Thanks. I didn't even think of that but doesn't beer have such a low alcohol level that it wouldn't kill off pathogens as well?
Non alcoholic malt drinks are pretty popular and sit at room temp in stores. Im looking for a recipe to follow. If it does require to ferment and then remove the alcohol I would do boil it off, which should kill everything right before I bottle.
The ~5% alcohol content in beer is enough to keep it safe even when stored long-term.
The bottles on the store shelf have been sealed
and then pasteurized. Even with scrupulous sanitation, it’s not possible to eliminate all microbes in the air, bottle, and transfer equipment. Boiling just the liquid isn’t enough.
It’s also not feasible to carbonate something with a lot of sugar, in the bottle.
As for recipe, I’ve never had this product, so I’d be flying blind. I’d start by seeing if a nonfermented recipe could get close enough.
Clues from the nutrition information are the protein and sugar levels: 0.6 g and 20 g per 100 mL.
I’d start by making two separate teas. For the first tea, heat water to 50 C, add crushed roast barley at a rate of 100 g/L, allow to cool and steep over 12 hours, and strain out the solids. For the second tea, bring a liter of water to a boil, add 10 g of Magnum hop pellets, boil for an hour, and strain solids.
The roast barley tea will probably be too roasty; dilute (I’m guessing ~50%, but could be way off) until you get the level you want.
My guess is 30 g/L light DME and 45 g/L table sugar, added to your diluted roast barley tea; start low, taste, and adjust up to your desired sweetness, keeping the 1.5 proportion of sugar to DME. Then add little bits of the hop tea, a milliliter at a time, to get the bitterness you want.
This approach should get you adjustable roast, sweetness, and bitterness, and if you’re careful with measurements and math you can construct a recipe.
As I suggested before, force carbonate in a mini keg and store cold.
If you go through all that and you’re still missing something, you may need to start messing with arrested fermentation followed by boiling. In that case, you’d start with more table sugar, ferment briefly, and then boil. Obviously there are a lot more parameters to adjust there.
