Lower ABV?

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Dr_Unkenly

Not a real doctor
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If I wanted to lower the ABV of an AG recipe, what's the best way to achieve that?

Is it simply a case of reducing the grain bill?

Are there other things to consider? Different mash temp maybe? What about the hops?
 
Basically yes, the easiest way is to reduce the grain bill. Increasing mash temperature will also reduce the fermentability of the wort meaning a higher fg and lower abv. Doing either of these will affect the balance of sweet/bitter in the finished product so the hops will have to be adjusted accordingly.
 
Depends how low you want to go. I do this all the time as I prefer my beer to be about 4% and a lot of the reciepes from my G.Hughes book are around 5%. From 4%-5% is fairly easy ad straightforward using a brewing calc but if you want to drop your ABV to below about 3.5% then it's a bit harder as you want to retain body in the beer too so as SS say you need to mash higher, longer and possible use more grains with a higher proportion of unfermetable like crystal
 
Thanks guys. I'm seeing a lot of interesting recipes in the 6-7% range and looking to get them more around 5%.

So if I lower the grain bill a bit and mash a bit higher, I shouldn't affect the balance too much?

Interesting the point about the crystal malts. Could I look at reducing the amount of base malt but leave the other malts as they are?
 
Dr_Unkenly said:
Thanks guys. I'm seeing a lot of interesting recipes in the 6-7% range and looking to get them more around 5%.

So if I lower the grain bill a bit and mash a bit higher, I shouldn't affect the balance too much?

Interesting the point about the crystal malts. Could I look at reducing the amount of base malt but leave the other malts as they are?
Click to expand...

If you reduce everything proportionally you should get the right balance from the grains but the hop bitterness will be out of balance. Best thing to do it plug the recipe in to a piece of brewing software, check the balance value then adjust the grain and hops down to get a lower ABU but maintain roughly the same balance. If you just reduce the base malt you'd probably knock things out of kilter but it would depend on the individual recipe and how much you need to reduce the grain bill by.
 
Dr_Unkenly said:
Thanks guys. I'm seeing a lot of interesting recipes in the 6-7% range and looking to get them more around 5%.

So if I lower the grain bill a bit and mash a bit higher, I shouldn't affect the balance too much?

Interesting the point about the crystal malts. Could I look at reducing the amount of base malt but leave the other malts as they are?
Click to expand...

If your going from 6-7% to 5% I wouldnt even bother mashing higher. As mentioned I often adjust from 5-6% to 4%and just mash at 66C like normal. As DrM says just reduce the malts proprtionally (I use a brew calcualtor cuz I'm **** at maths).

To get the hop balance right I just use IBU:OG ratio. Divide the IBU by the last two numbers of your original recipe to give you the ratio. Eg 34IBU: 1048 OG gives you a ratio of 34/48= 0.7. Just keep the ratio the same with your adjusted reciepe and keep the hop proportions the same (eg 60min 60%, 10min 40%)
 
Thanks. Really appreciate your help guys.

I'm assuming that scaling back on the later additions will also reduce the amount of hop flavour. Is this generally desirable? Or would it be worth scaling back the early additions more and leave the later ones closer to the original levels? On some kind of sliding scale perhaps?

Also MyQul, you say it's not worth adjusting mash temp in this instance, is that because the amount we're scaling back is not that much or because our target ABV is not that low?
 
Dr_Unkenly said:
Thanks. Really appreciate your help guys.

I'm assuming that scaling back on the later additions will also reduce the amount of hop flavour. Is this generally desirable? Or would it be worth scaling back the early additions more and leave the later ones closer to the original levels? On some kind of sliding scale perhaps?

Also MyQul, you say it's not worth adjusting mash temp in this instance, is that because the amount we're scaling back is not that much or because our target ABV is not that low?
Click to expand...

Your scaling back ALL hop additons in proportion to maintain balance of the original reciep.

I wouldn't bother to adjust the mash temp because the target ABV isn't low.
 
Ok, got it.

One more question: For the sake of simplifying the maths, if I was aiming to go from 7% to 5%, could I just multiply the weights of all the ingredients by 5/7?
 
That would work for the grains but probably not for the hops.

Because the amount of bitterness is related not just to the weight of hops but how long you boil for and how much alpha acid is present in the hops it gets more complicated.

US a brewing calculator like Brewers friend to run the numbers. You can get a free account and I think it is invaluable.

Re the late addition hops, depending on the style I might be inclined to leave them the same. If you are after a big hop flavour and aroma then keeping the late additions the same won't really add too much bitterness but will give you the hoppy hit.
 
Dr_Unkenly said:
Ok, got it.

One more question: For the sake of simplifying the maths, if I was aiming to go from 7% to 5%, could I just multiply the weights of all the ingredients by 5/7?
Click to expand...

Yes, that is exactly how the brewing software works. This will be the way to go.

It is by far your best benchmark against which to tweak the recipe in future, should you wish.
 
If you change mash temp lower abv drastically. Then I'm afraid you have a different beer.

If you don't like high abv beers then don't try to replicate them..

There are things you can do like add carapils for mouthfeel biscuit malt for more biscuit flavour but why replicate something you don't like?.

Best IMHO to stick to beers in that abv range. There are so many.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk
 
I'm just trying to better understand how the various ingredients and processes affect the final brew and being able to manipulate the abv content is something I would like to learn about.

So far most of the advice is essentially to water down the brew, obviously this will change the beer but if it's still nice beer then I'm happy. I'm after interesting beers, not necessarily clones of one thing or another.

If there are any other things one could consider, particularly with the maltiness/hoppiness then I'm all ears. Or if we say that a weaker version of a beer should, by definition, be a bit thinner and less hoppy then I would like to know that also.
 

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