Adventures in NA Homebrewing

[a6ladd]

I have a friend that stopped drinking everything but NA's, Becks, Kaliber, O'douls. I'm on a mission to make him some decent beer to drink.

I've done some reading and experimenting and the only practical way Ive found of accomplishing an NA home brew is to heat your brew, post fermentation, and cause (most of) the alcohol to evaporate. After this I've simply been chilling the 'wort'/beer, adding more yeast and bottling.

My next experiment is in regard to correcting some of the issues I've been having with hop aroma/bitterness. I am going to create my wort as usual and bring it to a boil. Instead of boiling for the full 60 minutes and adding standard hop additions I will boil for roughly 30 minutes or until I get my desired volume, whichever occurs last, then I will chill my wort and pitch my yeast.

After fermentation is complete I am going to carefully rack my fermented wort from the primary into the kettle and bring up the temperature and hop my wort.

This is where I need your input!

Should I bring it to a full boil or is roughly 170-180F enough for full hop utilization? Its been a while since I've tried making an NA batch, do I need to worry about oxidization if I am bringing the wort to a full boil again? Are there any other things I should take into consideration in regard to potential for off flavors?

Any other advice, input, or possible recommendations would be GREATLY appreciated!



Ladd

 

[a6ladd]

Anyone? Please help me!

 

[Revvy]

Dude, you have to realize that not a lot of people have done this. If you've looked at some of the threads on here, where serious discussions of N/a brewing occur, not a lot of actual work has been done.

Rather than asking for advice, why don't you split your batch in two, do it both ways, and you tell us what works best?

Sometimes you have to be the groundbreaker....Don't look for advice, become the expert.

 

[nukebrewer]

No personal experience, but I can conjecture. Boiling will drive off any oxygen, so I would say you're good there. Since it's been fermented, there isn't that much sugar to worry about caramelizing. The only think I might worry about is the suspended yeast being killed off and causing autolysis type smells and flavors. I would worry about this at any temp where hops would be effectively utilized. You could probably combat this by cold crashing and possibly filtering if you've got the stuff for it. Again, no personal experience, but hopefully I've brought to light some issues you may not have thought of previously. Good luck!

 

[a6ladd]

Dude, you have to realize that not a lot of people have done this. If you've looked at some of the threads on here, where serious discussions of N/a brewing occur, not a lot of actual work has been done.

Rather than asking for advice, why don't you split your batch in two, do it both ways, and you tell us what works best?

Sometimes you have to be the groundbreaker....Don't look for advice, become the expert.

Revvy, I've tried this several different ways, a few of them side by side test batches. I'm looking more for input of possible types of off flavors produced with the unorthodox double boil. I was also curious if anyone had done it differently than me.

I've made some pretty tasty n/a brew before, I would just like to perfect the science:rockin:

No personal experience, but I can conjecture. Boiling will drive off any oxygen, so I would say you're good there. Since it's been fermented, there isn't that much sugar to worry about caramelizing. The only think I might worry about is the suspended yeast being killed off and causing autolysis type smells and flavors. I would worry about this at any temp where hops would be effectively utilized. You could probably combat this by cold crashing and possibly filtering if you've got the stuff for it. Again, no personal experience, but hopefully I've brought to light some issues you may not have thought of previously. Good luck!

Thanks for the input nuke. I've never thought about autolysis, Ill do some reading on that today and check to see if I can pick up any of those flavors in my next batch.

 

[pjj2ba]

This is where I need your input!

Should I bring it to a full boil or is roughly 170-180F enough for full hop utilization? Its been a while since I've tried making an NA batch, do I need to worry about oxidization if I am bringing the wort to a full boil again? Are there any other things I should take into consideration in regard to potential for off flavors?

Any other advice, input, or possible recommendations would be GREATLY appreciated!



Ladd

I'd be a bit hesitant to bring it to a full roiling boil, but a nice simmer would be good. I'm assuming you added bittering hops the first time around - if not, I would, as the bitterness should persist through later stages. The beer should boil at some temp. below 212 due to the alcohol content and should rise as the amount of alcohol decreases.

