N/A beer

[scsnick]

I don't know if it has been covered or not, so please don't flame me if it has. Im out of town and only have my phone for internet. But anyways, I have recently started brewing. I have only brewed 5 batches, and the last one was my first all grain (Its a simple czech pils and hopefully its drinkable.) My Grandpa was recently told that he had to stop drinking. So now he only gets to enjoy a few N/A beers everyone in a while, and he isn't very fond of them.

I was wondering what you would have to do in order to make an N/A beer. It seems like it would be interesting, and im sure there has to be some way to make a better N/A than Busch. Does anybody have any experience with this? I know its kind of the opposite direction that most go for, but I would like to try it.

 

[Revvy]

There's a ton of good info on here, I couldn't drink for a couple months because of my heart surgery, and although I didn't brew in, I did some research. These are articles from BYO magazine, the first one is sort of the bible of info on doing it.

Brew A Great Non-Alcoholic Beer.

Tastes Great! Less Alcohol!

Homercidals been doing some research on it, and there's also another guy who was trying to use a vacuum pump of some type to remove alcohol as well.

Start with those articles and I'll try to did up other things on here. Just ignore the inevitable childish comments and jokes that pop up whenever someone "dares" talk about non alcoholic beer.

 

[COLObrewer]

I have to ask what NA beers your grandpa has tried, we have tried a few since we are on the wagon for a month. I have to say some of them satisfy my beer thirst.

From my post on this thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/13th-step-recovery-homebrewing-272279/index5.html
" FYI, the ones we have tried so far on our month long wagon ride are: Kaliber by guiness, decent amber with a little smokiness. Buckler by heiniken, nice lager flavor, St Pauli, pretty close flavor to regular st. pauli, skunk and all. Clausthaler Golden Amber from Germany, nice lager flavor and also adheres to the reinheitsgebot".

I tasted another Kaliber last night and it seems closer to liquid bread to me than anything. We've since tried Odoul's amber which is pretty good, but the one I think I like the most so far is the Paulaner Thomas Brau, has more of a munich type malt flavor.

What's interesting on their website here http://www.paulaner-thailand.com/thomas_brau.htm is that they state "The secret is a special fermenting process in which the yeast delivers the typical beer flavor, without producing alcohol". What? Never heard of that.

Brew on my friend

I'm sure Homercidal will pop in here if he sees your title.

 

[ArcaneXor]

Einbecker Alcohol Free is the NA beer I usually drink when I need a break.

 

[whatsleftofyou]

I did one a few years back for my friend's dad. It was an all-grain cream ale kit from NB that I brewed and fermented normally. Then I racked into a kettle and heated it to 170F for an hour and a half. I then cooled it, primed with sugar as normal, and pitched fresh dry yeast. It was cool to do, and he loved it, but never again. I was still brewing on the stovetop back then and my apartment smelled absolutely AWFUL.

 

[Palefire]

I made 2 N/A beers for my bro-in-law last christmas. An oatmeal stout, and a version of Ed Wort's Pale. They were both half batches (2.5 gallons) that I brewed on the stovetop. I then did the "stick in the oven for 30 min" thing after they were done fermenting. Used some slurry in the bottling bucket to carbonate. For the Pale, I made a hop tea that I added when bottling. The whole process was, honestly, a little bit of a PITA.

They both took way longer to condition than usual - a good 2 months after bottling. But they both ended up really good! I ended up cooking the stout for longer than I needed to, so it had a kind of "cooked" taste for a few months. But that cleared up. The pale was good right away - i think the hop tea helped a great deal. To my mind, it tasted like a decent (but not great) store-bought pale.

Bro-in-law loved them and made all his non-drinking friends drink some when they came over. Short answer: it's some work to do, but you can make a very good N/A beer if you want.

 

[C-Rider]

I know it's against the law, but.....if you know someone w/a still could you not brew a beer as normal and then put it in the stil to get rid of the alcohol?