Strange question..... How to Make Non alcoholic beer?

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KimmiC

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Me again.

I know this must be a strange question but is there a way to make homemade NON alcoholic beer? Reason I ask is because my husband does not drink alcohol. However he LOVES beer. He just had way too many back in the day :tank: and has been off the sauce for 15 years. Whenever we dine out, he always gets Buckler, Clausthaler or Kaliber.
 
There was another user on HBT that did this.

After fermentation is complete, he heated the beer up (not to a boil, but I forget the temperature) and this drives off most of the alcohol. I didn't bookmark the thread though.
 
Here's an idea - brew the beer with NO hop boil and ferment it out. Once fermentation is complete, do another boil and add the hops according to schedule. Chill and bottle/keg, repitching yeast if doing natural carbonation. That way you should be able to get a nearly non-alcoholic beer with hop flavor and aroma.

Obviously I haven't tried it, because I'm not that interested in non-alcoholic beer. But if I saw a non-alcoholic IPA on the shelf I would give it a try just for fun.
 
Nice but I have to have ZERO sauce in it. He won't even use mouthwash with alcohol in it. I like him better w/ no alcohol in him LOL. But he likes me with alcohol - go figure LOL!
 
The only way to have ZERO alcohol (like 0.0%) is to not ferment in the first place. You can boil off alcohol, either with heat or vacuum, but there will always be SOME amount left.

If you don't ferment, you won't have something resembling beer IMHO.

Even the "non-alcoholic" beers that your husband gets at the bar most likely have a tiny percentage alcohol. In the USA, they can have up to 0.5% ABV and still be sold as non-alcoholic.
 
Yeah there is almost no way to completely remove ALL alcohol from anything. Even when you cook with wine, there is some residual alcohol left.
 
As chocotaco said, even "non-alcoholic" beers have about 0.5% ABV; this is a level you should be able to achieve at home, even if you bottle carb, which should only add about 0.25%.
 
From what I've read you can drive of all of the alcohol by this method. The way it gets back to the 0.5% abv is with the natural carbing. When you add the yeast and priming sugar you create alcohol. I would imagine that if you kegged it you wouldnt have that problem and you would have 0.0% abv and it could still be carbonated.
 
chocotaco said:
Here's an idea - brew the beer with NO hop boil and ferment it out. Once fermentation is complete, do another boil and add the hops according to schedule. Chill and bottle/keg, repitching yeast if doing natural carbonation. That way you should be able to get a nearly non-alcoholic beer with hop flavor and aroma.

Obviously I haven't tried it, because I'm not that interested in non-alcoholic beer. But if I saw a non-alcoholic IPA on the shelf I would give it a try just for fun.
Click to expand...

Very good idea. So basically all the hop aroma kinda stays in....instead of boiling off while you are getting rid of the alcohol.

One question: wouldnt an actual boil after fermentation is complete kinda destabilize the beer for long term storage?
As far as I know you dont boil the beer after fermentation, but heat it up to below boiling temp because alcohol can be driven off at lower temp (as opposed to water that requires boiling, 100ºC, temp.)
 
I've been considering this, because I do like the taste of a good beer without getting hammered. I may split a 5 gallon batch to 2.5

Here's my question: By doing half of the fermented beer at around 180 degrees in the stove for 30 minutes not only would I lose alcohol, but also hop flavor. At this point where could I add more hop flavor back to the beer?

And how would I check gravity ?.........
 
chocotaco said:
Here's an idea - brew the beer with NO hop boil and ferment it out. Once fermentation is complete, do another boil and add the hops according to schedule. Chill and bottle/keg, repitching yeast if doing natural carbonation. That way you should be able to get a nearly non-alcoholic beer with hop flavor and aroma.

Obviously I haven't tried it, because I'm not that interested in non-alcoholic beer. But if I saw a non-alcoholic IPA on the shelf I would give it a try just for fun.
Click to expand...

