Could I get a double ipa kit and bottle it early to get the flavour but not the strong alc .I love the taste of the double ipa beer but they are a bit strong I like to drink 6 bottles without being tipsy one would say
You bottle early and all you get are bottle bombs.
So how do u get the strong flavour????
You could pasteurise the beer then keg it and force carb it. Then bottle it under pressure.
Pasteurising it will just leave you with very sweet beer. If you're making the DIPA from an extract kit then you would have to use less extract for the same amount of water. This would reduce the alcohol but also the malty flavour so you may have to compensate by steeping some other grains in your wort.
describe the strong flavor you're going for.
there are lots of different strong flavors.
if the strong flavor you're after is 'alcohol' you'll find it difficult to get it into a low abv brew
if the strong flavor is bitterness, hoppiness, roastiness, maltey, chocolatey, etc it might be easy.
if you can list a few double IPAs that have the strong flavor you're going for it might help.
I will hazard a guess here, and say that the OP is looking for that big, uncompromising, wall to wall hop character.
I am of the opinion that if the double IPA experience could be recreated at say <5% ABV, many breweries would have done it already.
There are many good session IPAs out there, but they drink very differently to regular strength & double ipa.
While the hops are the star of the show, the malt backbone and higher alcohol are somehow needed to pull it together.
There is nothing to stop you cramming more hops into kit beer, and there should be dedicated sections in most brewing forums that cover kit hacking.
Change out the kit yeast for a less attenuating yeast. This will leave you more residual sweetness. A higher fg will make the beer feel bigger even if it is only is pale ale strength.
You are kind of limited with lots though. Looking into hop tea, steeping grains , lower attenuating yeasts and dry hopping techniques.
Or just brew the douple IPA you want and drink less
If you have an actual double IPA kit, I dont think I would go about diluting it or doing anything similar to take down the gravity/strength. It will probably just taste diluted and over-attenuated, or you will upset some important ratios, like IBU/FG. The reverse however is easier - you can easily add more hops to a sessionable kit pale ale.
But the best advice (from LordEoin) I think is to make the DIPA in the way it was intended, and package it in smaller bottles (e.g. 330ml), more suited to relaxed consumption.
I can't I get thirsty at the weekend I'll just have to hunt for a tasty 4 percenter lol
You could also brew a pale ale kit to the recommended 4.odd % and add some lactose to it. This will up the body of he beer without fermenting our. Boil up some hops and add to reach the desired bitterness to balance out the sweetness and dry hop with about 100g of your favourite hop.
Low abv session ipa's can be tricky enough to do even for all grain brewers so you really are limited to what you can do with kits.