Yuri4x4
Member
Let me preface this topic by saying this was not my idea. I just stumbled upon an interesting website last night, and haven't been able to stop pondering this problem ever since. The website is: http://www.patsbcb.com/ I am in no way affiliated with this company.
In a nutshell:
Pat and I share a common bond in that we are avid hikers. (almost) Nothing is better than a beer at camp, after a strenuous hike. But hikers need to be mindful of every ounce of weight in their pack. The way weight-removal is accomplished with food is to dehydrate and re-hydrate later at camp. But is there a way to do this with beer?
You can't boil-off water from beer without boiling off the alcohol too. Pat has supposedly figured out a way to brew with almost no water to make a concentrated beer-syrup (which is high in alcohol). Which opened-up a whole new slew of legal hurdles. I fear that the government will never get it figured out in order for Pat to bring this product to market, and if they do it won't take long before kids are putting this 'alcohol syrup' into Red Bull, or some other crazy concoction and it will get pulled from the market.
(As for CO2: Pat has designed a bottle that can carbonate beer/soda by using a reaction similar to alca-selzer (this might be beneficial to homebrewers as well). He already sells this product as well as single-serving soda concentrate pouches to use with it.)
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My idea is to forget about all the legal mumbo-jumbo. I want to figure out how normal people can make 'beer concentrate' in their own homes. I've heard rumor that beers like Bud Light are actually brewed at a higher gravity, then watered-down later. So the idea of adding water to finished beer isn't new.
I'm an experienced homebrewer, but nowhere near as knowledgeable as some of you. This is where I thought I'd let you experts chime-in...
Homebrewers use a lot of water brewing beer. Back in my extract days, I only boiled a couple gallons, then just topped-off to 5 gallons post-boil. Is it possible to NOT add that post-boil water yet still get enough alcohol? Does the yeast really need the water? If you used (say) a 5-gallon recipe with only 1 gallon of water, would you get 5-times the alcohol in that single gallon? Will the yeast survive those conditions?
An alternative plan would be to basically make ice-beer. Freeze beer and remove the ice. I don't know how far you could go with it, or even how to do it specifically. BMC used to make ice-beers (and may still do it AFAIK). But if you were successful in removing half the water content, that's twice as much remote-location beer for the same weight/effort.
What about dehydrating beer? Ethanol's boiling point is 173 degrees F... If you stayed under that temperature, could you dehydrate beer?
Or what about distilling-off the ethanol, then adding it back in to the concentrate?
Any other suggestions?
Frankly, it seems like it would be very difficult to make a beer that would be worth all this trouble. But even if a concentrated homebrew IPA came out tasting like a Bud Light, that would be better than hauling all that weight.
In a nutshell:
Pat and I share a common bond in that we are avid hikers. (almost) Nothing is better than a beer at camp, after a strenuous hike. But hikers need to be mindful of every ounce of weight in their pack. The way weight-removal is accomplished with food is to dehydrate and re-hydrate later at camp. But is there a way to do this with beer?
You can't boil-off water from beer without boiling off the alcohol too. Pat has supposedly figured out a way to brew with almost no water to make a concentrated beer-syrup (which is high in alcohol). Which opened-up a whole new slew of legal hurdles. I fear that the government will never get it figured out in order for Pat to bring this product to market, and if they do it won't take long before kids are putting this 'alcohol syrup' into Red Bull, or some other crazy concoction and it will get pulled from the market.
(As for CO2: Pat has designed a bottle that can carbonate beer/soda by using a reaction similar to alca-selzer (this might be beneficial to homebrewers as well). He already sells this product as well as single-serving soda concentrate pouches to use with it.)
______________
My idea is to forget about all the legal mumbo-jumbo. I want to figure out how normal people can make 'beer concentrate' in their own homes. I've heard rumor that beers like Bud Light are actually brewed at a higher gravity, then watered-down later. So the idea of adding water to finished beer isn't new.
I'm an experienced homebrewer, but nowhere near as knowledgeable as some of you. This is where I thought I'd let you experts chime-in...
Homebrewers use a lot of water brewing beer. Back in my extract days, I only boiled a couple gallons, then just topped-off to 5 gallons post-boil. Is it possible to NOT add that post-boil water yet still get enough alcohol? Does the yeast really need the water? If you used (say) a 5-gallon recipe with only 1 gallon of water, would you get 5-times the alcohol in that single gallon? Will the yeast survive those conditions?
An alternative plan would be to basically make ice-beer. Freeze beer and remove the ice. I don't know how far you could go with it, or even how to do it specifically. BMC used to make ice-beers (and may still do it AFAIK). But if you were successful in removing half the water content, that's twice as much remote-location beer for the same weight/effort.
What about dehydrating beer? Ethanol's boiling point is 173 degrees F... If you stayed under that temperature, could you dehydrate beer?
Or what about distilling-off the ethanol, then adding it back in to the concentrate?
Any other suggestions?
Frankly, it seems like it would be very difficult to make a beer that would be worth all this trouble. But even if a concentrated homebrew IPA came out tasting like a Bud Light, that would be better than hauling all that weight.
