Non-Alcoholic Beer?

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Foreigner

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First off: I'm not interested in making the stuff. I'm just curious as to how it is made.

The closest I can come to guessing is that they brew a low gravity beer and then do something akin to distilling away the alcohol.

My parents were drinking some over the long weekend here and I couldn't help but be curious.

I think it tasted a bit metallic, but that might be my bias..

Anybody know?
 
you can near boil your wort after fermentation to get the same results. IIRC that is how the majority of NA beers are commercially produced. I have thought about doing it to a few gallons for my friends that don't drink.
 
If you want to make a whole batch, i've read to only boil for 30 min, with only bittering hops added, let it ferm. when that is done, add your flavor and aroma hops and bring it to 180 for 30 min to finish up. cool it down, rack off the trub and bottle with a 1/2 pack of dried yeast and sugar....or keg.
 
Drunkensatyr said:
you can near boil your wort after fermentation to get the same results. IIRC that is how the majority of NA beers are commercially produced. I have thought about doing it to a few gallons for my friends that don't drink.

yeah, thats what I thought, cuz alcohol has a slightly lower boiling temp than water...

thanks...is it just me or does it really taste a little gross?
 
What brand of N/A were you drinking??? Most of the domestics that I've tried(miller, Pabst, etc) were pretty disgusting. But my sister likes Clausthaller, a German import. I've tried it out of curiosity and it's actually not bad, if I'm remembering correctly(it's been awhile:eek: ) They have two kinds, regular and amber.
 
It was a Becks. But *I* wasn't drinking it :ban:

It had a slight metallic aftertaste
 
You could try the oppisite of Ice distilling (freeze the beer) and then when you take the ice chunk out.. instead of throwing it away (because it is not alch).. you could defrost it. and throw the liquid away( the alch).. not sure how you would carbonate it other than force carb..
just a thought... never tried it before.. i likes the alcohol!!

SpamDog
 
SpamDog said:
You could try the oppisite of Ice distilling (freeze the beer) and then when you take the ice chunk out.. instead of throwing it away (because it is not alch).. you could defrost it. and throw the liquid away( the alch).. not sure how you would carbonate it other than force carb..
just a thought... never tried it before.. i likes the alcohol!!

SpamDog

That won't work, you will end up with slightly flavored water. You need to heat the beer to around 175, you don't want to boil it since that will change the hop profile. It takes 20 - 30 minutes the distill off the alcohol.
 
SpamDog said:
You could try the oppisite of Ice distilling (freeze the beer) and then when you take the ice chunk out.. instead of throwing it away (because it is not alch).. you could defrost it. and throw the liquid away( the alch).. not sure how you would carbonate it other than force carb..
just a thought... never tried it before.. i likes the alcohol!!

SpamDog

I did this with a mead. The ice that came off was all water.
 
Word. I made some N/A for my pops out of a porter and he loved it. Just followed the BYO directions.

BTW, the commercial breweries don't use this method for their N/A's. They have some sort of complicated vacuum system that does it.
 
The vacuum lowers the boiling point. Much like higher altitude, or oppposite of a pressure cooker.
Less heat to affect the flavor profile.
 
Last year I ran the Alpine Marathon in Switserland and at the finish line they gave us Erdinger N/A beer. A German beer and I really liked it. It had a great taste and none of this metalic taste I have been reading about here. If at all you can get your hands on these, I can really recommend it.
 
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