Low alcohol partigyle - thoughts welcome

[Redgrave_3]

Thinking of trying to get a low alcohol (LA) beer on tap by partigyling my next brew. Inspired by a claw hammer video

Did dry Jan this year and developed a bit of a taste for LA beers which previously i’ve never enjoyed. They’re never quite right though and for some reason I resent the cost, which I appreciate is a reflection the processes aren’t dissimilar to making regular beer.

The basic gist of the video is just to do a normal mash and sparge to full volume on the first beer and then sparge further to collect whatever you get. One concern is people say that sparging below 1.010 can lead to extracting tannins and to be LA you probably want to be between 1.005-1.010. Im not that stressed about going over 0.5% abv since it’s for me but in order to compare to commercial examples it would be good to get to that ball park.

I’m using a brewdevil (70l) and my original grist is (from memory) 70/30 pilsner and wheat malt, the base for a sour (Philly sour) I plan to split and add different fruits too. I’ll be ending up with 42l in the fermenter so probably more leftover grist than I need.

My ferm fridge will be occupied by the main brew so my second fermenter is a 30l snubnose and that’ll have no temp control. Before the ferm fridge I used a lot of kviek and pitched warm, wrapped it up and let it do its thing inside. Not sure kviek is optimal for LA though since it’s supposedly needs more nutrients for lower strength regular beers.

The yeast is a big question mark for me, no idea if having so little work to do gives me more leeway in terms of temp and off flavours? Any recommendations of experience of that would be very welcome. Obviously using pressure is an option although that wasn’t part of my previous process using that fermenter (just spunding at the end).

Also I suspect I’ll be pulling too much out to make 20 litres of something sub 1.010, expect I’ll need to do some on the fly adjustments and dilutions.

The last big question mark is hopping rates and additions. I suspect I want to keep bittering pretty low since but haven’t really formulated a plan so any ideas welcome.

That’s about the extent of my thought process, prolly missing plenty. It will be a longer brew day of course so whether it’s worth it is up for debate but I guess time will tell.

 

[Redgrave_3]

Due to the overwhelming response to this post I decided to go ahead with my plan to partigyle a Low Alcohol (LA) after this weekends brew. Here follows the problems/observations I encountered:-

1) my actual grist for the sour was 60/40 pilsner/wheat (with some rice hulls), not 70/30 pale MO and wheat as I had thought when I ordered EKG and The Firm yeast from CML in the week.

2) Sparge capacity, my original grist/recipe called for 60l of water total so I couldn’t no-sparge and didn’t have capacity to heat and store enough sparge for both. For some reason I thought I could no sparge original brew (I.e mash with all liquor) since it’s a lower strength beer so has less grain. I was mistaken.

I figured I would not compromise the full brew and wing the LA one since it was already an afront to Bacchus.

3) water wise mine’s pretty hard so for pale styles I cut mine with mineral water but still use AML (and campen). I couldn’t treat all the water at the outset (no container big enough for 85l), so in the spirit of no compromise I did my usual thing for brew 1) and held back some mineral water for brew 2.

4) I didn’t know what to expect extraction wise from the partigyle. It was only meant to be a 4% ish base for the sour (ended at 1.042). Given original was a double batch and I’m aiming for <0.010 (this is coming up to the boil as I type) I thought I would get away with a cold sparge and hold back some water to liquor back as need be. 20 litres poured cold over already sparged grist got me to 1.006 preboil.

Just coming up to the boil now, 50g of EKG to play with and no decisions on timing for the hops or length of the boil. I don’t like mega bitter anyway and worried in such a weak beer it would be overpowering I think I’ll use most of it later for flavour but not messing around dry hopping this LA, wheat based, but English yeast and hopped monstrosity.

 

[jof]

Nice to see you trying.
My only attempt at LA was when the kids were younger & wanted to join in.
Effectively made a small batch beer from crystal malt & hops and about 200g sugar to give the yeast something to do & carbonate it.
To begin with it was definlty meh.

But surprisingly it improved over time and at about 6 months was ok.

 

[Redgrave_3]

Nice to see you trying.
My only attempt at LA was when the kids were younger & wanted to join in.
Effectively made a small batch beer from crystal malt & hops and about 200g sugar to give the yeast something to do & carbonate it.
To begin with it was definlty meh.

But surprisingly it improved over time and at about 6 months was ok.

Cheers Jof! Not expecting great results but was hoping for something passable for “nights off”. Encouraged to hear your’s matured ok but 6 months would be a record for me not drinking something (by quite some margin).

 

[Redgrave_3]

Ended up with just shy of 20l of something at 1.014, so overshot a fair amount. I should add for readers so intently following this that I did liquor back with 2 litres during the boil since I’d held back 5l in case I overshoot 1.010. So 22l total went in to 9kg of “spent” grain. No idea where I’m going to put this now since I haven’t fermented inside for years.

 

[Jim Brewster]

My next brew is going to be an attempt at low alcohol using David Heath's low ABV IPA recipe. The key thing is making up for the loss of body due to less malt, along with lowering the bitterness again due to the lower amount of malt.

As part of this carapils and munich are in the grain bill to give body, as well as mashing high (75C) to increase non fermentables. Boil only 30 minutes with Centennial and Mosaic, both added at 15mins and flameout to give around 18 IBU, with a BU to GU of around 0.5, and also a dry hop with both.

I am going to alter his method slightly by brewing a gallon batch but then liquoring back about 5 times to give a 20-25L fermenter volume.

For a low ABV IPA you can use a low attenuation yeast which is around 70%, examples I am aware of are Windsor, S33 and M-15 as these are supposed to not ferment certain sugars (can't remember if it's dextrins or maltotriose or both).

