DoubleFisted
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Has anyone brewed a low carb beer? I was challenged by a fellow mate to make one for him and I really have no idea where to start. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Low carb all grain brewing
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All calories in beer are from carbohydrates, so basically you are being tasked with brewing a light beer. Pretty much anything in the session category will fit the bill, though they of course have lower alcohol. Otherwise, you can try to reduce residual sugars by providing a very fermentable wort.
If you are looking for a low calorie, fuller bodied beer, consider English bitter or mild, Scottish 60/-, low gravity stouts, etc.
For a low calorie light beer, light adjuct lagers would be appropriate.
If you are looking for a low calorie, fuller bodied beer, consider English bitter or mild, Scottish 60/-, low gravity stouts, etc.
For a low calorie light beer, light adjuct lagers would be appropriate.
devilishprune
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Alcohol has calories too, specifically 7 kcal/g (compared to 4 kcal/g for carbohydrates).
I agree with everything else that you said, though.
Mash low for longer with a low OG beer and that should get you on your way. Some people like to add amylase or beano, but I'm not to fond of that myself.
Alcohol does indeed have calories, but all the diet books tend to classify them as carbs for the sake of "counting carbs". In the technical sense, ethanol indeed has one too few oxygen atoms to count as a carbohydrate, but I doubt that's what his friend is thinking about when he says "low carb".
There is also a small amount of protein, but in the vast majority of beers it's a nutritionally trivial amount.
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DoubleFisted
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So maybe my water to grain ratio should be higher too which will make it a lighter beer? This is all just an experiment for a guy that is trying to cut carbs.
DoubleFisted said:
It really depends which way you want to go. For a medium alcohol, light bodied beer, that can work (though mash thickness isn't actually a huge factor in my experience). For a low alcohol, medium bodied beer, you'd want to do the opposite.
Golddiggie
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If you mash your grains lower you'll have a lower FG... So, if you take that into account and make a relatively low OG brew (say 1.035-1.040 area) and mash at 148-150 (I would do at least 60 minutes, but if others have more experience there, chime in), you should get a FG that's in the low range (below 1.010)... You'll need to experiment with this over a few batches, getting the grain amount right. I think it will be tough to get blow the 150-175 cal/pint range... Or you won't want to drink it since it's so light/thin...
Running this through Beer Smith, to get something in that range you use a silly low amount of grain...
Running this through Beer Smith, to get something in that range you use a silly low amount of grain...
kanzimonson
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Think about this: at the beginning of fermentation, you have a big pot of sugar. You did the best you could to extract as much sugar (energy/calories) from the malt as possible. At the point right before fermentation, it's at its maximum potential energy. Then, the yeast use some of this energy for their reproduction. This reduces the energy/calories in the beer.
So the more sugar you can coax the yeast to eat, the less calories in the final beer. Or put another way, the less sugars you can leave in the final beer, the less calories it has. That means making a low OG beer and mashing low, as people have mentioned, but also you can use amylase enzymes in the fermentor to convert more complex sugars into something the yeast can eat.
Fascinating stuff. Oh and tell your friend he's a weiner.
So the more sugar you can coax the yeast to eat, the less calories in the final beer. Or put another way, the less sugars you can leave in the final beer, the less calories it has. That means making a low OG beer and mashing low, as people have mentioned, but also you can use amylase enzymes in the fermentor to convert more complex sugars into something the yeast can eat.
Fascinating stuff. Oh and tell your friend he's a weiner.
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DoubleFisted
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Thanks for the great advice this is why I love HBT. And trust me I do call him a weiner but at least he is still drinking beer with this new diet fad he is trying I guess. We will see how this goes. I assume there is no real way to test how many carbs are in the end result?
Most of the recipe calculators will spit out a rough approximation of the number of calories in a beer. Depending on how his fad diet works, that may or may not be a good basis for figuring out "carbs". If he is just counting sugars (and not alcohol, like devilishprune mentioned), you can subtract out the caloric value of the alcohol by figuring out the absolute volume of alcohol in the batch. The protein will still be in there and I'm not sure how you'd figure that out, but my understanding is that it isn't a significant amount.
devilishprune
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Actually, there is. Depends on how much effort you're willing to put in. I remember doing something similar in High school Biology, so it's not that advanced.
