drive off alcohol and all that, and we also all know the issue with these beers. The flavour (and specially the hop profile) is pretty much ruined. But now I've been thinking about something else - why not hop the beer during the post-ferment boil while the alcohol is boiling off? Hear me out...

    Post-ferment boil, most hop aromas are boiled off in about 5 minutes. Flavour is boiled off in about 15 minutes, and after that I dunno what happens. This is what I read up online doing some research. So here's my idea:

    1. Make a no-hop beer. Basically mash the grains and don't do a full boil. In other words you'll be left with a low-gravity wort after a very short sanitizing boil. This wort will be more in volume, obviously, so you'll adjust for this when you mash.
    2. Ferment this low-gravity wort to completion. This should happen relatively quickly since it's a low gravity, and it won't stress out the yeast.
    3. Post-ferment, you dump this low-ABV beer in your boiling kettle, ready for the boil. Here you'll do the boil you would have needed to get to your target gravity pre-ferment.
    4. Boil. During this boil, you do your hop additions according to the full schedule. According to this site: http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/seaso...ohol_trans.htm you should be able to boil out 75% of the ABV in the beer in an hour. Extrapolating that percentages give around 15% ABV remaining of the original amount after a 90 minute boil. You can even do a longer boil if need be to remove more. 150 minute boil and you're left with 5% of the ABV.

    Now if you had a lekker low ABV from the low starting gravity to begin with, say around the 3% mark, you'll be ending up with 0.45% ABV in a 90-minute boil. 0.15% in a 150 minute boil. That's not a lot. Do your hop additions here and unless I'm mistaken, you'll be in your target IBUs and so on without the long-boil flavour of hops in your beer, which is a trademark of post-ferment boiled beers, is it not?

    Am I missing something here or can it really be done as simply as this? If so, I'm going to do a little test run with this on a small batch and see what I can come up with. It'll have to be force carbonated obviously (or re-yeasted and some carbonating sugar added), which I don't have access to, so that's why I'm asking. Am I missing something here or can it really be as easy as this?

  • #2
    Do check out Brewdogs Nanny State, grainbill under 1kg, hop heavy. Normal fermentation. Abv 0,5

    Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

    Comment


    • #3
      This has really peaked my interest. If you do give this a go let us know how it goes. As soon soon as I have space again I am going to do a split batch and try this!

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by groenspookasem View Post
        Do check out Brewdogs Nanny State, grainbill under 1kg, hop heavy. Normal fermentation. Abv 0,5

        Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
        Thanks man! 0.5 is still a tad high for me though. I'm looking at half that as a maximum, hopefully. Want to see how low I can get it, and if it'll be worth trying.

        Comment


        • #5
          Am having a devils peak zero at the moment, it's not bad, better than anything else (low abv) I've had. Am wondering if they added a metric ton of water to dilute or used a small grainbill and hopped it up.
          It reminds me of their ipa, much rather have that when out and about to keep safe on the roads. I'm fairly certain that they borrowed heavily from Brewdog, cbc even has a mandarina ipa. Brewing that tomorrow, but adjusted to late hop and hop stand then dry hop 100g hopbill in total. Bittering with green bullet to bump the ibus (plus I have it and want to finish it)


          Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

          Comment


          • #6
            Ok so I've done some research in the topic, and the more I learn the more I'm convinced I'll be able to do this well. In short, it comes down to the following:

            1. Start with a low-ABV beer, around the 3%~4% mark. This will give you negligible amounts of alcohol the closer you get to the 2-hour time I'm planning.

            2. Holding the brewed beer at a higher temperature, which is starting at around 76°C, is sufficient to evaporate a lot of the alcohol. This temperature will need to be raised as time goes along, but around 2 hours starting at 76°C and ending at the 90°C mark should leave behind between 0.3%~0.5% ABV. That's not a lot. That's not a lot AT ALL.

            3. Apparently (and this is untested), as long as you don't aroma or flavour hop, you shouldn't have to worry about this during the boil. You can add both as you get closer to the end of the boiling off. Bitterness is a requirement though and if you make sure the beer is relatively clear (in other words, not a lot of particles, including hop particles in the beer), you shouldn't change much about the bitterness either. Obviously, the bitterness will increase, as volume goes down, but you can calculate for it.

            4. You should start with some bitterness. Even if it's just 15 IBUs, the IBUs help to keep the beer free from infection. More can be added later during the boil to make up the bitterness, if you wish.

            5. When done, you can water down the beer back to original volume. Now, let's do the math, using totally theoretical numbers (but which should be accurate enough):

            Starting batch size: 10l.
            Average boil off rate (which I Googled), adjusted for the lower temperature: 1.5l per hour.
            Boil time: 2 hours.
            Final volume of batch: 7l.
            Starting ABV: 4% ABV.
            Final ABV: 10% of 4%, which is 0.4% ABV.

