Creating an NA (Or...how I neutered my beer)

Williams 728
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I'd also say that the the most home friendly and accurate way to mesure the end abv is by condensing and calculing the total alcohol evaporated. There is a tool like a densimeter with a different scale that tells the abv of distilled spirit. You can also know the percentage of alcohol in the pot if you know the percentage of alcohol in the vapor condensing out of the pot I remember seeing a chart about that but could'nt find it now. You can calculate the output abv it with the temperature of the alcohol/water vapor too. Or simply assume that there is none left when there in no alcohol coming out, but you'll probably boil it more that you might want to get to this point.

Another way to make a flavorfull brew low on alcohol that i thought would be to get a poor enzime conversion. I would use a lot of unmalted grains and only a bit of malt so it will convert only partially getting low sugar. It will be cloudy but should taste good.

Might give it a try sooner or later...
 
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Holy necropost batman.

Actually the most home-brewed friendly way of measuring alcohol would be just measuring the specific gravity again after the process of de-alchoholizing.

Not trying to be a jerk, but you know we can say the word alcohol here right?
 
Thanks to you, I just learned a few new things. I thought that, since the density of the alcohol and water are relatively closer than water and sugar it would make a few percent change in alcohol concentration hard to mesure on the hydrometer. I've read your post, did some search and learned. I've found a table and it looks like we could easily be precise to around 1% alcohol by weight. http://www.separationprocesses.com/CourseWare/Experiments/Property01.htm
So i now believe that is in fact a lot simplier just to take sg readings before and after boiling. We could approximate that in the 1 to 10 % abv scale a 0,002 sg change is Worth 1% abv. You might want to add water up to your original volume to be more accurate because the residual sugar concentration will also increase as it boils wich might put the mesure off.

Sorry about the alcool from the last post, i'm french so i just wrote it properly in my own language, it was an easy mistake for me, i'll try to edit it and not do it again so i'll become closer to perfection.
 
Let me be "that guy":

A liquid boils based on temperature and pressure. It is not enough to say that water boils at 212F, you need to state that water boils at 212F and 14.7PSIG. To put this a little more scientifically, something boils at a temperature when the vapor pressure of the liquid equals the pressure surrounding the liquid, causing the liquid to turn into vapor. As the pressure increases, a higher temperature is needed to boil the liquid, and vice-versa. Brewers in Denver can get their kettles to boil at a much lower temperature.

Why do I bring that up? The answer is twofold:

1) You can remove alcohol by pulling a vacuum on your beer so that the alcohol will boil off at room temperature. If you can expose your fermented product to a net pressure of 8.5PSI (6.7 PSI lower than atmospheric), then the alcohol will boil off. Why is this preferred to adding heat? Heat polymerizes sugars and changes the flavor of the beer.

2) It is possible to "break" the azeotrope of ethanol-water by performing the "boil" at different pressures (and temperatures).

Here are some references for you:
Boiling Point and Vapor Pressure

Separation of Binary mixture using Pressure Swing
Distillation with Heat Integration

Vacuum Distillation
 
Holy crap on a stick, Batman.. I just found the motherload..

Thanks for some great and informative reading, guys! By posting this right now, I'm reviving a ten year old thread, which is quite cool.

I'm curious as to how to brew a good NA pale ale kind of beer, and surely this thread has given a lot of inspiration, but I was considering another, perhaps overly complicated, approach.

I'd first brew a pure base malt batch, no hops, and leave it to ferment. A few days before fermentation is completed, I'll brew something like a Brewdog Nanny State, and leave it to ferment (yeah, you're supposed to).. Then I'd boil batch #1 to lower the ABV to something around 1%, cool it, and add it to batch #2, mixing them together, dry hop, leave them to get aquainted for a few days, CC and bottle.

My logic is this: Batch #2 brings the color, hops and live yeast, while batch #1 brings the proper malty body and fullness that NA beers so often lack.

It would of course not hit as low as a regular Nanny State or other industry NA beers, but if my end product ends up somewhere close to 1% ABV mark, I'd be happy.