Here's the wiki for Benedict's Reagent:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict's_reagent
Basically, this tests for the monosaccharides glucose and fructose as well as lactose and maltose. I doubt that you will have glucose and fructose present after fermentation, but you may have maltotriose (pretty much unfermentable by ale yeast).
This article may also interest you. http://www.brewinfo.org/articles/clinitest2.html
It seems rather hard to quantify, but you can compare it to some standard solutions to get a general idea.
If you don't want to get that involved, then you can always use one of the many online calculators to determine the calories per pint. Or, you can just estimate based on the FG. 1.020+ is high, 1.000 is about the lowest you can get (and probably not without some additional amylase/beano).
Edit: Or you could do what MalFet said.
Here's the wiki for Benedict's Reagent:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict's_reagent
Basically, this tests for the monosaccharides glucose and fructose as well as lactose and maltose. I doubt that you will have glucose and fructose present after fermentation, but you may have maltotriose (pretty much unfermentable by ale yeast).
This article may also interest you. http://www.brewinfo.org/articles/clinitest2.html
It seems rather hard to quantify, but you can compare it to some standard solutions to get a general idea.
If you don't want to get that involved, then you can always use one of the many online calculators to determine the calories per pint. Or, you can just estimate based on the FG. 1.020+ is high, 1.000 is about the lowest you can get (and probably not without some additional amylase/beano).
Edit: Or you could do what MalFet said.
kanzimonson
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Yeah one time I was looking at a stuck fermentation thread on HBT and it was something like a 1.120 beer that stopped at 1.050. I went to calc the calories per beer and it was like 450 for a 12oz!!!!!!!!!
Golddiggie
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Personally, I really don't care about the calories in the brew. I'm brewing, and drinking, mighty tasty stuff. Keep in mind that people will be less inclined to knock back several glasses/mugs of that big brew, compared with many of a lighter, lower cal. brew... So, it pretty much evens out at the end of the day. Many times, you don't even drink the same amount at one time with the larger brews (compared with 12-16oz of normal brews)... Personally, I'll probably wait to share my 10-12% ABV brews with others
(either 500ml or 750ml bottles) so that I DON'T drink the entire thing. Then again, if it has a low enough FG, I probably would drink it all... Just don't ask me to do anything after that for a little while. 
Try Biermuncher's Cream of Three Crops. The calculator I plugged it into says 135 calories per 12oz. And you can always play with hop additions to get the taste to your liking.
Try Schlenkerla's All-Grain - Miller Lite (Really Triple Hopped)
Beertools Pro has it at about 94 Calories.
Beertools Pro has it at about 94 Calories.
Sawdustguy
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Actually I don't think that is correct. As I understand it Amylase breaks glycosidic bonds between the glucose molecules in STARCH.
kanzimonson
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Hmmm, I'd like to hear more about this.
I've definitely heard that even though alpha is the "chopper" and beta is the "biter," they eventually come to branches in the starch that they can't break anymore. There's some other enzymes that breaks the branches.
Sawdustguy
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Here you go.....
[qoute]Nearly all beer includes barley malt as the majority of the starch. This is because of its fibrous husk, which is not only important in the sparging stage of brewing (in which water is washed over the mashed barley grains to form the wort), but also as a rich source of amylase, a digestive enzyme which facilitates conversion of starch into sugars.
With kanzimonson, I'd like to hear more about this too, because — though I'm a long, long way from understanding mash chemistry — I've always been working on the assumption that both alpha and beta amylase were able to attack glycosidic bonds in long chain dextrins in addition to starches. Alpha is more versatile then beta, of course, and neither can break down their respective limit dextrins.
I'm not sure that my reading of the quote you posted contradicts that. The long chain dextrins are often intermediates in the process of converting starches to sugars, of course. If it's not the amylases breaking them down, what is? Anyway, interesting stuff...
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