Brewing without hops?

[tonymctones]

I know this question has probably been asked a few times but hopefully this is a different take on it.

I know you can brew without hops and use herbs ala gruit but my question is can you brew without any type of bittering agent? I would assume that using just grains and some sort of LME/DME along with yeast would be sufficient in creating an alcoholic beverage or am I missing something that yeast adds to the process in respect to alcohol?

I know it's probably a weird question but I like to experiment and was curious if I was thinking correctly?

Have any of you guys ever tried or tasted something like this?

 

[feinbera]

You'd get an alcoholic fluid, I'm not sure I'd call something that sickly-sweet, with all the residual sugars from the malt and absolutely nothing bitter (or sour) to counter them, a beverage per se. If you mashed really low and really long, shot for relatively low gravity, and fermented with a very high-attenuating yeast, maybe you could achieve something approaching a macro lager in terms of flavor profile, but I'm not sure why you'd bother.

 

[flars]

Would probably be like a tea made with grains instead of tea leaves. Would take recipe development to deliver the flavor you want rather than just brewing an ale without the hops.

 

[DromJohn]

I have not tried a hopless malt with alcohol, but I have had many hopless malts without alcohol. Sometimes called malt tea or malt soft drinks. Those have been about as sweet as colas. I suspect fermentation would make them less sweet, though perceptually sweeter than a bittered malt. Seems like a worthwhile experiment. If so, then I'd like to taste a series of a single malt with different yeasts.

 

[FloppyKnockers]

Sure. You just can't call it beer. More like a Grozet or Gruit.

 

[tonymctones]

Thanks guys, the tea and soft drink references are along the lines of what I was thinking. Specifically a root beer type soft drink or iced tea style alcoholic beverage I figured the sweetness would go well with both of these...may have to do some small batch experiments!

 

[Sailingeric]

I think they call it Zima

 

[slym2none]

OP, get some Malta (a non-alcoholic beverage made by Goya) to see if you like that. It's kinda-sorta what you would be making, just with alcohol, if I understand correctly.

 

[DromJohn]

Goya Malta has hops.

 

[slym2none]

Well, ****... I had no idea. I just thought it was malt-soda.

My bad, OP. All apologies.

 

[Bosh]

Old old English ale was often just malt with no hops or herbs. They often made it strong as alcohol works as a preservative in the absence of hops.

Bacteria is a bigger risk without the hops so be careful but should be sweet but drinkable is you don`t put in any malts that sweeten the beer. Just use base malt ZERO crystal malt etc.