Who remembers Zima and how do I go about making it?

So who on here remembers Zima? Does anyone have a recipe, I can make a very lightly colored beer about as light in SRMs as bud light, but I can't seem to figure out how to get it to be clear.

Does anyone have a recipe?

sugar, water, yeast, artificial flavoring

are you sure, sugar will make it create esters and probably ferment hot. I don't remember zima having those yeasty esters.

recipe:
1. dilute vodka with water to desired Abv.
2. force carbonate.

I believe all those things, zima, smirnoff ice, etc use rice as the bulk of their fermentables. Yes, you heard it here first, smirnoff ice contains no vodka... because if it did, it couldn't be sold like beer. Malt liquor in many states has fewer restrictions on sale. As a result, they create a cheap hooch-like concoction and add artificial flavors.

Without a large R&D budget to find yeasts and such which ferment cleanly, I think this is beyond the reach of the average homebrewer...

UNLESS... you can just use rice solids. Maybe use rice solids and a clean-fermenting yeast, maybe champagne yeast? Then add flavorings at bottling time.

It's probably all rice and sugar. Maybe throw in some yeast nutrient, and ferment as cool as you can to minimize esters?

But that still leaves the question of WHY???

To be fair, I was just a kid when zima was popular so I don't have any concept of what it was like, but the modern-day drinks like smirnoff ice that have pushed zima out of the market taste like ****, IMO, so I can't imagine zima was worlds better.

Actually, funny story, in the mid-90's, at the height of zima's popularity, I won a drawing at a local convenience store and won a huge inflatable zima-bottle-shaped pool lounge, which was REALLY appropriate for a kid about 10 years old to be using.

I'm going to be shot for this but..................why not just buy Zima at the store, and use your precious brewing space for beer? I mean, I'm not knocking Zima, it's not terrible, I sure prefer sipping it over Bud Light if I'm outside in the summer. I think in effort-vs-price, I would just pick up a 6'er.

Otherwise, I'd do a hard lemonade, kill the yeast with Campden, keg it, blend it with more lemonade concentrate for flavor, and force carb it.

Funkenjaeger said:

But that still leaves the question of WHY???

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That's what I was wondering. Maybe you should just mix some vodka with some sprite and call it good, or just stick to beer 'cause Zima sucks!

Funkenjaeger said:

But that still leaves the question of WHY???

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Cheaper than a time machine back to the 80s when it was popular?

Edit - My bad, it was early 90s. (seems like so long ago)

Donasay said:

So who on here remembers Zima? Does anyone have a recipe, I can make a very lightly colored beer about as light in SRMs as bud light, but I can't seem to figure out how to get it to be clear.

Does anyone have a recipe?

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You remember Zima and you still want to make it? Understand that Zima and all those other alcopops old and new aren't brewed like beer they are manufactured. A alcoholic base is made by fermenting some malt and who knows what else and then with various enzymes and filtration processes the liquid is left clear as water. Flavorings and sweeteners are then added to produce the desired final product. Trying to brew it from scratch in one step is probably an exercise in frustration although I have seen claims of success on some of the forums.

I wish you the best of luck in doing this, even though it sounds like the rest of us hate it, it would appear that you don't. I am on the why side of the fence myself, but like I said. Good luck.

Also don't know if it is the same thing, but:

Zima

Hey, rest of us besides me! I was pointedly not a hata'!

OT: GOOD GOD the Zima page sucks! I've never EVER seen a worse "verify your age!" mechanism before! It's bad when even a computer nerd says "Dammit I can't figure out how to work this thing!!!"

chriso, my apologies, I guess studying java and HBT dont mix

OT: As for your OT, I agree. I was able to click enough times under the "bouncing bottle" to find the text box, but entering your birth year does squat. Yeah that page needs some help! Silly little asp pages!

I wouldn't know. I never had a Zima that didn't have a jolly rancher shoved into the bottle for some flava. Ah, yes, to be a teen in the mid-90's.

I remember when Zima hit the scene and everyone was all wrapped up in it heh.

Evan! said:

I wouldn't know. I never had a Zima that didn't have a jolly rancher shoved into the bottle for some flava. Ah, yes, to be a teen in the mid-90's.

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SWMBO's drink of choice in her younger days right there - lol

rdwj said:

SWMBO's drink of choice in her younger days right there - lol

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Quit lying ... it was your drink of choice too. You liked it with a butterscotch candy in it, right?

Zima and other clear beers have the color removed by using activated charcoal in the kettle and/or in the fermenter.

This technology in not really appropriate for use in the home.

Additional filtration is used post ferment getting down to well under 0.3 microns.

The flavorings are all artificial. Coors employs a flavor chemist to dream up different combinations in the lab. These are added when the beer is being packaged.

I really don't like zima either, it is more of a can I make this kind of a thing for me. I want to push the boundary's and understand how to get stuff like this done. It goes along with that time I made a miller lite clone, that actually tasted like miller light. I actually have lagering down now, so beers like that (although a waste of time and resources, are challenging to make) and I like the challenge of making weird stuff.

As they say anyone can make a porter and not f it up to badly, who here can make zima?

Donasay said:

I really don't like zima either, it is more of a can I make this kind of a thing for me. I want to push the boundary's and understand how to get stuff like this done. As they say anyone can make a porter and not f it up to badly, who here can make zima?

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Oh thank god....I thought maybe you hit your head or something, you usually give great advice and info to people...You're not the usual n00b who comes on here wanting to make a bud clone for their GF or looking for a cheap hooch fix. It was surprising to some of us to see this sort of thing coming from you...We were worried.

Needless to say I googled to see if there WERE any recipes on any other brewing forums...no luck... but I found out something about zima I didn't know from wikipedia...

It is an un-hopped beer with flavoring agents added, and has slightly more alcohol than an average American lager.

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I never knew it was considered a "beer."

Having said that you'd have to start with the palest lightest lovibond malt possible wouldn't you? And use, i would think Lemon and lime zest for flavoring. Then either filter the heck out of it or dillute it in a high ratio of sugar water....Then use a really clean lager yeast i would think. And filter it again....

I wonder....Would degassing 7up and using that to dilute a low lovibond malt wort fermented with a lager yeast and filtered then force carbed get you close?

Wow, I commend you on this experiment. And look forward to seening your results.

I remember it tasted something like 7-Up.

In any case, if you want to make it and start off as if you were brewing beer, you'll need a filter that's finer than Giselle Bundchen.


TL

chriso said:

OT: GOOD GOD the Zima page sucks! I've never EVER seen a worse "verify your age!" mechanism before! It's bad when even a computer nerd says "Dammit I can't figure out how to work this thing!!!"

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Are you kidding, or are we looking at a different page, or is it just broken in your browser, or what? Coming out of the bottle, in a big arc, is a list of the months of the year... click one, it pops up days, then years... Definitely a stupid gimmick, but far from challenging... Though I did find the invisible text boxes at the bottom by random clicking since it was mentioned, that certainly wouldn't have been the first thing I tried

There's a mythbusters where they make 'good' vodka by charcoal filtering 'bad' vodka. I can't seem to find the episode on the website, but I distinctly remember them pouring the nasty stuff through some sort of charcoal filter contraption and it tasting much better afterwords. Maybe you could get soma Zima like clarity in this fashion.

Just playing devil's advocate here .....


I respect your desire for a challenge, but aren't there any other areas of brewing where you could challenge yourself and still have something you'd want to drink at the end? I'm thinking along the lines of all the "weird" stuff Dogfish Head puts out. I mean, have you gone that far in your brewing career where you're so bored you need to make Zima??

Hell, I'm sure I could fit into my wife's panties if I really tried, but that doesn't mean I want to take that challenge.

I dunno, it just seems like a waste of time & energy for something you aren't going to drink. But hey, to each his own!