You will have way too much water that boils off....but a really good idea. I think I'll just put a pellet of chinook or something into the bottle before bottling it. I am wondering if that's a good idea though. :)
 
I've neutered parts of 4 batches this Fall for a friend that's in the same boat as your husband. I heat it to 175-180 on the stove then place the kettle in the oven for 1/2 hour. Most important- make sure you check the temperature. My oven temp was off by about 25 * and my 1st test batch never dealcoholized. So on the other batches, I checked the temp. of the beer several times and adjusted the oven temperature.
I didn't notice a difference in flavor in regular vs. neutered, but all 4 batches were malty, not hoppy- a Scottish ale, a Honey Porter, a Graf, and a Vienna lager.
And during the research about the neutering process, I seem to remember that a chemist piped in that due to the nature of alcohol/water solution, you could never get to 0%ABV by heating. Can't remember his specific reasoning.
 
I had to chime in because I was reading some of those "even non-alcoholic beer has some alcohol in it" comments. All beverages with fermentable sugars in them will have a small level of alcohol in them. In the US the difference between alcohol and no alcohol is .5%. This means any beverage under .5% ABV is non-alcoholic/ alcohol- free. It is common for all natural juices to have .5% ABV. This is do to the presence of wild yeast on the fruit and floating freely in the air. Hell, I've seen some stats that say an orange on the vine can be greater than .5% ABV. That's right, an orange itself. At .5% it is impossible to drink enough of the beverage to get alcohol into your bloodstream. Your body will digest the minuscule amount faster than you can drink. You're stomach would explode sooner than alcohol would enter your system.
If your husband had a previous problem with alcohol then even alcohol free beer is probably not the best idea. The psychological reaction to intoxicants by people who previously struggled with them can cause relapses. As in taste could cause a relapse. But, if he's safe with Kaliber and Buckler, non-alcoholic homebrew is probably alright.
Problems with alcohol are very unique because much of it has to do with the perception of it. People don't perceive orange juice as having alcohol in it, so it's okay. The fact is oj can have as much alcohol as non-alcoholic beer. It's all rather strange. I could go into it more, but the gist of it is, yes alcohol free beer has alcohol in it, so does non-alcoholic homebrew, but so does oj, grape juice, bananas foster, and plenty of other things. There's a fun intersection between psychological dependency, physical dependency, and social pressures that contribute to how alcohol effects people and how we understand what is and isn't "alcoholic."
 
I read where a malt beer with an already low ABV would work best. I chose a Scottish 60 shilling, ABV around 3.3 / Got one from Brewmaster's for $20.

And for many on this thread that's going on about 0.0 ABV, You just can't, you have to add active yeast and sugar to carb. That will bring it to at least 0.5% like other N/A's..
 
But if you keg, you eliminate the bottle conditioning fermentation of the priming sugar, don't you? I would think creating normally fermented beer, use 175-180 stove heat to drive off alcohol, hopping maybe then (there's a real time/amount experiment waiting to happen), and kegging for carbonation and you'd have the best chance for the lowest ABV homebrew.
 
I'm also still concerned about losing hop flavor during the stove part. Should I toss some hops in there for the last 10 minutes or so ??
 
Could you just skip adding hops to the initial boil, and just add them to the "evaporation" kettle post fermentation?
 
derek704 said:
Could you just skip adding hops to the initial boil, and just add them to the "evaporation" kettle post fermentation?
Click to expand...

The alcohol boiling point is lower than the water boiling point....I am not sure that the bittering hop will fully be isomerized.

I am no expert...this is just my thought on this. I am still wondering how to add the bitterness/aroma/flavour after the alcohol is gone.
 
You cannot drive off all alcohol, this is why distillers can never get to 100% efficiency through heat distillation, some alcohol stays permanently bonded to water.

For hops you can use an iso-extract to get the bittering without boiling any hops. There are also plenty of extracts out there for aroma and flavor, these are routinely used throughout the brewing industry.
 
helibrewer said:
You cannot drive off all alcohol, this is why distillers can never get to 100% efficiency through heat distillation, some alcohol stays permanently bonded to water.

