NA Midrange Ale

[anemic]

Much fruitless searching, thus I must pose the question. Apologies. Have read & searched all over this forum and the web. What I have been able to find is a reference to a deleted BYO NA recipe, and the other info focuses on force carb - keg procedures, whereas I'm a bottler.

New homebrewer desires to brew a tasty NA beer for adults who are retired alcohol drinkers or myself who enjoys a full flavored ale but I find no joy in commercial NA beers, even Hakke Beck & the like. Home brew is usually quite a bit better than commercial brews, why does NA beer have to be so bad? Lets fix it.

Goal of 0.5% to 1.0 ABV is acceptable.

General plan is to start small (to see how it works before committing to a full 5 gallon batch). Brew up a ~2.5 gallon full boil batch of something like a midrange ale with some decent hop flavor, perhaps like Northern's American Amber Ale. Looking for a SG <1.050. Ferment it fully, then boil off the alcohol for about 20 mins at 172 to 180f, watching carefully.

Add back priming sugar and a dry yeast pack.

Using calculators I plan to add 2 oz of table sugar & a yeast pack I didn't use.

It seems that roughly 1 gallon yields about 10 (12 oz) bottles so the goal is about 25 bottles out of this batch.

I appreciate all feedback from the Brewmeisters on the forum. My chief questions for you experts are:

*Should I add a hop at the bottling - priming stage?
*Will my 6 gallon plastic fermenter (Pale Ale) work with only a half batch?
*Do you agree that one dry yeast pack + 2 oz of sugar sounds about right to carbonate the bottles but not produce alcohol in excess of 0.5% to 1.0% ABV?

This plan seems to cover new ground, surprisingly, as evidenced by so much information on everything else and so little on tasty NA beer. Many thanks & cheers,

Anemic in Grand Rapids

 

[Got Trub?]

I've looked into this a little in the past. Unfortunately alcohol is an important flavour compound in beer. In addition it will affect the perceived flavours of other components in your beer. I vaguely remember hearing somewhere that you will notice a significant loss of beer flavour once the alcohol level falls below about 2.5-3%. My compromise was to get into brewing lower alcohol session beers like British Bitters and Scottish 60/- ales and would highly recommend them as an alternative. The alcohol content is low enough you can drink several without any impairment and they are very tasty. Good luck in whatever you try to brew.

GT

 

[anemic]

I look forward to brewing some Scottish Ale this fall. Meanwhile I have tweaked the plan a bit. I have an American Wheat which is approaching bottle date and might be a perfect candidate for the NA experiment. I plan to rack off 1.5 gallons into a small boil pot and boil it, observing it at 170 degrees to see if it may be apparent that the alcohol is boiled off at some stage. This second boil should remove all/most alcohol but it will be impossible to certify this. To compensate for the expected flavor hit, I'd like to add a 10 minute, 5 minute & 2 minute hop to flower it up a bunch. I invite your input on which hop would give a complexity to the flavor and a pleasing aroma to the drinker?

 

[anemic]

I have a follow up note, please see a post I added to another thread.https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/non-alcoholic-brew-2967/index5.html#post1314511