Once boiling, that should drive off any O2 that is present. I would though be carefull at all transfer stages, including going from fermentor to kettle, and then more importantly during and after cooling.

I would add some more flavor and aroma hops during the alcohol removal step as these will be affected during that stage - you might even skip these in the original beer.

If you had some way to pull a slight vacuum on the boil pot, that would allow you to have your boil at a slightly lower temperature, and that would be a little "gentler" on the beer.

Good luck!

 

[JLem]

Just curious as to how you test/determine/estimate the ABV content? How do you know you've got a NA beer in the end?

EDIT: did a very quick search and found this info - http://forums.egullet.org/index.php...off-the-alcohol/page__p__1859665#entry1859665

How long are you heating the beer for?

 

[passedpawn]

First, and this is important, how do you propose to measure the alcohol content to know if you removed all of it? Search ebulliometer on this forum or google and you'll see it's not so simple.

I think a great way to make an NA beer is to NOT ADD YEAST.

Here's what I would do: Make a pale ale (OG = 1.015) and DON'T ADD YEAST. Make a big beer at the same time and add yeast to that one. Then, run the evolving CO2 from the airlock of the big beer THROUGH the small beer (imagine some tubing linking the carboys and a tube going to the bottom of the small beer carboy, maybe terminated in an airstone. This way you'd get a lot of the phenols and esters and aromatics from fermentation without any of the alcohol. Parti-gyle would be an efficient way of getting both the small and big beer from the same mash.

Force carbonate the NA beer. Bottle conditioning will result in nearly 0.5% ABV in the bottle.

 

[nukebrewer]

What I have read, which makes perfect sense, is that since alcohol boils lower than water, you can monitor the temp while heating to determine when the alcohol is gone. The temp will rise to about 175 F and hold while the alcohol is boiling off. When the temperature starts to rise again it means the alcohol is done boiling off. When it reaches the boiling point of water, all the alcohol should be gone. The reason your link said 75% of the alcohol remained with boiling is probably because whoever did it equated boiling to alcohol being gone and stopped boiling shortly thereafter.

 

[a6ladd]

I'd be a bit hesitant to bring it to a full roiling boil, but a nice simmer would be good. I'm assuming you added bittering hops the first time around - if not, I would, as the bitterness should persist through later stages. The beer should boil at some temp. below 212 due to the alcohol content and should rise as the amount of alcohol decreases.

Once boiling, that should drive off any O2 that is present. I would though be carefull at all transfer stages, including going from fermentor to kettle, and then more importantly during and after cooling.

I would add some more flavor and aroma hops during the alcohol removal step as these will be affected during that stage - you might even skip these in the original beer.

If you had some way to pull a slight vacuum on the boil pot, that would allow you to have your boil at a slightly lower temperature, and that would be a little "gentler" on the beer.

Good luck!

I was thinking for my next batch I would forgo the hop additions before fermentation and then do a simmer/boil and a standard hop schedule post fermentation. I like the vacuum idea too!

 

[a6ladd]

Just curious as to how you test/determine/estimate the ABV content? How do you know you've got a NA beer in the end?

EDIT: did a very quick search and found this info - http://forums.egullet.org/index.php...off-the-alcohol/page__p__1859665#entry1859665

How long are you heating the beer for?

Im going to heat the beer somewhere between alcohols evaporation point and waters boiling point. Right now I'm leaning toward the boil so I can run the hop schedule post fermentation as I would in a normal brew day (pre-fermentation). As far as the alcohol is concerned I was thinking about sending it off to White Labs through Northern Brewer but after boiling for an hour I would imagine my alcohol content would be pretty low.

 

[a6ladd]

First, and this is important, how do you propose to measure the alcohol content to know if you removed all of it? Search ebulliometer on this forum or google and you'll see it's not so simple.

I think a great way to make an NA beer is to NOT ADD YEAST.

Here's what I would do: Make a pale ale (OG = 1.015) and DON'T ADD YEAST. Make a big beer at the same time and add yeast to that one. Then, run the evolving CO2 from the airlock of the big beer THROUGH the small beer (imagine some tubing linking the carboys and a tube going to the bottom of the small beer carboy, maybe terminated in an airstone. This way you'd get a lot of the phenols and aromatics from fermentation without any of the alcohol. Parti-gyle would be an efficient way of getting both the small and big beer from the same mash.

Force carbonate the NA beer. Bottle conditioning will result in nearly 0.5% ABV in the bottle.

This is a VERY interesting idea and it seems like it would be easy enough with the parti-gyle approach. Would it matter how 'big' your big batch was? Id imagine you have to be somewhere in the 1.080 range to produce enough second runnings for a small beer. Ive never done a parti-gyle before. Ill have to give this a shot. Thanks!!:cross:

 

[a6ladd]

What I have read, which makes perfect sense, is that since alcohol boils lower than water, you can monitor the temp while heating to determine when the alcohol is gone. The temp will rise to about 175 F and hold while the alcohol is boiling off. When the temperature starts to rise again it means the alcohol is done boiling off. When it reaches the boiling point of water, all the alcohol should be gone. The reason your link said 75% of the alcohol remained with boiling is probably because whoever did it equated boiling to alcohol being gone and stopped boiling shortly thereafter.

I like this idea better than sending it off to White Labs for an exact alcohol measurement lol

 

[passedpawn]

This is a VERY interesting idea and it seems like it would be easy enough with the parti-gyle approach. Would it matter how 'big' your big batch was? Id imagine you have to be somewhere in the 1.080 range to produce enough second runnings for a small beer. Ive never done a parti-gyle before. Ill have to give this a shot. Thanks!!:cross:

Something to consider though: NA beer does not have the antiseptic properties of alcohol. So you'd either need to pasteurize the bottles (danger!) or keep them refrigerated. That's my opinion; maybe someone else can comment on storage of homebrewed NA beer.

 

[a6ladd]

Something to consider though: NA beer does not have the antiseptic properties of alcohol. So you'd either need to pasteurize the bottles (danger!) or keep them refrigerated. That's my opinion; maybe someone else can comment on storage of homebrewed NA beer.

I hadn't thought of that before. So far I haven't had an issue with infection in any of the batches I've made and I had been storing them at cellar temps. I will take extra care when sanitizing next time around, thats for sure.

 

[JLem]

Im going to heat the beer somewhere between alcohols evaporation point and waters boiling point. Right now I'm leaning toward the boil so I can run the hop schedule post fermentation as I would in a normal brew day (pre-fermentation). As far as the alcohol is concerned I was thinking about sending it off to White Labs through Northern Brewer but after boiling for an hour I would imagine my alcohol content would be pretty low.

According to the info found in the previous link (http://forums.egullet.org/index.php...off-the-alcohol/page__p__1859665#entry1859665), you would need to boil for 2.5 hours to drive off 95% of the alcohol. Boiling for only an hour would remove only 75% of the alcohol.

Note: I have no idea the accuracy of the discussion in the link I provided

 

[a6ladd]

I could live with a 75% reduction of alcohol. I typically shoot for an OG of 1.050 in this type of brew so I would be down under 1.5% abv which is fine with my friend so this isnt a true 0.0% abv brew.

 

[a6ladd]

So I think this is going to be my outline for my next batch of NA.

1. Formulate a recipe, most likely a pale ale, on the light side of things.
2. Prepare my wort and leave out the hop additions, chill, add yeast and ferment.
3. After fermentation cold crash the wort to help separate out as much of the yeast as possible and minimize the flavors/smells of autolysis.
4. Carefully transfer the un-hopped brew from the primary into the boil kettle and begin to raise the temperature. (I will be looking into the vacuum option)
5. As soon as my wort reaches 175F add my first 60 minute bittering hop addition.
6. Slowly raise the temperature over the next 60 minutes until I can (hopefully) reach 212F. I may continue to boil past the 60 minute mark in order to further reduce the amount of alcohol, but I am undecided at this point.
7. Chill my wort and transfer back into the (clean) primary fermenter.
8. Let this stand for a few days then cold crash.
9. Transfer the wort from the primary into the bottling bucket with priming sugar. Add yeast and stir gently.
10. Bottle, carb and enjoy!

Thank you guys so much for your input. Keep it coming if you've got something else!

 

[a6ladd]

Double post. Oops!