Small beer recipes

DerekofPriory · May 27, 2015

Hi all,
Last week I had a T.I.A. - a mini stroke - and thankfully it wasn't permanently damaging, I veer a bit to starboard upon occasion but who doesn't,:wink:
Due to the medication I'm now on I need to curtail my alcohol intake, that in itself isn't a problem, I'm dry every January anyway, but I do enjoy a good drop of ale. Hopefully I can manage that by cutting the strength but not the body or flavour of my brews so to the point, does anyone have any recipes or suggestions for small beers, 1.5% or thereabouts, I prefer mild and ruby ales but I'll try most types and I'm sorry if there's a thread here already that covers my wishes but I couldn't find it.

Cheers Derek B.

ManseMasher · May 27, 2015

I'll keep my eye out for you mate. I'm sure between us all we can come up with something!

ManseMasher · May 27, 2015

http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/16168/ebh-msb-marcus-stupid-bitter

Here's one for starters....

MyQul · May 27, 2015

If you're a AG or exract brewer, there's loads of them on brewtoad. Just use the search filters to pick whether your AG or extract, choose your style then choose the ABV% then rank from strongest to weakest or visa vera.

Here I've done a AG Mild ranked weakest to strongest (weakest being 1.5%ABV)

https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes?page=1&sort=abv&recipe_types[]=3&styles[]=36&sort_reverse=true

Twostage · May 27, 2015

I'd been wondering about small beers recently - sort of drinking without drinking, do you have to do anything special or just use less fermentables ?

Tony1951 · May 28, 2015

Twostage said:
I'd been wondering about small beers recently - sort of drinking without drinking, do you have to do anything special or just use less fermentables?

I'm just getting started in AG so I can't say how it would be done with that method.Maybe mashing at a higher temperature would make low alch but big body, but I've been making what I called Table Beer which is pretty weak, out of Cooper's cans. Instead of adding a KG of DME / BE or other sugar to the can, I have been just adding 125gm of BE. This comes out about 2.4% when kegged with about 85gm of sugar for secondary fermentation.

The beers taste OK, I find them quite pleasant - way more flavour than Becks Blue - a different universe. They aren't that full in body obviously, but I enjoy them and keep the strong stuff for a couple of times a week. I bet they would come out at under 2% if I left out the 125g of BE. Bitterness may rise a bit if I understand the process, which I'm not sure I do that well.

The approach I have used works out with an OG of 1025. If I left out the 125g of BE, I think I would lose about 0.2ABV in 23 litres, so I might still be a touch over 2%.

I've used pretty flavoursome bases, like the Cooper's IPA or Cooper's English Bitter. When I get more experience, I will try and do it with AG, just not ready yet for that step.

MyQul · May 28, 2015

Here'se a couple of coopers receipes from their site to give you an idea how to do it with kits. Tony51 is onto the right idea by just adding less DME/BE

http://www.coopers.com.au/#/diy-beer/beer-recipes/non-alcoholic-light/detail/zephyr-light/

http://www.coopers.com.au/#/diy-beer/beer-recipes/non-alcoholic-light/detail/nelsons-light/

cwrw666 did I light beer with kits a while back and posted about it, can't remember how exaxtly he did it. Hopefully he'll see the thread and chip in.

As for making AG light beer, pretty simple really. Basically put , just make a beer with less grain and therfore less sugar to ferment into alcohol- use a calculator to get the ABV% you want.

How much body is in that beer can be a bit more complicated and can require a bit of manipulation of variables. You can use a yeast, such as Windsor, which doesn't attenuate as high to leave more body behind and not ferment out all the available fermentable sugars or you can may be use malts like crystal malt that has unfermentable sugars to retain body.

jamesw · May 28, 2015

does the beer not taste quite weak (in the malty sense).
Ive had some of the bud light style beers in the USA, and tbh they were terrible, they tasted like watered down lagers (some companies had even been found to water down normal beers).
What about adding other things to give better mouth feel? (like glycerin for wine or maltodextrin?)

clibit · May 28, 2015

I might have a crack at this...

http://byo.com/low-alcohol-brewing/item/263-brew-a-great-non-alcoholic-beer

MyQul · May 28, 2015

clibit said:
I might have a crack at this...

http://byo.com/low-alcohol-brewing/item/263-brew-a-great-non-alcoholic-beer

Very Interesting. May also have a go too.

jamesw · May 28, 2015

Just a word of warning, that method is rather crude and will not remove much of the alcohol.
Yes it will remove some of the alcohol, but looking into it, even 2 and a half hours of baking removed only 95% of the booze.

obviously this is fine for most people but not for anyone who isnt allowed any alcohol.
If you want a 1 or 2% brew from 5%, youd need to heat @180 F for an hour or so, but priming it may increase this by a few % too...
Rather unpredictable

what this does to the flavour i wouldnt like to speculate.

for more reading on alcohol evaporation, read this scientific paper Alcohol retention in food preparation, by Augustin J, Augustin E, Cutrufelli RL, Hagen SR, Teitzel C., J Am Diet Assoc. 1992 Apr;92(4):486-8.