I'm not going for a specific ABV as it's a bit of an experiment but somewhere around 1.5-2%

 

[MashBag]

Tbh honest, I genuinely did see this post.

an afront to Bacchus.

I did see somewhere low alcohol yeast, which builds flavours, that would certainly be useful.

Watching closely, this is something I want to try and have been researching. Good on you.

 

[Redgrave_3]

Cheers @Jim Brewster . I did see that David heath video a while back, be intersted to hear how you get on with it. What attracted me to this method was the simplicity/cheapness of just reusing the grist. Of course if the end product is terrible that’s a sunk cost. I could imagine capping the second mash with non fermentables could be a good strategy too. Yeast wise The Firm is supposed to be a low attenuater so will see where it ends up but I think there are more specialty yeasts as @MashBag alluded to that won’t just finish higher but also won’t touch more complex sugars.

Fermentation kicked off about 12 hours after pitching, pretty meagre krausen as you might expect with so little to do.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Have a look at ultralowbrewing.com

You can use the partially extracted grains as an adjunct in other mashes.

Sort of reverse partigyle.

 

[Jim Brewster]

What attracted me to this method was the simplicity/cheapness of just reusing the grist. Of course if the end product is terrible that’s a sunk cost.

Definitely worth a try as it's almost a free brew. As you say it's conventional wisdom to stop sparging when the wort is below 1010, I would either liquor back or brew a lower volume if the numbers don't work out

 

[Redgrave_3]

Have a look at ultralowbrewing.com

You can use the partially extracted grains as an adjunct in other mashes.

Sort of reverse partigyle.

Cheers for the link, some interesting reading in there.

 

[Redgrave_3]

Finished at at 004 which according to BeerSmith gives me 1.3%. Hydrometer sample tasted hoppy and finished very bitter (but I always find that straight from the fermenter the bitterness is much higher than it ends up). Very thin as you’d expect, more like hop flavoured water.

Gonna chill it and keg it so see what it’s like in a couple of weeks

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Lowering the pH would soften that perceived bitterness. Something to try perhaps in the glass to see if you can find a sweet spot.

 

[Redgrave_3]

Had a few of these last night and I’m somewhat pleased. It isn’t really all that beer-like, too thin, no malt character. It is very refreshing and hoppy, I can smell some yeast character but not really taste it. Head doesn’t really hang around.

If I decided to do it again I would definitely choose a primary beer with more going on and strongly consider capping the mash with some unfermentables.

Guess the acid test will be if I continue to reach for it but I did pour myself another today whilst working so there’s that to be said for it.

 

[TNP]

I'm working on something similar.

I usually do ~4% beers and get 90% efficiency. I was thinking about re-mashing these grains with a higher mash temperature (between 70-80C) and get a super low alcohol beer with some unfermentables for body. I still never tried because I suspect I'll be just wasting water since I can reach an efficiency so high.
My was then to add many hops for aroma and ferment with SafAle Abbey, so that hops and yeast could cover the lack of malt.

 

[TNP]

My next brew is going to be an attempt at low alcohol using David Heath's low ABV IPA recipe. The key thing is making up for the loss of body due to less malt, along with lowering the bitterness again due to the lower amount of malt.

As part of this carapils and munich are in the grain bill to give body, as well as mashing high (75C) to increase non fermentables. Boil only 30 minutes with Centennial and Mosaic, both added at 15mins and flameout to give around 18 IBU, with a BU to GU of around 0.5, and also a dry hop with both.

I am going to alter his method slightly by brewing a gallon batch but then liquoring back about 5 times to give a 20-25L fermenter volume.

For a low ABV IPA you can use a low attenuation yeast which is around 70%, examples I am aware of are Windsor, S33 and M-15 as these are supposed to not ferment certain sugars (can't remember if it's dextrins or maltotriose or both).

I'm not going for a specific ABV as it's a bit of an experiment but somewhere around 1.5-2%

I see we thought pretty much the same things.

 

[Redgrave_3]

I'm working on something similar.

I usually do ~4% beers and get 90% efficiency. I was thinking about re-mashing these grains with a higher mash temperature (between 70-80C) and get a super low alcohol beer with some unfermentables for body. I still never tried because I suspect I'll be just wasting water since I can reach an efficiency so high.
My was then to add many hops for aroma and ferment with SafAle Abbey, so that hops and yeast could cover the lack of malt.

I did briefly think about “remashing” in the form of a batch sparge with my old coolbox. Then I figured more cleanup. I wouldn’t be deterred from trying due to high efficiency because you’ll know your SG after the mash so can liquor back accordingly.

 

[Jim Brewster]

I see we thought pretty much the same things.

It turned out quite nice, but as expected the I think dry hop was too much considering I omitted the lactose (which I dislike in beer). Its still drinkable and the hop burn will hopefully mellow as it often does, with half the dry hops it would have been really good for such a low alcohol level

 

[TNP]

Well

Today I brewed a beer: OG 1.035.

Then I put some more water, to get about half the First beer's volume. I mashed again, boiled again, put hops only post boil.
OG 1.006... very low. I pitched anyway a bit of SafAle 256, it should have a lot of attenuation, should be able to find something to eat...

If I try this again:
1- Consider using a diastaticus
2- Avoid re-mashing. Those six pathetic points would have come out with just a sparge I guess...

 

[Redgrave_3]

Keep us posted @TNP it’s helpful to hear other people’s experiences. At .06 you’re in the realm of making a genuine LA beer sub 0.5% (assuming it takes off).

What was your grain bill?