Double boil wort to make NA beer

[jeanverr]

I've been brewing for almost 20 years now, but for health reasons am interested in coming up with a method that will yield good tasting non-alcoholic beers. I've read various articles on the topic, including the one instructing you to place your finished beer in an oven for 30 minutes at 180 degrees to drive off the alcohol. According to the USDA, however, 30 minutes isn't enough time to drive off the alcohol. 2.5 to 3 hours is instead needed at a simmering temperature to do this. This process also drives off the hop flavors and aromas. Therefore, I'm wondering what would happen if I made one of my regular recipes, but excluded the hops from my typical 90 minute boil, fermented the finished product, and then boiled it again for 90 minutes (adding water before the boil to compensate for the loss of volume), but this time following my normal hopping schedule. Would it drive off most of the alcohol, and at the same time add the hop character that the recipe typically calls for to the finished non-alcoholic beer? What other impacts/unintended consequences would the second boil have on the beer?

 

[chocotaco]

I've wondered this too.

I say try it out and see what happens! And make sure to report back. For science!

 

[DaleHair]

I considered doing this. I would make the beer with the bittering hops, then after the alcahol was boiled off add the flavor and aroma hops.

 

[mchrispen]

There is a discussion and some experimentation you can read in the General Techniques section here. BierMuncher sacrificed a nice steam beer for science... and seems to have had a decent result.

 

[zeptrey]

Another question, what if you froze the beer? I know I've heard of people freezing their beer in order to extract the alcohol and methanol from the rest of the so called beer. Could this be done to get rid of the alcohol out of the beer without having to boil?

 

[mchrispen]

Freezing concentrates the alcohol (including the methanol) as you remove the ice/slush, which is how eisbock is produced. I guess that you could work it backward and salvage the frozen slush as your NB. I do think your malt and hops will be much more dilute than the concentrated boozy beer left behind.

 

[zeptrey]

Freezing concentrates the alcohol (including the methanol) as you remove the ice/slush, which is how eisbock is produced. I guess that you could work it backward and salvage the frozen slush as your NB. I do think your malt and hops will be much more dilute than the concentrated boozy beer left behind.

Just trying to think of alternatives, since all I'm reading is that most boiled beers end up still being 1-2% abv brews. Could be worth a shot, I need to look at how Eisbocks are done and see how we could work it backwards.

Also, was wondering if you used rye/wheat malts that you could brew a full bodied low abv beer. And then try boiling the rest of the alcohol off...see how close you can get to being NA.

 

[fearwig]

Another question, what if you froze the beer? I know I've heard of people freezing their beer in order to extract the alcohol and methanol from the rest of the so called beer. Could this be done to get rid of the alcohol out of the beer without having to boil?

No, sugars and other solutes affect freezing points too, this is a bad way to isolate alcohol (unless you want those solutes in your isolate, like in jacking). Your NA would be crazy watery, maybe even as bad as commercial.

There is practically no methanol in beer, though, I understand it's similar to orange juice.

 

[fearwig]

Also, was wondering if you used rye/wheat malts that you could brew a full bodied low abv beer. And then try boiling the rest of the alcohol off...see how close you can get to being NA.

Maybe like 4lb of C20 plus a pound of aromatic and a half pound of maybe biscuit. Stab in the dark. Bet you'd wind up around .008 and 2% (pulling this out my butt here). The aromatic and biscuit would sure make it taste like beer, at least.

 

[mchrispen]

Also, was wondering if you used rye/wheat malts that you could brew a full bodied low abv beer. And then try boiling the rest of the alcohol off...see how close you can get to being NA.

I seem to recall an article somewhere, but it escapes my Google skills, that point to this as the key to success. It is very possible to brew something with a very low ABV, but with the requisite flavors and aromas of real beer. JesterKing released a table beer a while back that was just under 2.0 ABV and it was pretty good. I just have NO idea of where to start other than more research. Perhaps a combination, with some trial runs, of a specialized recipe and procedures that prepare your beer for the heating process, and back flavoring with hops after maybe less objectionable. That is the direction that folks in the link I provided were heading.

There is some concern over alcohol's azeotrope characteristics, so there is a minimum threshold you can reach even with distillation. I suspect you will be hard pressed to get below 2% practically without boiling under pressure/vacuum or other more extreme conditions. I know that wash for distillation cannot achieve complete 100% efficiency without boiling the entire wash dry (which is NASTY!). FYI - it also seems that hop bitterness is increased significantly in the heating process, perhaps more oils isomerize, creating something very different in character... you would want to account for that in the recipe.

 

[chocotaco]

Yeah freezing will remove mostly water. You'll be left with all the goods (including alcohol) in the liquid and colored water in the ice.

I think your plan of doing a post-fermentation "boil" with hops will work pretty well. I would do bittering in the original beer, then ferment. Bring it up to 180-ish for 60-90 minutes and do your aroma additions (make sure to calculate what bitterness they will add!) I think your malt backbone will fare pretty well against the heat, as will the bittering. So at the end you should be left with something that is pretty close to what you would have had from the original recipe, except very low in alcohol. You won't completely remove the alcohol, but with a 90 minute "boil" at 180 you should be able to get it down under 1%.

I would say take an OG prior to fermentation and a FG after fermentation. Then take an FFG (FINAL final gravity) after you boil off the alcohol. You can use that to calculate how much alcohol is left. Post your results please!

Now I am curious and I'm seriously considering trying a non-alc IPA just to see what happens. It would make a great prank for all your buddies that drink up your homebrew! Don't tell them it's 0.5% and see how drunk they act after downing 6 pints.

 

[chocotaco]

Another interesting thing about the post-ferment boil is whether or not the presence of alcohol in the "wort" has any effect on hop utilization in the second boil. I really don't think ANY research has been done about that - you could break new ground and write a published paper if you do a series of controlled experiments!

 

[zeptrey]

Also, was wondering if you used rye/wheat malts that you could brew a full bodied low abv beer. And then try boiling the rest of the alcohol off...see how close you can get to being NA.

I seem to recall an article somewhere, but it escapes my Google skills, that point to this as the key to success. It is very possible to brew something with a very low ABV, but with the requisite flavors and aromas of real beer. JesterKing released a table beer a while back that was just under 2.0 ABV and it was pretty good. I just have NO idea of where to start other than more research. Perhaps a combination, with some trial runs, of a specialized recipe and procedures that prepare your beer for the heating process, and back flavoring with hops after maybe less objectionable. That is the direction that folks in the link I provided were heading.

There is some concern over alcohol's azeotrope characteristics, so there is a minimum threshold you can reach even with distillation. I suspect you will be hard pressed to get below 2% practically without boiling under pressure/vacuum or other more extreme conditions. I know that wash for distillation cannot achieve complete 100% efficiency without boiling the entire wash dry (which is NASTY!). FYI - it also seems that hop bitterness is increased significantly in the heating process, perhaps more oils isomerize, creating something very different in character... you would want to account for that in the recipe.

http://ec.libsyn.com/p/2/8/5/28572d...1ce3dae902ea1d01c0813fd1cb54b4a4&c_id=6282469

Take a peek at this! He brews up an all Rye beer thats around 2.5% ABV and a Wheat/Rye that OG was 1018 and finished at 1008 which is 1.3 % ABV. It happened to be low cal too 76 cals per pint.

 

[fearwig]

Hmm, yeah, the "FFG" would be slightly higher than the FG in proportion to how much alcohol boils off, after you adjust or top up with water to preboil volume. But you are measuring a very small change (2pts?), so I think you'd need a fine resolution hydrometer.