Evan!
Well-Known Member
Well, I was up until 1am, but I got 7 whole 12oz bottles capped and ready to go. This is my first time doing this. I found a cool article from BYO about how easy it is to dealcoholize your beer...I always thought that the vacuum method that the commercial breweries use was the only way...but then I find out that, since ethyl has a lower boiling point than water, all you need to do is heat your beer to 173.3f for 30 minutes, and it will boil the alcohol out. So that's what I did last night. I took a little over 2 quarts from my Smoked Porter, which is currently in secondary, and stuck it into a 180f oven. Unfortunately, it took a really long time to get from 60f to 180f. So I was up very late. But I tasted a little bit at bottling...not bad. Much better than O'Douls, that's fo sho. The body is lacking now that the alcohol is gone...but this was something that I decided to do after I had already brewed the porter. Next time I do this, I'm going to make sure and add plenty of maltodextrin to the boil to compensate for the lack of alcohol....that's what the BYO article suggested. Not MD in particular, but just some kind of dextrose.
Anyway, if you're interested, here's the directions. It's unbelievably easy, and you can just do a portion of a batch if you want.
Anyway, if you're interested, here's the directions. It's unbelievably easy, and you can just do a portion of a batch if you want.