Thoughts?
 
Just a question for anybody who might be lurking here, I have been battling an off flavor in all my bruise for the last 18 months or so, a couple weeks back I stumbled across this thread on how neuter your beer. Well I had a 2 gallon batch of an Amber American Ale sitting in primary which had the same off flavor problem so I decided I had nothing to lose might as well try to turn it into non-alcoholic beer. I went through the process described above and everything went smoothly. I crack open one of the non-alcoholic breews last night and to my dismay the off flavor is 100% removed in the non-alcoholic beers!! So my question is what boils off when we Heat the fermented beer to 175 degrees for a half hour? Did I boil off fusel alcohols? What did I boil off bad tasting ethol alcohol? Or are there other flavors which could potentially be boiled off at 175 degrees? If I can figure out what I boiled up when making the non-alcoholic beer then I can figure out what is causing my regular Brews to have off flavors and remedy it, and that would be sweet! I apologize for the hijack but if someone could let me know what they think I have boiled off while creating non-alcoholic beer I would be super excited and grateful!
 
spam- Yes, I think it is probably fusel alcohols, although there are other aromatics that are probably boiled off. You get fusels from too high a fermentation temperature, especially at the beginning, or if your yeast are nutrient deficient and stressed.
So...... next batch, try adding Wyeast(or other brand) yeast nutrients to the boil, make sure you are pitching enough yeast(check Mr. Malty or other pitch calculator), and especially oxygenate well- might think about investing in an O2 delivery system. And keep those fermentation temps in the low-mid 60s, especially in the 1st 3 days. Good Luck. :mug:
 
I have read that enough people have tried this. No one has really said what the abv is in their final product. I can't seem to get my SG to move even after cooking at 175 for 45 mins.........
 
Esky, I attempted it with a scottish 70/- a few years back, at about the same temp and time you did. I sent mine off for lab analysis, and only had dropped the ABV to around 2.5%. Which is nice for making it super sessionable, but not what I was aiming for to make a N/A beer. I will try again one of these days, but it will probably be quite a while before I am set up for something like that again (moving, school, etc.).
 
The boil off is a great idea for malt-forward beers and perhaps hop-forward beers if one accounts for a second hop boil/steep. However, it made me wonder how to make very low alcohol yeast-forward beers.

I always liked “Leichte Weisse”; i.e. low or no-alcohol Bavarian Wheat, which I cannot get where I live. Not too fond of the alcohol free commercial lagers here. Since the yeast is pretty real in the Bavarian alc.free beers, it’s way closer to the real thing.

My question: Does anyone know if there is a DIY approach to reduce alcohol in wheat beer down to <0.5%vol (i.e. alcohol free)? Boiling yeast slurry up doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Until then, I wonder if I will try at least a “Leichte Weisse” (<3%ABV).
Any pointers making full-flavour light beers; i.e. how to end up reducing only alcohol, but keeping the impression of malt, hop and especially yeast somewhat comparable to a 5%ABV?
 
Thanks to this forum I have been doing this for over six years. I am disappointed in myself for not posting here on this thread, but I have a couple threads here on the subject which are probably not worth reading at this point. this thread is much better and I hope my sharing my experiences will further improve it for those who wish to do this.

I use lots of campden. More than half a tablet per gallon. You can use any amount less than
one tab per gallon and it is great for preventing infection and extending shelf life. After six
years of brewing probably more than 100 gallons per year my infection total is two and a half gallons. I will likely never brew without it! You can make a very safe sanitizer by crushing a tablet or two in a spray bottle filled with water. No rinse necessary and will not mess up your clothes like bleach or other one step sanitizers.

Also in this thread I see much trepidation about boiling. I go ahead and boil at least 50 minutes and still love the result. About hops, what you do is adhere to your schedule during
the second boil, or alcohol removal boil. Also when I boil I use plastic soda bottles. I love
not needing a capper, and the range of sizes is great and bottling is easier because the bottles are usually clear. A simple sanitizing soak for five minutes works since I can see if any debris is inside. The need for amber bottles is exaggerated unless you age your brew a while and in that case store them in darkness which should not be too hard. Scrubbing the bottles seem paranoid but since you can't see in the amber bottles so most brewers perceive they have no choice.

