HELP NEEDED ASAP-"Non Alcoholic" homebrew advice

First of all, I want to thank everyone who contributes their shared experiences. I have learned so much in my short time here. I hope to give back to my fellow HBT'ers one day soon!

That being said, this is a topic near and dear to my heart. A good friend of mine(former beer lover) had a near fatal cardiac arrest and cannot drink alcohol(Cardiologists orders) I'd like to brew up a 5 gallon batch of "non alcoholic" homebrew.

I'm aware that all "NA" brew have a mimimal amount of alcohol(less than 0.5%) He is allowed NA brews, but he hates the BMC crap... I know there's other commercial options, but he loves IPA's/APA's,and I'd like to order a all grain kit from AHS ASAP! This kit sounds great- AHS Session Series Northwest Special [05105] (http://www.austinhomebrew.com)

So my question is this, what do i need to do differently to ensure that we make a great tasting homebrew minus the alcohol. This kit is already low(3.9%) What do I do differently through out the fermentation process?(amount of yeast to pitch, length of primary/secondary?)

Thanks in advance for all your help! I appreciate it more than I can express.

Salud

Here is a link to BM's technique of boiling out the alcohol, which i've done before: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/creating-na-how-i-neutered-my-beer-39433/

BTW is you are kegging+Force carbing no problem, but if you bottle, you need to add a packet of dry yeast with priming sugar to carbonate it.

p.s. you will also lose some hop characteristics by boiling away aroma. might want to look into hop extract to counter this.

You might consider mashing at 158F. That will reduce the fermentables. And I'd hold off on the aroma hops until the end of the alcohol boil-off.

david_42 said:

You might consider mashing at 158F. That will reduce the fermentables. And I'd hold off on the aroma hops until the end of the alcohol boil-off.

Click to expand...

It's reducing fermentable sugar, not reducing sugar. The OG will be just as high as before, but you'll have a bunch of unfermentable sugars, thus a sweet beer that is NA. Have him try adding a hop pellet or two to a bottle of NA before he drinks it to see how that is.

I had done some research on this myself not to long ago. I don't reacall all of the info that I had found but what I remember from it:

The best thing to do is to bake off the alcohol. IIRC, you would place the fermented beer in the oven at 150-175 for about an hour. I read conflicting info on the removal of hop flavor rearding this method. I plan on purchasing a pony keg and trying this, but have yet to do so.

Again this is just what I recall from the few hours of research I did, and facts may be incorrect.

could you boil off the alcohol via a vacuum? seems like if you did this, you wouldn't get any off tastes because of heating, though it may be impractical and not work

twoodward15 said:

Have him try adding a hop pellet or two to a bottle of NA before he drinks it to see how that is.

Click to expand...

I know this does not exactly answer your question-- but I second this approach, in the meantime while you are making the NA beer. I have made some gluten free beer...the sorghum has a cidery taste. We put pellets or hop flowers in the pint glass to cover up cr#p beer. I also have cut up fresh/whole ginger root and put the slices in, + a slice of orange.

Check this out:

http://hbd.org/hbd/archive/1609.html#1609-18

I strongly suggest not giving any beer to your friend until you have accurately tested the alcohol level and determined it is truly NA.

twoodward15 said:

It's reducing fermentable sugar, not reducing sugar. The OG will be just as high as before, but you'll have a bunch of unfermentable sugars, thus a sweet beer that is NA. Have him try adding a hop pellet or two to a bottle of NA before he drinks it to see how that is.

Click to expand...

Dextrins do not correlate with sweetness, as an FYI...

Noob alert!!! Would using a small amount of DME and otherwise running it like normal without adding yeast still give you a beer flavor? If you did say 1.5 lbs of DME, 5 oz of hops at different addition times, and no yeast, then force carb it. Would it taste like beer?

Thanks for the the replys! I'm checking out the links after I post this.

This is kind of an interesting read

http://www.chow.com/stories/10519

twoodward15 said:

It's reducing fermentable sugar, not reducing sugar. The OG will be just as high as before, but you'll have a bunch of unfermentable sugars, thus a sweet beer that is NA. Have him try adding a hop pellet or two to a bottle of NA before he drinks it to see how that is.

Click to expand...

Not true! Dextrins aren't sweet. The molecules are actually too big for the human tongue to detect. I've had an IPA mashed at 160. It was by no means sweet, but it had more body than Marisa Miller.