For hops you can use an iso-extract to get the bittering without boiling any hops. There are also plenty of extracts out there for aroma and flavor, these are routinely used throughout the brewing industry.
Click to expand...

also for aroma and flavour? I thought isomerized hop extract was just for bitterness.

P.S. I have just tried to search for specific hop extracts such as nugget hop extract, cascade hop extract....google gives me no matches.
 
I read a post a while back that someone used a french press and boiling water to make a hop tea. They then added this back to the NA brew and there you have it. My strategy would be to estimate the volume lost from the second boil when you drive off alcohol, then use that much water to make a hop tea. You end up with the same volume as before and get your hop flavor and aroma in there.
 
The more I think about this the more I want to do it... I actually think the hop tea idea could really work. You could do alcohol free ipa´s with that. Adding back the hop tea wouldn´t be a huge detriment to mouth feel on lighter beers either like a bitter. Food for thought.
 
Elysium said:
also for aroma and flavour? I thought isomerized hop extract was just for bitterness.



P.S. I have just tried to search for specific hop extracts such as nugget hop extract, cascade hop extract....google gives me no matches.
Click to expand...


The iso are for bittering only. Here's a site with other varieties:

http://www.hoptech.com/collections/hop-oils-extracts



Sent from my iPad using Home Brew
 
angryyoungman said:
I read a post a while back that someone used a french press and boiling water to make a hop tea. They then added this back to the NA brew and there you have it. My strategy would be to estimate the volume lost from the second boil when you drive off alcohol, then use that much water to make a hop tea. You end up with the same volume as before and get your hop flavor and aroma in there.
Click to expand...
Brilliant idea :)

There is one small problem: hop utilization.

The amount of water that boils off......is little and the hops that you boil in that much water wont impart as much flavour/aroma as boiling in a full, say, 5-gallon beer. I need to find again what Palmer says about this....he gives the curve of hop utilization.

but then again....brilliant idea. Thanks.
 
dstranger99 said:
What if I were to put a bunch of whole hops into a tea bag and make 2 or 3 cups of it, or would pellet hops work better ?
Click to expand...

Why would you put them in a tea bag? Isnt it easier to put them in the liquid and filter the liquid afterwards? Surely less messier, but I wouldnt constrain hops in a tea bag......I think it is better, regarding utilization, if they are freely floating.
Then again.....read my previous comment...it might make you look into Palmer's book and the part where he talks about hop utilization. It is mainly connected to time more than anything else and he talks about how bitterness utilization is dependent on the boil time.....so, I might be talking total rubbish here. :)
I guess we just have to try our ideas out and come back to tell about them. :)
 
Elysium said:
Why would you put them in a tea bag? Isnt it easier to put them in the liquid and filter the liquid afterwards? Surely less messier, but I wouldnt constrain hops in a tea bag......I think it is better, regarding utilization, if they are freely floating.
Then again.....read my previous comment...it might make you look into Palmer's book and the part where he talks about hop utilization. It is mainly connected to time more than anything else and he talks about how bitterness utilization is dependent on the boil time.....so, I might be talking total rubbish here. :)
I guess we just have to try our ideas out and come back to tell about them. :)
Click to expand...


My thinking on that is while 1/2 my batch is in the oven, I can simply add the hop tea once the booze has been burned off, then cool it down, and have it ready to rack for bottling without having hop gunk to deal with.
 
As far as the hop utilization I don't really know a whole lot about it to be honest. But I am not certain that iso- alpha acids would boil off during a secondary boil. Most of the experiments I have read or heard about from other home brewers is that the hop bitterness, from the iso- alphas, stays behind after a second boil to drive off alcohol, but all the flavor and aroma of the hops will disappear. My idea would be that because the flavor and aroma hops are added later they have a fairly low rate of hop utilization and contribute next to no iso- alpha acids.
From my understanding it would appear that a second boil to get rid of alcohol drives off the normal alpha acids, and leaves behinds the iso-alpha acids. So if you do a regular boil after the mash, and a normal early bittering addition, you will retain all the iso-aplhas, and all the bitterness. Then, when you do the second boil to get rid of the alcohol you won't need to concern yourself with adding any bitterness, just aroma and flavor. So boil the "hop tea" for 15 minutes and add the usual flavor and aroma additions at the same time. Combine the tea with the aroma and flavor with the non-alcoholic brew (which should have retained the iso-alphas) and, theoretically, you will get the non-alcoholic brew with all the hop bitterness, as well as the flavor and aroma.
Heck, you could probably add the priming sugar to the hop tea boil and kill to birds with one stone.
I hope that all made sense and wasn't terribly complicated or repetitive.
 