            Now say you water down the remainder (to make up for the loss of volume - you need to balance the flavours and IBUs), so you add 3l of water. That dilutes the solution again, with the final solution containing 70% of your boiled beer. That means your ABV is also only 70% of the final amount's concentration. If my maths are correct, that would mean 0.28% ABV in the final beer. That's not a lot. That's not a lot at all.

            Now, obviously this beer is uncarbonated. I don't have a kegging setup, so I'll have to bottle condition this. Adding 25g of sugar to the entire 10l batch will make a lightly carbonated beer, which is something I'm completely fine with. 25g of sugar also means the ABV will be increased - but not a lot. Actually, it seems like it might add only like 0.1% ABV, so we'll end up back to 0.38% final ABV, bottled and ready for consumption.

            Changing the starting 4% ABV to 3% reduces that final ABV to 0.31% ABV, and changing the starting ABV to 2% gives 0.24% ABV. That's very, very low. That's almost to the point where you can drink as much as you want - you won't get drunk. At all.

            So, sound good for the test?

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Toxxyc View Post
              So, sound good for the test?
              Do it!! I am finding this quite interesting.

              Are you saying you are basically taking a "conventional'' homebrew from the fermenter and processing it from there?

              Dont forget you will effectively 'pasteurize' the yeast with heat so will need to add more when priming.

              Could you start with a 5-6% beer to try and keep a lot of flavour, or does that make it impractical to get down to low ABV?
              Langchop
              Senior Member
              Last edited by Langchop; 13 December 2018, 08:28.
              Cheers,
              Lang
              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
              "Dudddde...Hold my beer!".... ; "I wonder what will happen if I ...."

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Langchop View Post
                Do it!! I am finding this quite interesting.

                Are you saying you are basically taking a "conventional'' homebrew from the fermenter and processing it from there?

                Dont forget you will effectively 'pasteurize' the yeast with heat so will need to add more when priming.

                Could you start with a 5-6% beer to try and keep a lot of flavour, or does that make it impractical to get down to low ABV?
                Yep. Take a normal homebrew, de-alcoholise it and bottle it. I'll be tapping off a bit of the yeast cake to give the beer something to carbonate by, yes. I don't want to go too heavy - I don't want to carmelize or burn sugars and also don't want to waste so much ingredients on a test run :P

                Comment


                • #9
                  Go for it, keen to hear your results. You could boil and hop-up your replacement water, whilst the main brew is tapering down and then dry hop to slot back some aroma

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by groenspookasem View Post
                    Go for it, keen to hear your results. You could boil and hop-up your replacement water, whilst the main brew is tapering down and then dry hop to slot back some aroma
                    Yeah I was thinking about this a lot, and I think a hoppy tea might be the best way to add aroma and flavour to the brew. I can also add the sugar, make sure the solution is clear, dilute the beer with the tea and bottle directly from there after cooling.

                    I'll still see if I want to dry-hop. Might not be the absolute best idea for a starter, but I'll see. Depends on how much hops remains

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      I might join you in a low abv test, it seems to be a fairly simple process after bittering and fermentation. My idea around the hoptea is that you can do a similar boil time to isomerize the alpha's without too much hassle. I only late hop, so in this instance (if it was me) I'd boil the 3L water and add my late hop additions for 5min, remove the hops and cool or dunk the 3L hoptea into your de-alcoholising cooling down brew, once cooled I'd dry hop with around 50g-60g and keg.

                      I was going to pickup a micro pipework kit for the GF to do lawnmower/low abv beers, but if this works then that would be pretty darn cool, but dangerous. Beer o clock can be anytime.
                      groenspookasem
                      Banned
                      Last edited by groenspookasem; 13 December 2018, 13:26.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Does anyone know of a place or a person or something I can use or send a beer to when it's done so that the actual ABV can be measured?

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Toxxyc View Post
                          Does anyone know of a place or a person or something I can use or send a beer to when it's done so that the actual ABV can be measured?
                          vinlab.com
                          2017 SANHC-Finals-German Pilsner.2019 Academy of Taste-1st Lager +1st Overall-German Leichtbier.2019 Free State Fermenters-1st Place-Australian Sparkling Ale.2019 SANHC-Final Round-German Leichtbier.2020 SANHC-Top 5-EishBock.2021 SANHC-Low Alcohol Cat: 2nd-2%Lager, Over All Cat: 2nd-Schwarzbier.2022 Free State Fermenters-1st-American light Lager.2022 Fools and Fans National Competition-Top 5-Dunkles Bock

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            The idea and process sound very good!

                            Chat to Apiwe at https://brewsterscraft.co.za/. She runs a lab for beer testing.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Refractometer? Although I'm not sure if it would read that low

                              Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X