Non alcoholic Home Brew

Has anyone here ever tried their hand at a non alco beer? Alcohol is off the menu for me for the foreseeable future and probably forever, but I still have all the gear gathering dust around the house. I wouldn't mind giving a non alco/very low alco pale ale or stout/porter a go. Is it just a matter of boiling it and cooling down once fermented or more complicated?
Thanks in advance.

Donadea Leo

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Has anyone here ever tried their hand at a non alco beer? Alcohol is off the menu for me for the foreseeable future and probably forever, but I still have all the gear gathering dust around the house. I wouldn't mind giving a non alco/very low alco pale ale or stout/porter a go. Is it just a matter of boiling it and cooling down once fermented or more complicated?
Thanks in advance.

I haven't tried to make a non alcoholic version but believe you have to make your beer as per normal, ferment as normal and when it's fermented, you then have to bring the beer up to a certain temperature, to evaporate off the alcohol, you can then prime with some sugar and pitch more yeast before bottling for carbonation. The process will create a different flavour to your original beer, I think wheat beers work ok with it hence why there are a good few non alco wheat beers available.
I don t know why you have to stay off the alcohol but if it's a challenge to stay off the drink I wouldn t be inclined to be making any beer, especially if you 're in the habit of having one or two as part of your brewing day. Anyway just an opinion do what you like with that.

I'm on blood pressure meds so cut out the booze altogether. Not that tough really but I miss it the odd time. There's a decent selection of non alco or 0.5% beers which I can drink. I haven't brewed anything in ages and just missed doing it to be honest. I used to brew fairly strong stouts, but that's not an option now! I might try a small batch of wheat beer after a bit more research and see how it goes. Thanks for the reply.

hrcbob

From what I have read/seen there is actually a different type of yeast used that doesn't produce alcohol as a by-product of eating all the sugars.
I think there was a "how it's made" discovery program about alc free beer that described the yeast.
Would be a far simpler process than de-alcoholicing regular beer for the home brewer I'd imagine.

rubadub

Donadea Leo wrote: »

I haven't tried to make a non alcoholic version but believe you have to make your beer as per normal, ferment as normal and when it's fermented, you then have to bring the beer up to a certain temperature, to evaporate off the alcohol,

This is a common misconception, the boiling point of ethanol is 78.4C and many think this means you can just heat to that temp and the alcohol will all "boil off", but it does not work like that, it if did than distillation would be a lot easier!

People talk about it in cooking too which can be more dangerous, e.g. I saw a TV chef wrongly tell recovering alcoholic Frank Skinner that all the alcohol had been boiled off some dish he was about to eat but need to know it had absolutely zero alcohol left.

Some will make non alcoholic beer by distilling/boiling off the alcohol, many would do it under vacuum so it does not have to get as hot and ruin flavours, others use reverse osmosis.

Just found this guide and would not agree with it at all
https://byo.com/article/brew-a-great-non-alcoholic-beer/

Turn Up the Heat
If you opt for the evaporation method, preheat your oven to its lowest setting. The target temperature is around 180° F. It is a good idea to use an oven thermometer, because it is not unusual for oven settings to vary by 25 degrees or more. Once the oven is preheated to the desired temperature, you can place the fermented beer into a stainless steel or enameled pot (your brew kettle should do nicely for this purpose) and put it in the oven. Leave the beer in the oven for about 20 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

You should be able to smell the alcohol being driven from the beer quite strongly during the first few minutes. Progressively, the alcohol smell will become weaker. After about 30 minutes you can remove the beer from the oven and give it a final stir. You may want to take a teaspoonful, let it cool a bit, and taste it to make sure all the alcohol flavor is really gone. A word of warning, though: Hot, flat beer doesn’t taste that great. But the intent is simply to check for any remaining alcohol.

it simply does not work like that. If you brewed a 5% beer you would have to actively boil it and drive off a significant volume before it dropped to 0.5%

Another worrying find. ohhh but he studied chemistry
https://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/AlcoholEvap.htm

James Peterson, a cookbook writer who studied chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, stated in his encyclopedic cookbook called Sauces:

You need to cook a sauce for at least 20 to 30 seconds after adding wine to it to allow the alcohol to evaporate. Since alcohol evaporates at 172°F (78°C), any sauce or stew that is simmering or boiling is certainly hot enough to evaporate the alcohol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_with_alcohol#Alcohol_in_finished_food

A study by a team of researchers at the University of Idaho, Washington State University, and the US Department of Agriculture's Nutrient Data Laboratory calculated the percentage of alcohol remaining in a dish based on various cooking methods.[4] The results are as follows:

alcohol added to boiling liquid and removed from heat: 85% alcohol retained
alcohol flamed: 75% alcohol retained
no heat, stored overnight: 70% alcohol retained
baked, 25 minutes, alcohol not stirred into mixture: 45% alcohol retained
baked/simmered, alcohol stirred into mixture: (see table)
Time (h) Alcohol retained[5]
0.25 40%
0.57 35%
1.1 25%
1.6 20%
2.0 10%
2.6 5.0%

Carawaystick

You could dry hop water or very thin wort to try get some kind of hoppy drink, but I reckon a drinkable non-alcoholic beer is beyond the reach of a homebrewer.

It's taken the major macrobrewers 2 decades plus to get to the stage of a somewhat drinkable NA lager

Carawaystick

Carawaystick wrote: »

You could dry hop water or very thin wort to try get some kind of hoppy drink, but I reckon a drinkable non-alcoholic beer is beyond the reach of a homebrewer.

It's taken the major macrobrewers 2 decades plus to get to the stage of a somewhat drinkable NA lager

I've given up on this idea anyway. Too much hassle. Some decent ones on the market anyway. Baltika and mikkellers offerings are pretty good.

slayerking

I wouldn't be messing around with boiling off the alcohol or anything like that.
I've been tempted to brew a low alcohol nano IPA for the craic as an experiment, never got around to it but my approach would be to brew it to desired strength from the start.

e.g. aim for a SG of around 1.015 and aim to finish at 1.006. That would leave you around the 1 percent mark.

You wouldn't need much malt to achieve that. Mash high-ish to keep as much body as possible, it will need it coz of the low abv and small malt bill it would have a tendency to be very thin and light.
Hop it alot for aroma and flavour. I'd be a bit nervous dry hopping with such a low alcohol but you could try it, prob be fine. Pretty sure O' Brother brewing did a dry hopped nano IPA.

Interesting experiment to see how it would turn out.