Funkenjaeger said:

Are you kidding, or are we looking at a different page, or is it just broken in your browser, or what? Coming out of the bottle, in a big arc, is a list of the months of the year... click one, it pops up days, then years... Definitely a stupid gimmick, but far from challenging... Though I did find the invisible text boxes at the bottom by random clicking since it was mentioned, that certainly wouldn't have been the first thing I tried

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Well see now, that does make sense. I did not see that last night! I figured it was just some "Drink this, now or your eyes will turn purple and you will think all beer but Coors light taste like a$$!" So I didn't even read the arc of words!

Like I said, studying java and HBT really don't mix that well!

Donasay said:

I want to push the boundary's and understand how to get stuff like this done. It goes along with that time I made a miller lite clone, that actually tasted like miller light. I actually have lagering down now, so beers like that (although a waste of time and resources, are challenging to make) and I like the challenge of making weird stuff.

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Let's disect the actual product you are trying to replicate.

• It made by a company with a licensed to make beverages using fermentation.
• The beverage is supposed to approximate the taste of an unidentified mixed drink using a distilled alcohol.
• By legal necessity that company a combination of a fermented beverage and artificial ingredients, etc.
• The purpose of the beverage is to dupe people into believing that they cannot make this with a base clear liquor (vodka, gin, tequila) and some mixer (sodawater, fruit, etc).

You may have heard of a product called Uncrustables. It's a PBJ pocket...without the crust. That's what you are making and you are trying to do it without cutting off the crust with a knife.

JustDave said:

I respect your desire for a challenge, but aren't there any other areas of brewing where you could challenge yourself and still have something you'd want to drink at the end?

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+1 and that knowledge might be useful to, you know, BREWING BEER.

That said, if you still desire to pursue this, post away!

I had 2 or 3 Zimas when they first came out and could not (still can't) understand why people liked it.

Besides a slight lemon flavor I found it very mineral tasting. I always thought it tasted more like Alka-Seltzer - seriously - very "salty". I'd take a light lager and pass it through an activated charcoal filter to remove most of the color, flavor and aroma (not that it would take much) and then add alka-seltzer tablets to it.

Or, diluted vodka and alka-seltzer, or try this, diluted vodka and then add a bunch of buffer 5.2 to it. I was messing around with some 5.2 for some non-brewing stuff and was using it way over the recomended rates, to the point where I could definitely taste it, and it kinda reminded me of Zima (minus the fizz)

If you really want to do this, I'd brew a beer with 50% 6-row, 50% rice, maybe 5 IBU of bittering hops (mostly as a preservative) and add a butt-load of Burton salts to your water - enough so you can really tasted the salts. Maybe some extra 5.2. You can mess around with small batches of water and scale it up. My recollection though is you want lots of minerals in it

My best guess would be to try a very long low temp mash with 50% of the lightest colored base malt you could find, and 50% rice. Maybe 145 degF for 2 hours, to get as fermentable a wort as possible. I would ferment with champagne yeast to drop the gravity as low as possible (.990 ?) I would then try the carbon thing using Brita filters. Perhaps, if you have a filtering setup, you could get a super-fine filter pad and run through that a bunch of times. After that, I would kill the yeast (pasteurize) back sweeten with soda-water (unflavored). You could then flavor with you choice of flavoring syrups to taste.

Seems like an awesome experiment that I wish I had the time for. I don't know who all of you are kidding, but TONS of women love these drinks. It doesn't make it right, but they do love them, they are alcoholic soda for crying out loud.

Cheers

I would say try to make an all rice beer (or sake) and then add flavorings. Add some malto dextrine to up the body and I bet you would be close.

Revvy said:

Needless to say I googled to see if there WERE any recipes on any other brewing forums...no luck... but I found out something about zima I didn't know from wikipedia...

I never knew it was considered a "beer."

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That is why I mentioned it in the beer forum, it is technically a beer, and all of those smirinoff drinks are technically "Malt beverages" as it is illegal to sell pre mixed drinks mixed with hard liquor, so it is a stretch but those are almost beer as well.

Donasay said:

That is why I mentioned it in the beer forum, it is technically a beer, and all of those smirinoff drinks are technically "Malt beverages" as it is illegal to sell pre mixed drinks mixed with hard liquor, so it is a stretch but those are almost beer as well.