About hops, I do use some in the initial pre-fermentation boil, maybe an ounce. Trial and error has to apply to some extent. I apologize for the parts of this post that were off topic.
I further hope it all helps and plan to visit often to answer questions if anyone has any.
I almost forgot about my yeast method. It is very simple. Before I boil out the alcohoh
I save a little original fermented product in a mason jar and splash a few drops into
each bottle of de-alcoholized and primed homebrew with a turkey baster or funnel.
 
Norselord said:
Let me be "that guy":

A liquid boils based on temperature and pressure. It is not enough to say that water boils at 212F, you need to state that water boils at 212F and 14.7PSIG. To put this a little more scientifically, something boils at a temperature when the vapor pressure of the liquid equals the pressure surrounding the liquid, causing the liquid to turn into vapor. As the pressure increases, a higher temperature is needed to boil the liquid, and vice-versa. Brewers in Denver can get their kettles to boil at a much lower temperature.

Why do I bring that up? The answer is twofold:

1) You can remove alcohol by pulling a vacuum on your beer so that the alcohol will boil off at room temperature. If you can expose your fermented product to a net pressure of 8.5PSI (6.7 PSI lower than atmospheric), then the alcohol will boil off. Why is this preferred to adding heat? Heat polymerizes sugars and changes the flavor of the beer.

2) It is possible to "break" the azeotrope of ethanol-water by performing the "boil" at different pressures (and temperatures).

Here are some references for you:
Boiling Point and Vapor Pressure

Separation of Binary mixture using Pressure Swing
Distillation with Heat Integration

Vacuum Distillation
Click to expand...

So could it be as easy as just hooking a vacuum pump to the gas post of a corny keg and letting it go for a while?
 
I maybe getting in over my head asking these questions, but why would a corny collapse under vacuum? A corny is rated for 60psi if I'm not mistaken. I understand that's pressure and not vacuum though.
If were only looking to lower the pressure by 6.7 psi, thats approximately 13.6 inHg, if that conversion is made right. When vacuuming an automotive ac system, a vacuum pump will pull the system down to approximately 25-30 inHg. However they are small lines in the system as opposed to the large surface area of a corny.
I'm not challenging your response, and I very well could be and I likely am wrong, but I just have a hard time believing it would crumple.
 
R56brews said:
I maybe getting in over my head asking these questions, but why would a corny collapse under vacuum? A corny is rated for 60psi if I'm not mistaken. I understand that's pressure and not vacuum though.
If were only looking to lower the pressure by 6.7 psi, thats approximately 13.6 inHg, if that conversion is made right. When vacuuming an automotive ac system, a vacuum pump will pull the system down to approximately 25-30 inHg. However they are small lines in the system as opposed to the large surface area of a corny.
I'm not challenging your response, and I very well could be and I likely am wrong, but I just have a hard time believing it would crumple.
Click to expand...

Corneys are designed for internal pressure and not vice versa, i work on and operate 600hp steam boilers(roughly equivalent to the size of a normal work van), the boilers along with other steam converting vessels around my campus ALL require a vacuum breaker, in the event of a steam stoppage, draining the vessels or the call for heat ends ie spring/summer shut downs, the equipment under steam pressure once cooled to room temperature causes a vacuum and WILL implode pressure vessels

Google Tank car implosion
 
Thank you, i spent some time researching this a tiny bit now.
I'm moving off topic a bit now, but I'm curious to learn a bit. I found this on a physics forum:
"For a plain carbon steel tank to be able to withstand one atmosphere of external pressure (or full internal vacuum), with a safety factor of 4, it has to have walls about 1 percent as thick as the diameter of the tank. Even without no safety factor, the walls must be almost that thick, because the rigidity of the walls increases with the cube of the thickness---a wall half as thick is only 1/8 as rigid, and will collapse under about half an atmosphere (around 8 PSI) of vacuum."

