I've got a stout that's about ready to bottle, and I want to try to remove the alcohol from a portion of it. The plan is to try to heat it up to 175-180 F for ~30 minutes as outlined here. Yes, I know I may degrade the flavor and will definitely degrade my own experience, but I'm still going to give it a shot.
My one concern is the fumes. I don't have the equipment to boil outside, so this will happen in my kitchen, either on the stovetop or the oven. If I take 1/3rd of the 6-gal batch and successfully reduce the alcohol from 5.5% to 0.5%, that's ~21 beers worth of gaseous alcohol coming off the kettle. How much of this am I going to wind up inhaling as I stand by checking the temperature, stirring, etc? Is opening a window and trying not to breathe near the kettle enough of a precaution? Should I be worried about combustion, especially in the oven?
The fact that I haven't seen any warnings on any of the articles I've read about makes me think I probably don't need to worry. On the other hand, I feel like very few homebrewers are trying to make NA beer, so maybe there are risks that just don't get discussed much. Any experience or insight would be appreciated.
My one concern is the fumes. I don't have the equipment to boil outside, so this will happen in my kitchen, either on the stovetop or the oven. If I take 1/3rd of the 6-gal batch and successfully reduce the alcohol from 5.5% to 0.5%, that's ~21 beers worth of gaseous alcohol coming off the kettle. How much of this am I going to wind up inhaling as I stand by checking the temperature, stirring, etc? Is opening a window and trying not to breathe near the kettle enough of a precaution? Should I be worried about combustion, especially in the oven?
The fact that I haven't seen any warnings on any of the articles I've read about makes me think I probably don't need to worry. On the other hand, I feel like very few homebrewers are trying to make NA beer, so maybe there are risks that just don't get discussed much. Any experience or insight would be appreciated.