MyQul · May 28, 2015

jamesw said:
Just a word of warning, that method is rather crude and will not remove much of the alcohol.
Yes it will remove some of the alcohol, but looking into it, even 2 and a half hours of baking removed only 95% of the booze.

obviously this is fine for most people but not for anyone who isnt allowed any alcohol.
If you want a 1 or 2% brew from 5%, youd need to heat @180 F for an hour or so, but priming it may increase this by a few % too...
Rather unpredictable

what this does to the flavour i wouldnt like to speculate.

for more reading on alcohol evaporation, read this scientific paper Alcohol retention in food preparation, by Augustin J, Augustin E, Cutrufelli RL, Hagen SR, Teitzel C., J Am Diet Assoc. 1992 Apr;92(4):486-8.

So you've actually tried the linked BYO method?

clibit · May 28, 2015

It's not what the article said? And priming sugar adds about 0.2% I think. I'm not looking for 0% beer. Just be interesting to see what a normal strength beer with alcohol taken out would be like. May try adding a hop tea to replace lost aroma.

Tony1951 · May 28, 2015

From the article Clibit referenced:

"The simpler sugars found in beer wort, such as lucose and maltose, are readily fermented by common beer yeast. More complex sugars, such as dextrins, are not fermented by beer yeast. These dextrins will not contribute as much to the sweetness as they will increase the fullness of the beer. If you're going to take out the alcohol, you might as well give it a little more body. The more dextrins there are the better. The dextrin content can be controlled during the mash by holding the grains at the high end of the mashing temperature range (158Â° F) for a longer period. This causes the starch conversions to stay in the dextrin range, producing a more full-bodied beer with less alcohol."

This what I was getting at in my comment above about mash temperature. My first AG was a bit hot in the mash and it stopped fermenting at 1018 - 1020. The next one went to 1008 when I got the mash temperature better controlled. The first brew had a really nice mouth feel and a rich floral kind of taste. I really liked it, but the alcohol content was obviously lower because I'd made unfermentable sugars. Maybe this kind of approach would get away from thin beers without taste.

MyQul · May 28, 2015

Tony1951 said:
Maybe this kind of approach would get away from thin beers without taste.

Definately, this is another way to give a smaller beer body in a similar manner to the other two ways I mentioned you could achieve this.

jamesw · May 28, 2015

Ive not tried it, but i read about it in scientific literature.
I was more pointing out that it was not as non-alcoholic as some people might want/need, and that those heating times seem rather underestimated.

DerekofPriory · May 28, 2015

Hi again everyone,
Thanks for the ideas and links, I've at least a couple of weeks on the panel so I'll try a couple of gallons of each suggestion and explore the links further and let you know what I learn and more importantly what it tastes like in a few weeks, I use CO2 so conditioning is a little quicker.
Cheers, Derek B

Chippy_Tea · May 28, 2015

Keep us posted :thumb:

DerekofPriory · May 29, 2015

Hi all, Thanks MyQul, brewtoad is a handy place to find, I'll have a go at this one first[URL=//https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/11-05-15-sobering-thought-pilot"I have to divide everything by a hundred but that's easy, the main problems/questions are; a, what's gladiator? What's toffee and would amber work(47Â°L)? Are leaf and pellet hops equal, weight for weight to use and compensate for alpha acid content? Finally yeasts, I have S-04, S-05 and GV12?, I don't need to make the same drink just something nicely drinkable that won't fight with my meds!

Cheers and thanks for every-ones help, Derek B.

clibit · May 29, 2015

Gladiator must be an American maltster. The recipe looks bizarre though, seems to be more crystal than base malt. Toffee is probably a dark crystal. I'd pick a more regular recipe!

Small beer recipes

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

New Member

Regular.

Regular.

Chairman of the Bored

Landlord.

Bungling Amateur

Chairman of the Bored

Well-Known Member

Senior Member

Chairman of the Bored

Well-Known Member

Chairman of the Bored

Senior Member

Bungling Amateur

Chairman of the Bored

Well-Known Member

New Member

Administrator.

New Member

Senior Member

Similar threads

Join the conversation!

Join today and get all the highlights of this community direct to your inbox. It's FREE!