Reference https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/calculating-max-vacuum-for-55-gallon-drum.301228/

That's for carbon steel however. But still, taking that into account. A corny is about 8.5" in diameter. 1% of the diameter would be .085". I couldnt find a corny thickness, but a sanke appears to be about 1.5mm thick, so lets just assume a corny is about 1mm thick. That's about .039" thick. If the above source is accurate, then you guys would be correct that a corny would collapse even at half an atmosphere. But this is based on carbon steel, and I'm not really sure how thick a corny really is.
Sorry for doubting, and Sorry for getting off topic and the long post .Thanks for the information guys.
So the real question is, short of purchasing a tank that fits the thickness required to the diameter, is there anyway to do it with equipment that an average homebrewer might already have?
Thanks again
 
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Wouldn't it be less work and less trauma to the original flavor profile of the beer to reverse freeze distill? Meaning freeze and save rather than discard the frozen portions. Can save the unfrozen alc too to boost a lower gravity beer.
 
R56brews said:
Thank you, i spent some time researching this a tiny bit now.
I'm moving off topic a bit now, but I'm curious to learn a bit. I found this on a physics forum:
"For a plain carbon steel tank to be able to withstand one atmosphere of external pressure (or full internal vacuum), with a safety factor of 4, it has to have walls about 1 percent as thick as the diameter of the tank. Even without no safety factor, the walls must be almost that thick, because the rigidity of the walls increases with the cube of the thickness---a wall half as thick is only 1/8 as rigid, and will collapse under about half an atmosphere (around 8 PSI) of vacuum."

Reference https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/calculating-max-vacuum-for-55-gallon-drum.301228/

That's for carbon steel however. But still, taking that into account. A corny is about 8.5" in diameter. 1% of the diameter would be .085". I couldnt find a corny thickness, but a sanke appears to be about 1.5mm thick, so lets just assume a corny is about 1mm thick. That's about .039" thick. If the above source is accurate, then you guys would be correct that a corny would collapse even at half an atmosphere. But this is based on carbon steel, and I'm not really sure how thick a corny really is.
Sorry for doubting, and Sorry for getting off topic and the long post .Thanks for the information guys.
So the real question is, short of purchasing a tank that fits the thickness required to the diameter, is there anyway to do it with equipment that an average homebrewer might already have?
Thanks again
Click to expand...

So a cylindrical tank's (or pipe's) capability of withstanding external pressure is dependent on four things: Length without reinforcement (in this case the height of the keg), diameter, wall thickness, and the material properties.

I ran the math using ASME BPVC VIII UG-28. If you assume the corny keg has a wall thickness of 1 mm (0.039 in) the code allowable external pressure is ~11.6 psi. At sea level this would equate to an internal absolute pressure of 3.1 psia which is 23.6 in Hg vacuum.There is some innate safety factor in that code as well. That's actually better than I thought. But that is assuming the wall thickness is 1 mm which seems thicker than they are to me.

Another thing to consider is how the lid seals on a corny keg. It utilizes the internal pressure to help the gasket seal the keg. So you may have difficulty pulling a vacuum since it might bleed air in. Also you'd likely want a larger opening than the gas or liquid posts for the ethanol vapors to escape from.

To your second question, I think the answer is yes. I built a vacuum NA beer system a bit ago using a couple of aluminum pressure cookers. Relatively inexpensive and sufficient wall thickness to withstand the external forces. Here is a schematic of the system as well as a picture of the set-up and the pressures I was able to achieve. I only tested it once so far on some keg overflow I had stored in 2L soda bottles. It worked, but the starting beer wasn't much to talk about as I may have forgotten to put any CO2 on the 2L so it was heavily oxygenated...