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You are just using you're malt as a low alcohol base, and then filtering out any flavour and color. I don't see much sense in going through the trouble to do this at home. You'd be better off with a bottle of vodka and 7-up.

mr x said:

You are just using you're malt as a low alcohol base, and then filtering out any flavour and color. I don't see much sense in going through the trouble to do this at home. You'd be better off with a bottle of vodka and 7-up.

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I think he pretty much answered the "why he's doing it" here...

Donasay said:

I really don't like zima either, it is more of a can I make this kind of a thing for me. I want to push the boundary's and understand how to get stuff like this done. It goes along with that time I made a miller lite clone, that actually tasted like miller light. I actually have lagering down now, so beers like that (although a waste of time and resources, are challenging to make) and I like the challenge of making weird stuff.

As they say anyone can make a porter and not f it up to badly, who here can make zima?

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It's like some of the people here trying to make bud...not the n00bs, the serious brewers who want a challenge of making something extreemly difficult. I applaud him wanting to experiment and stretch himself...Plus if he's successful he'll have the chicks eating out of his hand! (Chicks dig fizzy booze dontja know)

Revvy said:

I think he pretty much answered the "why he's doing it" here...

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Just helping clarify what he's doing. He's making low strength vodka and back adding flavour.

Revvy +1.

Donasay - Ignore the nay-sayers and go for it if that's what you want to do.

I good tester experiment may be to try filtering a miller lite with a activated brita filter. This may give you an idea of the color change and flavor profile, you can hope for. I think you could brew a less flavorful and more dry beer than ML rolleyes:) with the rice/suger, but this could be a cheap experiment to use as a gauge.

Funkenjaeger said:

Coming out of the bottle, in a big arc, is a list of the months of the year... click one, it pops up days, then years...

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Then maybe I just have a hard time reading - either in arcs or in yellow-on-green text. I used the "arc based" navigation, I was musing that it was very difficult to control your selection USING the arcs. But I also count keyboard-navigability as a criteria, even though most people use mice, so they lost points there too. ANYWHO, back to beer:

I am very tempted to accept your challenge, Donasay, and try to reproduce this myself. I'm no stranger to Zima, I never minded it back in "the day" and I would surely find SOME way to drink 5gal of it if I brewed it. Let me think and plot for a couple of days, but we might just be competing against each other to see who can make the best Zima-clone-esque brew.

Beerthoven said:

Revvy +1.

Donasay - Ignore the nay-sayers and go for it if that's what you want to do.

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I never said don't do it. I'm just putting out there what Zima is. Knowing exactly what you are trying to make may help you decide if you want to make it at all.

Boerderij Kabouter said:

I good tester experiment may be to try filtering a miller lite with a activated brita filter. This may give you an idea of the color change and flavor profile, you can hope for. I think you could brew a less flavorful and more dry beer than ML rolleyes:) with the rice/suger, but this could be a cheap experiment to use as a gauge.

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Isn't ML still too dark? What's the lightest light lager on the market today in terms of srm's? Isn't rolling rock nearly clear? I can't recall...

Maybe use the lightest one as a control, and miller light...Let's say it takes 5 progressive filterings with smaller micron filters to get miller light to match rolling rock...Then how low can you take the rolling rock, running IT through the same progression of filters...

Also, what grain has the lightest lovibond? For all intents and purposes this still has to qualify as a malt beverage...so the grain to rice ratio should still be higher.

mr x said:

I never said don't do it. I'm just putting out there what Zima is. Knowing exactly what you are trying to make may help you decide if you want to make it at all.

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If you look earlier on this thread, Zima it is actually defined as an "unhopped beer."

Revvy said:

If you look earlier on this thread, Zima it is actually defined as an "unhopped beer."

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They can call it whatever they want for marketing purposes. It is fermented malt beverage that has the color and flavor stripped from it. That makes it vodka cut down with water. Then add some flavour after the filtering.

So basically, if you take vodka, carbonated water, and some lemon/lime type flavouring, you will make 'classic' Zima.