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/hop-utilization-123942/

This thread has a hop utilization chart. As you can see, there is very, very little hop utilization under a 30 minute boil. The aroma and flavor hops are usually added during the last 15 minutes of the boil, so they would contribute very little iso-alpha acids and therefore have very little impact on overall hop utilization. So... That's all.
Heck, if you really, realllllyyyyyy wanted a hoppy non-alcoholic brew you could do the hop tea thing, boil off the alcohol, then dry hop (in a hop bag) it in a keg. After a few days, take the dry hop bag out, carb the keg and be ready to go.
 
Just getting back into brewing after a hiatus of about ten years and I stumbled across this thread.

The answer to the original poster's question is that you can make NA beer at home using vacuum distillation.

About 15 years ago I wrote an article on the process for the old Homebrew Digest listserve. It is a bit formal, but I was doing a lot of scientific writing at the time. Anyway, here is the link. You need to scroll down almost to the bottom to find the articles.

http://hbd.org/hbd/archive/2973.html

Enjoy!

One thing it does not mention in the article is that I did a series of experiments on stock solutions of ethanol in water to figure out how much volume you needed to evaporate to get a 5% alcohol solution down to 0.5% My memory is that it was between a third and a quarter of the volume of the beer.

Hoptech used to sell hop extracts that would put back some of the aromatics.
 
I have 5 gallons of fermented Pale Ale that I am about to bottle. Planning to take 48oz from the batch and do the 30 minute + 180degree heat cycle to burn off the alcohol.

My question is about how to calculate my yeast & sugar need to carbonate it. Here is what I have:
-5 pints of rinsed yeast from the primary which I intend to pitch after cooling the 48 oz. HOW MUCH SHOULD I POUR INTO THE 48 OZ BATCH???? 1/4 CUP, 1 TABLESPOON...ETC
-Based on my usual add of 4.5oz of boiled sugar water (in 1 cup water) to a 5 gallon batch, I intend to add .3oz of boiled sugar to the chilled liquid

Thoughts????
 
Hi. When I have done it in the past, I would prime the entire batch as usual, then pull off the 1st gallon and heat that to 170-180 and hold it for 1/2 hour. After cooling, I added back 1 tsp yeast slurry and bottled. When I didn't have any slurry, I added about 1/4 pkt. of Muntons cheapo yeast. Those are 7gm pkts. so that would make it 1.5-2gm. Worked for me.
Good luck!
 
An ethanol-water phase diagram might be instructive to people talking about separation limits.

bpcompn1.gif


NA brewers are interested in the left side of the diagram because they are interested in concentrating water. The theoretical limit to concentrating water by adding heat is 100%. There are practical limits that others have mentioned like time, cost, and impurities. Using a distillation column with a reflux could even eliminate most of water lost with the alcohol. Just keep in mind you are concentrating what distillers call the tail - high in fusel alcohols that give headaches.

Distillers are concentrating alcohol, so they are interested in the right side of the diagram. The inflection point is called an azeotrope where the solution of 96% alcohol and 4% water (at 1 atmosphere of pressure) boils at a lower temperature than either constituent. There are many methods to "break" the azeotrope. Pressure-swing distillation shifts the azeotrope by altering the pressure and allows a theoretical alcohol concentration of 100%. Distillers don't do this because they add water after concentrating anyway. There's also methanol in the head cut - the stuff that makes you go blind. The head and tail are discarded while the heart is kept for drinking. Depending on what they're making determines how closely distillers cut to the heart.
 

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