IMG_2932.jpg


IMG_2933.JPG
IMG_2935.JPG


Planning to test it out again soon as I just finished a herms build so I can more closely hold the hot water bath temperature.
 
chazzman said:
How did this become a distillation thread?
Click to expand...
I’ve had to switch to NA for health reasons. I’ve been a Home brewer for over 10 years.
I first started buying 12 packs of beer I liked and boiling it to about 170 it wasn’t the taste I wanted. I brewed a 5 gallon batch of a robust porter and boiled off half. It was ok, not as tasty. No priming auger was used to keep the alcohol down.
I’m the second half I added fake auger and vanilla when I botteld into 2 L soda bottles. The beer has no carbonation. I charged the bottles with a GizFiz carbonate. The beer was a good Vanilla Porter but I could not maintain carbonation. If you keg you will solve that problem. I just bought brown soda bottles and will try a diffeeent carbonation method.
I have a good beer I brewed about 5 years ago that is ageing. Brewed almost 2 weeks ago. It is a light ale and I dry hopped it with cascades and centennial hops. My mouth is watering to boil the alcohol off. I’ll let you know how I make out next week. I’ll boil half a at a time.
Good luck with your experiment. I’ll let you know how I make out. The goal it a light NA IPA. It has to be better than ODouls.
 
I've been watching the development of NA craft beer recently with great interest. Really cool to see that outfits like Athletic, Bravus, Wellbeing, and Partake are doing already.

Aside from improved methods of removing alcohol from finished beer, I'm even more interested in ways to make beer with less/almost no alcohol in the first place. Seems to me that yeast could be found/engineering that simply doesn't poop ethanol. Any experiments y'all have done along these lines?
 
I boil the finished beer to 173 degrees. Don’t use priming sugar before bottling. I dry hopped my last batch with cascade and centennial. I’m looking for an IPA. It needs little sweetener. I plan to add a cup on honey in the next boil. Problem is getting the carbonation. I plan to keg the next batch and force carbonation. I did a robust porter and I had to add some fake sweetener and vanilla. It came out good after the tweaking.
 
bdwelle said:
I've been watching the development of NA craft beer recently with great interest. Really cool to see that outfits like Athletic, Bravus, Wellbeing, and Partake are doing already.

Aside from improved methods of removing alcohol from finished beer, I'm even more interested in ways to make beer with less/almost no alcohol in the first place. Seems to me that yeast could be found/engineering that simply doesn't poop ethanol. Any experiments y'all have done along these lines?
Click to expand...

I had to step away from the scene as a beer blogger / journalist due to increasing intolerance of alcohol. Excited that NA beer is burgeoning because I really miss the flavors and the scene. Never had more fun than the years I participated in and conducted events in craft beer.

I've had products from Athletic (luckily within driving distance & has a tasting room), Bravus, and Wellbeing so far. The flavor is there in all of them, just missing some body for me... but that may be more a function of the styles so far being older, more traditional styles. I had moved well on from the traditional styles back then. I have Surreal Brewing's Red IPA on order.

Currently studying the various methods of mitigating alcohol production or de-alcoholization to start brewing some too.
 
To remove the alcohol I understand the 173 degree process. I suppose it depends on the amount you are heating to 173 degrees as to how long you hold it at that temperature. Do you have a volume per time ratio figured out
 
I did full boil (at swamp/sea level) a few weeks ago and removed .002 points down after 60min

If anyone is interested, I made a NA Gose with Papaya. I did a partigyle where my first runnings went to a NEIPA and my second runnings went to this. Reached a post mash gravity of 1.028. Boiled briefly, kettle soured with goodbelly x 72h, boiled briefly again, fermented with SD super yeast cake. Once it hit 1.012 I brought it to boil, added a small amount of tettnang at 45’, then coriander and sea salt at knockout. Gravity measured 1.010 at that point. Chilled and added 32oz 100% papaya juice, burst carbonated in 2-liter bottles.

It’s OK, but a little lifeless. If I were to do it again, I’d steep some additional crystal type grains in the second runnings before the boil to give it some more body.
 
BierMuncher said:
...

I wouldn't say this is completely NA, but I'd peg it no higher than 1.5 - 2%. I only held the kettle at 179 for 20 minutes. Another 15 minutes and I'm pretty sure I'd have driven off the remainder of the alcohol.
View attachment 2768
Click to expand...

You are not going to get rid of all of the alcohol this way. Even in a reflux still there is some alcohol left in the mash. So if the goal is to get to zero then it's not going to happen. But if the goal is to have a very low ABV then it sounds like you have a winner.
 
So I recently purchased some Wellbeing brews, a bit lifeless but I was overall impressed. I’ve long thought a good NA beer would be great as it would allow me to enjoy more without the negative side effects. The other day I enjoyed a wellbeing while I was finishing up some work around the house, had a couple home brews when I finished the work then one more wellbeing to cap it off. I could also see these being refreshing after a day of skiing when I’m the one behind the wheel on snow covered roads.

Sounds like there’s two common methods, boil it and vacuum it. Boiling is certainly easier since I have everything at my disposal but the vacuum model sounds easier on the flavors and aroma in the beer. Anyway, I’m glad this thread is alive and well, it’s given me some things to think about.
 
Since I got a lot of inspiration and helpful tips from this thread, I am posting my experiment results. The objective was to make 4-5 gallons of non-alcoholic (<1% ABV) hoppy pale ale, by using the ethanol boil off method.
The short story: I failed.
The long story: For the base beer I brewed a 5% beer with 90% Munich malt and 10% 2-row. I anticipated that the boil off would also affect the malt flavor, hence the high percentage of Munich. O.G. was 1.050, F.G. was 1.012. I only added a 1/4 oz of Magnum at 60 minutes, mostly for the anti-microbial properties of the hops and fermented with WLP001. The result was an uneventful, sweet-ish "beer".
This "beer" was then heated to 85 C/185F where it was held under constant stirring for 90 minutes. It was then boiled for an hour, with hop additions at 20, 10, 5 minutes and steeping hops (I don't do a whirlpool). During the boil I added about 0.5 gallons of water to compensate for the volume loss. Calculated IBU, according to Beersmith was 40 IBUs.
The final "wort" was then transferred in the fermenter and dry-hopped with 4 oz of hops. After 4 days of dry hopping I tasted it and it:
1. Was BITTER. Much more bitter than 40 IBUs should provide
2. Was lacking any sort of malt backbone.
3. Had a nice hop aroma and hop flavor.

I then added about 1 cup of malt extract boiled in 1 liter of water. This brought back some malt character and balanced out the bitterness nicely. At this point I was quite happy with the result and submitted a sample to WhiteLabs for ABV analysis. The analysis came back with 1.42% ABV (at 20 C). While this shows that the de-alcoholization process kind of worked, it is still too alcoholic to give it to someone who expects a non-alcoholic beer, which is usually considered to be <0.5% ABV.
What I might try/would do different next time:
1. Start with a lower ABV base beer. I think this may be preferred to a longer boil off because you already lose quite a bit of volume with the 90 min + 60 min approach above.
2. Lower IBUs a bit, maybe move the 20 and 10 minute additions back into the steeping/whirlpool hops, and/or use a lower alpha acid bittering hops for the base beer.
3. Add the malt extract during the boil off of the ethanol.

I hope this helps whoever wants to attempt a similar thing. If you do, I would love to hear about your results.
 
Priming sugar will only add a quarter of a percent to the brew if what I ever read about soda making with natural carbonation is correct. I have brewed NA for seven years and love my results for the most part. I do full rolling boils, use clear soda bottles. You can always cover the bottle if you are worried about light. After the boiled brews cools you will need to re-introduce yeast before you bottle. That is simple though, save a little of the original unboiled brew to pour back in and slowly but surely mix well before you bottle. Oops, the quarter percent
mentioned earlier refers to ABV. Most of us need not be afraid of it.
 
volx said:
Since I got a lot of inspiration and helpful tips from this thread, I am posting my experiment results. The objective was to make 4-5 gallons of non-alcoholic (<1% ABV) hoppy pale ale, by using the ethanol boil off method.
The short story: I failed.
The long story: For the base beer I brewed a 5% beer with 90% Munich malt and 10% 2-row. I anticipated that the boil off would also affect the malt flavor, hence the high percentage of Munich. O.G. was 1.050, F.G. was 1.012. I only added a 1/4 oz of Magnum at 60 minutes, mostly for the anti-microbial properties of the hops and fermented with WLP001. The result was an uneventful, sweet-ish "beer".
This "beer" was then heated to 85 C/185F where it was held under constant stirring for 90 minutes. It was then boiled for an hour, with hop additions at 20, 10, 5 minutes and steeping hops (I don't do a whirlpool). During the boil I added about 0.5 gallons of water to compensate for the volume loss. Calculated IBU, according to Beersmith was 40 IBUs.
The final "wort" was then transferred in the fermenter and dry-hopped with 4 oz of hops. After 4 days of dry hopping I tasted it and it:
1. Was BITTER. Much more bitter than 40 IBUs should provide
2. Was lacking any sort of malt backbone.
3. Had a nice hop aroma and hop flavor.

I then added about 1 cup of malt extract boiled in 1 liter of water. This brought back some malt character and balanced out the bitterness nicely. At this point I was quite happy with the result and submitted a sample to WhiteLabs for ABV analysis. The analysis came back with 1.42% ABV (at 20 C). While this shows that the de-alcoholization process kind of worked, it is still too alcoholic to give it to someone who expects a non-alcoholic beer, which is usually considered to be <0.5% ABV.
What I might try/would do different next time:
1. Start with a lower ABV base beer. I think this may be preferred to a longer boil off because you already lose quite a bit of volume with the 90 min + 60 min approach above.
2. Lower IBUs a bit, maybe move the 20 and 10 minute additions back into the steeping/whirlpool hops, and/or use a lower alpha acid bittering hops for the base beer.
3. Add the malt extract during the boil off of the ethanol.

I hope this helps whoever wants to attempt a similar thing. If you do, I would love to hear about your results.
Click to expand...
I am about to start make beer to make into NA I like yours post but the one thing I do know if you over 175F it will not remove the alcohol very good look to the moonshiners they want all the alcohol you get out brew and they start with high abv...So the next time you try run heat to 172 to 175 and see if it do come out better...
 
My experiment went like this:
Pulled 5 gallons Hefeweiss from a larger batch. Brought it up to 180F. I could smell ethanol coming off as soon as it reached 170F. Held it there for two hours hoping the ethanol smell would abate. It never did and I didn't want to go longer than that. Put it into a corny keg while still hot. Immediately put CO2 pressure on it and cooled it overnight. Carbed it for 5 days. Tasted it next to the original batch. The color had darkened and there was obvious oxidation. The esters held up nicely though. I sent it off to run alcohol. Sadly it only went from 4.8 to 3.33. Mission fail.
 
Here is something to read that I found:::
The principle of distillation is that one heats up the mash to boiling
point and cools down the steam (condensation) to a liquid. Alcohol
has a lower boiling point (78.3°C) than water (100°C) and so boils
first. By this means the alcohol is separated from the mash.
The strongest alcohol possible to achieve by distillation is 95%.
This is because a mixture of 95% alcohol and 5% of water has a
lower boiling point of (78,15oC) then 100% alcohol (78,3oC). This
is called an azoetrope. From a book called HOME DISTILLATION HANDBOOK by OLA NORRMAN (PSEUDONYM)

The only thing we doing is not cooling down the steam to a liquid
 
Anyone listen to the new Experimental Brewing podcast with Athletic Brewing? I've tried one of their "IPA"s and honestly it was pretty good.

It's interesting that while they consider their process proprietary, they commented it isn't one big change they made when compared to regular brewing, but that it's the culmination of a bunch of small modifications and techniques affecting their process that they use to create their NA beer. I imagine they're using some combination of, less grain, fiddling with high/low mash temp, lazy yeast, forced stopped fermentation, adding other unfermentables, etc.

Give it a listen. It was pretty interesting.
 
They could also be using a cold mash to get flavor with less starch/sugar.

I saw an "athletic brewing" beer at the store this week, but I didn't pick it up because it had a lot of carbs (currently on keto) --probably unavoidable to make an NA that tastes good. I'll have to try them in the future.
 

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