Hi everyone, I’ve come seeking your wisdom.
I love brewing beers. Im also, apparently, irresponsible when it comes to alcohol consumption. So I decided thotmi wont have alcohol in my house anymore. But I also want to still brew, and enjoy my brew.
So, is there a good way of de-alcoholizing the brew after it fetments, such that the flavor wont be impacted, or will be minimally impacted?.
Thank you, oh wise Lemmy hive mind
I actually love Hoptea. It’s tasty and gives me the hops from beer and a bit of caffeine. Would recommend.
Making alcohol-free or low-alcohol beer that tastes good is actually really hard and is still actively being researched. Because of reasons, it’s even harder at homebrew scale.
The main methods are:
- biological method, aka arrested fermentation: low OG wort, ferment only briefly, then chill down hard to stop fermentation. Similar to what @plactagonic@sopuli.xyz described. You can further reduce the amount of alcohol produced by selecting a maltose-negative yeast, such as Saccharomycodes ludwigii or a maltose-negative Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain, such as Lallemand LalBrew LoNa, which has only been released recently.
- physical method, aka dealcoholization: brew a normal strength wort, let it finish fermenting, then remove the alcohol through vacuum distillation or non-porous membrane distillation.
Each of the methods have their drawbacks. If you use a maltose-negative strain, you need to be able to pasteurize your beer, otherwise infections are inevitable. This is the reason why LalBrew LoNa is currently not sold to home brewers, as Lallemand does not think that home brewers will be able to reliable pasteurize and use the yeast correctly. The beer will also taste worty and sweeter than regular beer. Dealcoholization on the other hand is basically impossible to do at home. It also leaves behind a thin-tasting beer with unsatisfactory mouthfeel. Recent research has shown that the best tasting non-alcohol/low-alcohol beer can be produced by blending two beers made with these two methods.
I dunno about non-alcoholic homebrew beers, but I love me some Hops Water.
It is basically just sparkling water flavored with strong hops. Means that there are no malts in it. Tastes sort of like beer without tasting like watered down version of a proper beer. It’s a bit hard to explain and I have no idea how to do it yourself, but might be a good and an easy option.
Your best option for it is to make PITO (Czech method with minimum gear requirements).
In short you make low OG beer let it ferment for few days in 6°C. Then cool it with yeasts to 3-4°C and pressurise it and let it for few weeks (in keg or something). Get rid of yeasts and drink.
This beer then has about 0.5 - 1 % ABV.
I tried this recipe from David Heath and really liked it: