First review of my n/a beer

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OHIOSTEVE

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I called the neighbor and told him to chill down one of his NA beers and see if it is carbonated yet. (I made some oatmeal stout and then heated up some for an hour to remove as much alcohol as possible as he cannot drink) he reminded me that he prefers dark beers at room temperature, so I told him to pop one open and give me a detailed description of the pour and the head etc. he said it had a nice psssst on opening and a nice thick head that lasted the entire glass. I asked about the taste and he simply said MMMMMMMMM then his wife wanted to talk to my wife and angie started laughing ( my wife) because he was singing about the beer in the background lol. I swore I would never do it again but his reaction made it worth the hassle ..sooooo I am thinking an NA porter?
 
i cringe at the thought of doing that to such a wonderful creation, but if it's good and you like your neighbor enough, go for it. sounds like it could be good (just make sure you get rid of all of the alcohol or he could end up being back in AA [if that is indeed why he can't drink alcohol])
 
Sounds like the perfect homebrew review to me! I'll do backflips if someone even just hums a bar when they try my first batch!

My father doesn't drink alcohol (AA etc..) but he sure loves every cool NA beer that I could find him. Is the baking method something that could be trusted to remove nearly all the alcohol, or does it just cut some of it out? Like mentioned in the previous post, the last thing I want to do is take any chances with that.
 
he has the alcoholic thing going PLUS health issues. I told him and his wife that I could NOT guarantee that there was no alcohol in the beer. he used to drink a case or better of beer every day, plus some liquor. doc told him he had to quit so he said OK, and has not had a drink since.he just stopped drinking, no meetings no help, just quit. he will occasionally take a sip or even stick a pinky in one of my homebrews to taste it. he tried the oatmeal stout a while back and asked for an NA version of it. I only ended up with a 6 pack ( I boiled it over) he claims it is better than the alcoholic version but I find that hard to believe. Is there any way I can check the alcohol content without having to buy any more equipment? could I float a hydrometer in one of each( NA and regular) and will that tell me anything?
 
Take the SG reading at the time you pitch the yeast in the wort. Call that A.
Take the SG reading when fermentation is completely finished. Call that B.
Subtract B from A. Call the answer C.
Multiply C by 1.05 and call the answer D.
Divide D by B and call the answer E.
Divide E by 0.79 and the answer is the percentage of alcohol (by volume).

I would imagine substituting the SG after the bake-off would be sufficient, however I could be wrong.

It sounds to me like your neighbor stopped doing it for health reasons only and just REALLY liked beer/alcohol. If he had an addiction, i dont think he would have been able to give it up so quickly, so maybe he doesnt need every last drop to be burned off?
 
pwndabear said:
Take the SG reading at the time you pitch the yeast in the wort. Call that A.
Take the SG reading when fermentation is completely finished. Call that B.
Subtract B from A. Call the answer C.
Multiply C by 1.05 and call the answer D.
Divide D by B and call the answer E.
Divide E by 0.79 and the answer is the percentage of alcohol (by volume).

I would imagine substituting the SG after the bake-off would be sufficient, however I could be wrong.

It sounds to me like your neighbor stopped doing it for health reasons only and just REALLY liked beer/alcohol. If he had an addiction, i dont think he would have been able to give it up so quickly, so maybe he doesnt need every last drop to be burned off?
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yeah I think he REALLY liked it. he would pop a beer open and set it on his night stand in case he woke up in the night.
 
Well since with this heart issue I'm supposed to stop drinking, I too have been contemplating beginning to experiment with making good quality NA beers (Hell there may even be commercial ramifications if I can pull it off, since the only NA stuff out there is clones of macroswill lager.)

I haven't done much yet, BUT I have collected and read all the threads and the weblinks in those threads (Like to the BYO article that a lot of people on here have successfully followed to make low or no alcohol homebrew.

I plan on presenting my info in a thread as I discover stuff.

I commend you for working on this....Contrary to what others may say it is NOT a waste of time or "perfectly good homebrew" :rolleyes: to embark on this project....Try walking in MY shoes right now being me, award winning brewer, writing a book on brewing history, doing historical brewing demos, teaching classes on beer and food pairing and beer tasting, teaching folks to brew, helping around here, to be told by his cardiologist, that he can't/shouldn't be drinking ANY alcohol......Though talking to one of the faculty here I found out that that might be a bit overblown, and more the cardiologist covering his ass, by presenting worst case scenarios, than anything else.

But still, there is something missing in homebrewing/beer drinking in general, good quality, good tasting NA beer in flavors other than "light lager." And maybe Steve and I can be the ones to figure it out.....

:mug:
 
Revvy said:
Well since with this heart issue I'm supposed to stop drinking, I too have been contemplating beginning to experiment with making good quality NA beers (Hell there may even be commercial ramifications if I can pull it off, since the only NA stuff out there is clones of macroswill lager.)

I haven't done much yet, BUT I have collected and read all the threads and the weblinks in those threads (Like to the BYO article that a lot of people on here have successfully followed to make low or no alcohol homebrew.

I plan on presenting my info in a thread as I discover stuff.

I commend you for working on this....Contrary to what others may say it is NOT a waste of time or "perfectly good homebrew" :rolleyes: to embark on this project....Try walking in MY shoes right now being me, award winning brewer, writing a book on brewing history, doing historical brewing demos, teaching classes on beer and food pairing and beer tasting, teaching folks to brew, helping around here, to be told by his cardiologist, that he can't/shouldn't be drinking ANY alcohol......Though talking to one of the faculty here I found out that that might be a bit overblown, and more the cardiologist covering his ass, by presenting worst case scenarios, than anything else.

But still, there is something missing in homebrewing/beer drinking in general, good quality, good tasting NA beer in flavors other than "light lager." And maybe Steve and I can be the ones to figure it out.....

:mug:
Click to expand...

I will do a side by side of them in a day or so. Still gotta figure a definitive way to determine ABV in the final product though.
 
I'm currently trying to brew a low alcohol beer. My tafel bier is conditioning in the bottles. It came in at 2.9% ABV. Which is still too high for some people I know, but it should be interesting to see how it comes out.
 
neighbor called just now and said he was getting ready to pop the top on another of the NA beers if I wanted to run over. Nice PSSST on opening and a nice head. I took a taste and it is quite good. I was impressed.
 
Shame you're not allowed to use some sort of contraption to capture what's evaporating off and condense it into another vessel for other purposes. ;)
 
I've been doing some reading on distillation lately and from what I understand, you may not be removing as much alcohol as you think.

Basically while pure ethanol boils at 78.4 C, the solution of water and alcohol boils on a curve between the boiling point of both liquids, since the boiling point of water is higher the boiling point of the solution is higher.

Take a look at the chart at the bottom of this page http://homedistiller.org/theory.htm
According to that a 5% abv beer would have to be boiled at 96 C and the vapor being boiled off would be 35% alcohol and 65% water. This is why distillers do multiple runs by letting the vapor condense and distilling it further.

Also, check here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_with_alcohol
and here http://www.oasas.state.ny.us/AdMed/FYI/FYI-Cooking.cfm

Unfortunately I can't find the full article linked from those pages, but as the charts show, they added alcohol to various foods then tested them after different cooking times.

Even after simmering for 1/2 hour 35% of the alcohol remained.

Another thing to consider is that the higher fusel alcohols, isobutyl, isopentyl, butanol, pentanol etc, boil at much higher temperatures than ethanol and so are more likely to be retained in the final product. Those alcohols are more dangerous because they are converted by the body into formic acid, lactic acid and formaldehyde.
 
I think you're walking a slippery slope - it's doubtful you've removed all of the alcohol. I would do some measurements to make sure.

My impression is that he's digging it so much because there is still booze in it.
 
I tried to detect any alcohol taste in the sip I took tonight and could not detect any. I know that is about s unscientific as it gets. I gave him and his wife a fair warning that I made no guarantee on the content of it. IF it has the full amount of alcohol, the fact that there are only 6 of them has made him want to " savor" them. He has had 2 in 2 days. If I know him he will still have some of them a month from now.
 
The evaporation point for alcohol is 170 F, so if you brought the beer to a simmer I can't imagine that you wouldn't have evaporated everything. Great idea and awfully generous of you to devote the extra time for your neighbor. :)
 
pimento - Interesting study, but since they are starting with very low amounts of alcohol, their findings don't really deal with the issue making of NA beer. The baked goods they discuss started with alcohol levels way below the 0.5% which is the standard for NA.

OP - your best bet is to buy a precision hydrometer and cook the beer until the reading is stable. The final ABV should be under 0.5% at that point. Calculations are tough, because the difference between 0% ABV and 5% ABV is around 2 points.
 
david_42 said:
pimento - Interesting study, but since they are starting with very low amounts of alcohol, their findings don't really deal with the issue making of NA beer. The baked goods they discuss started with alcohol levels way below the 0.5% which is the standard for NA.

OP - your best bet is to buy a precision hydrometer and cook the beer until the reading is stable. The final ABV should be under 0.5% at that point. Calculations are tough, because the difference between 0% ABV and 5% ABV is around 2 points.
Click to expand...

Also, don't forget, if you are like me and are going to attempt to bottle carb this beer by adding BOTH priming sugar AND fresh yeast, you will have some alcohol present from the creation of co2.

David, I can't remember the number, but I think you've posted it. Isn't the amount of alcohol present from bottle carbing something like .005% ?
 
Revvy said:
Also, don't forget, if you are like me and are going to attempt to bottle carb this beer by adding BOTH priming sugar AND fresh yeast, you will have some alcohol present from the creation of co2.

David, I can't remember the number, but I think you've posted it. Isn't the amount of alcohol present from bottle carbing something like .005% ?
Click to expand...

Was just going to ask about this- seems like force carbing would be the way to do this.
 
Thanks for posting this ... my brother-in-law recently gave up drinking, hopefully for the last time. I'd really like to show some support by making him some n/a beer. Seems like most people who've tried it have had some trouble carbing in bottles, so it's encouraging to see that you got it to work!

I'm thinking about trying to pump out a 2.5G batch in a few weeks.

An idea: maybe if a few of us actually make a few batches of n/a beer, we could come up with some sort of sticky with instructions and advice on what's worked and what hasn't?
 
Palefire said:
An idea: maybe if a few of us actually make a few batches of n/a beer, we could come up with some sort of sticky with instructions and advice on what's worked and what hasn't?
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm hoping to have a thread or even a section of the forum devoted to this after we start making headway. I guess if we get enough threads on the topic we can pitch for a subsection on the forum for it.
 
All I did was pick up a tiny bit of trub from the bottom of the carboy and drop it into the bottling bucket with the priming sugar. That was enough yeast to carb it. I am sure that I had NONE left in the beer as I actually boiled it over.
 
david_42 said:
pimento - Interesting study, but since they are starting with very low amounts of alcohol, their findings don't really deal with the issue making of NA beer. The baked goods they discuss started with alcohol levels way below the 0.5% which is the standard for NA.

OP - your best bet is to buy a precision hydrometer and cook the beer until the reading is stable. The final ABV should be under 0.5% at that point. Calculations are tough, because the difference between 0% ABV and 5% ABV is around 2 points.
Click to expand...

As I mentioned, I haven't been able to find the full text of the article that chart is based on, it's from the apr 92 issue of The Journal of the American Dietetic Association. I've only found extracts which don't list exact temps and amounts.

I don't see any reference in the links about the amount of alcohol they added, where did you see that?

My main point was that the boiling point of pure alcohol is very different from the boiling point of alcohol in solution as shown in this link http://homedistiller.org/theory.htm
There's another explanation here http://www.chemguide.co.uk/physical/phaseeqia/nonideal.html
And here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillation
Scroll down to the bit about Idealized distillation model.
And a very detailed one here: http://old.iupac.org/didac/Didac Eng/Didac05/Content/ST07.htm

I don't mean to discourage the idea, just pointing out that it's much more complex than just heating the beer to 180 F for a 1/2 hour.

For normal beer ABVs you'll have to be much closer to 204 F and even then it may take longer than a 1/2 hour.

I'd love to see a dedicated forum or sticky on this, it's an interesting subject.
 
Anybody who is serious about this should read HBD digest number 1609 (post by Mary Beth Raines) and listen to the most recent Brew Strong QA with Charlie Bamforth.

Bottom line, people are pursuing a method that doesn't work and ignoring one that is easier and works better.

Before anyone hands a beer to someone who has health problems or alcoholism and claims it is alcohol free, I would hope they would have the beer analyzed using dedicated equipment or with the published spectrophotometric or chromatographic methods (these results will surely be surprising).
 
remilard said:
anybody who is serious about this should read hbd digest number 1609 (post by mary beth raines) and listen to the most recent brew strong qa with charlie bamforth.

Bottom line, people are pursuing a method that doesn't work and ignoring one that is easier and works better.

Before anyone hands a beer to someone who has health problems or alcoholism and claims it is alcohol free, i would hope they would have the beer analyzed using dedicated equipment or with the published spectrophotometric or chromatographic methods (these results will surely be surprising).
Click to expand...

what is the easier better method?
 
OHIOSTEVE said:
what is the easier better method?
Click to expand...

They all require expensive equipment. If you know someone at a brewery with a lab, ask them to do it. I know of breweries who will do this occasionally for homebrewers that they know. The marginal cost of an additional test for them is small, but it is an annoyance.

If you have a friend with a well equipped lab outside of a brewery, it depends on what equipment they have. The ASBC has a method for a gas chromatograph, it shouldn't be too hard to get that (if not on the internet, as a member of the ASBC which includes many brewery employees). You might ask Mary Beth Raines about the spectrophotographic method she used as I believe the source was other than the ASBC.

I'm skeptical of home methods of measuring alcohol because they all rely on the same assumption that you can easily boil all of the alcohol (or nearly so) out of the beer. This is precisely what Raines found was much harder to in a kitchen than anticipated (she was able to do it with small quantities in the lab).
 

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