Non Alcoholic beer

The hamster cage is really starting to spin here.....

I'm starting to get back in the swing of things at work from the medical leave I took.. At this nuring home I work at I think of really wierd things to do with the residents... real wierd. Things that has never been done there and from Activity Therapy forums... not necessarily done at other places as well. Its kinda my thing and it turns heads a lot there. Administration really likes it cause it gives them things to talk about when getting folks to come to the nursing home

So here's the thing. I want to brew some beer with them (man I can see them talking about it for months...). They can't drink it if its alcoholic. I partially thougth perhaps I can brew an alcoholic one and bring non alcoholic beer there for all to enjoy, but my first thrust would be to make the beer they can have and enjoy. I have not seen any recipe here on the forum or it even referred to so I'm partially thinking there is a reason for it other then everyone wants alcohol....

Can it be done?

I will try to search for the thread, but there was one on this topic. I think that there is a process by which you can boil off the alcohol, which boils at a lower temp than water, and then pitch some priming sugar and some yeast for carbonation. there will be a small amount of alcohol produced when it carbonates, but not enough to classify it as alcoholic. Or, if you keg, you could just presssure carbonate it. Again, not sure about the specifics, but it has been done.

You can remove most (95%) of the alcohol from any ale by heating it to 172F. As soon as the temperature starts rising higher, cool it down, prime and bottle. I'd start with a Mild or an American light.

Tricky thing. If you make non alcoholic beer, someone could perceive getting drunk. I got a guy drunk for his 18 birthday using Welche's concord grape juice concentrate substituting ginger ale for the water and served from a wine bottle. To this day, he won't believe me that it was non-alcoholic. All depends on how your administration would take t though.

Might want to settle for a nice hops tea. That is an anti-depressant and also aids in sleep. Served in the evening with a litte honey maybe nice.

Here's the thread and it includes a recipe.

Good luck,
Wild

I wish I could say that I had been a good friend and made that brew for my buddy, but I can't. I've got to get my supply built up before I can be making some NA. I guess my point is, I can't comment on how it turns out.

Commercial non-alcoholic beer is made by boiling it under vacuum such that the alcohol boils off at ~30C. This is less detrimental to the beer's flavor.

In Germany we have something called Malzbier (Maltbeer) and it basically is lightly hopped, yet unfermented sweet wort with carbonation. When I was a Kid I loved this stuff. And when my Kids are older I plan to brew this with them.

But I haven't done much research on this yet. The only information I have are some threads on a German homebrewing board.

There are 2 ways of approaching the problem of getting the carbonation into the beer:

the stopped fermentation method:
Here the wort is actually pitched with yeast and immediately filled into bottles that are capped. There it will produce CO2 and carbonate it. Once enough CO2 has been produced, the yeast needs to be killed by pasteurizing the bottles in ~70C water. Once this is done the Bottles can be cooled and stored. There will be about 1% alcohol in the bottles.

the force carbonation method:
The wort is placed in a keg and force carbonated. This seems to be the easier of the 2 methods and the resulting beer doesn't contain any alcohol.

But before I make this I will have to do more research. Especially regarding the shelf life and potential contaminants since there is less hops, less alcohol and lots of fermentable sugar in there. It is important to find out if there is any danger of pathogens being able to thrive in there.

BTW: I was able to find this Malzbier in the supermarket once. The only brand I know is Vitamalz. And there is always root beer, which I can't stand.

Kai

some links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamalz