Non Alcoholic Beer

[LordEoin]

My Dad's a tee-totaller. He had a 'beer' in Germany a couple of years ago and wasn't impressed. I think it was because it was a 0% lager a-la Becks.
He is into tasty food & beverages, and I want to make him a nice citrussy IPA to try with his food or to enjoy during a fillum ('movie' to the Americanized).

I've looked into it and the only way that strikes me as a viable option is to brew a real beer and evaporate the alcohol off.
This leads to a few questions that I hope some one will have the answers to.

The best solution I could find was to bake the beer at 79C for 2.5 hours, stirring occasionally. That should reduce the alcohol content by 95% (6% to 0.3%)
But my concerns are aeration and if this temperature is enough to turn what hop oils are in there to additional bittering.
I'm not too worried about aroma (as this can be reintroduced with dryhopping), but I don't want to end up with a gallon of excessively bitter oxygenated beer lacking hop flavor.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[dcalnan]

Sounds like an interesting project. What I initially thought of is distilling, as they boil off the alcohol and are left with what should be alcohol free "beer" without hops. Maybe spilt the gallon and do one with the desired bitterness and one with a lower bitterness and see if it changes? Just a thought would heating up the beer not kill the yeast, making bottle conditioned beer impossible?

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

If you can pull a vacuum on the beer it will boil off the alcohol at about 12C, which will give less heat damage, the way your suggesting will give heat damage and won't taste too good.
Another alternative would be to freeze the beer until the alcohol separates out?

[johnrm]

Could you use a modified pressure cooker for the above?

[auralabuse]

There is an alcohol free quite hoppy IPA called nanny state. So its possible

[irish_goat]

I had a little can of Bavaria 0.0% at the Killarney festival. It's not like other non-alcoholic beers in that it's not a beer that's had the alcohol removed (from what I can tell). It tastes like they just canned the run off from the mashtun. Not terrible, but not really like beer.

[johnrm]

@auralabuse
But can you brew it?
If so, what is your process?

LE is a champion of sustainability.
Come armageddon, I'm hanging with team LE
(Just staying away from the fruit of this project!)

[johnrm]

0.0% does not work IMO - the flavour is impaired.

@LE, is himself interested in 0.5%?
Evaporate off the alcohol, then add some sugar and yeast to bottle condition.

[Tom]

John, you're close. Don't waste a day making alcohol free beer. BUY alcohol free beer, and repackage with some yeast in a flippy top bottle, and voila! All the brownie points, and you can make an RIS or Trippel instead.

You could make a very low alcohol elderflower champagne.

Edit:

Just read this:

"Yeast doesn't normally make ethanol actually, it does that as a back up plan. Left alone under normal conditions, yeast actually likes to make carbon dioxide using oxygen. Ethanol is a biproduct of fermentation, which only happens when yeast is oxygen starved, like in a fermentation vat, or a wine bottle. " If it's true, and you have an oxygen stone, you could try it? If there's no alcohol to oxidise, then you'll not have an oxidised beer...

[Garry]

Great article here.

According to them, it only takes 20 to 30 minutes for the alcohol to evaporate off.

You could brew a beer with no hops and use hop extract to add bitterness after the alcohol has been evaporated?

[Parky]

I've used the 'oven bake' method to reduce alcohol in a hoppy pale ale before with some success. Not exactly the same as creating an alcohol free beer I know (I was aiming at <3%), but some of my notes might be of use to you -


1. Start with a recipe that has a low initial ABV (aim for <4%), this will mean less time in evaporation to create the desired ABV. (This can be achieved by using less base malt, increasing efficiency % in your brewing software, mashing at a higher temp to create more dextrins, or diluting the wort prior to pitching yeast to achieve a given OG).
2. I used a simple grain bill to avoid any big change in flavour from heating more complex malts (I used Vienna and light crystal).
3. To avoid any big change in bitterness or flavour I subbed in distilled water to replace the volume of liquid evaporated (you will be evaporating some water as well as alcohol). This dilution after evaporation has the added benefit of further reducing the ABV.
3. I bottle carbed the beer, so had to add in fresh yeast when priming (70oC will pasturise the beer and kill the yeast). You can avoid this step if you force carb,
4. Aeration wasn't a concern for me, as a nice hoppy pale ale is best drunk fresh, avoiding aeration issues that could occur if storing for a longer time.

As you say, you will certainly get some benefit by adding more hops after evaporation. I didn't opt for dry hopping, as I didn't want the beer hanging around too much longer. Instead I bottled immediately after cooling the evaporated beer and used a french press to create a hop essence added at bottling (see post below). I moved maybe 70% of the hops to this 'bottle hopping' stage, as most of the aroma and flavour had been killed in fermentation and evaporation.

http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.ie/forum/index.php/topic,9024.msg112318.html#msg112318

I know the above isn't entirely relevant for an alcohol free beer, but it may give you some ideas anyway 

[auralabuse]

@johnrm Haha, absolutely not. I have only started all grain so I'm happy with Drinkable

[LordEoin]

@ john, 0% if possible, but alcohol binds to the water so there'll always be some remaining unless it's completely dried out. I'd force carbonate.
@ Tom, trollmuch?
@ IrishGoat, bavaria is one of the better alcohol free beers. That's the the low standard.
@ garry, i read that one before but there are so many inaccurate statements that i distrust a lot of his advice.

Anyone know what temperature kills aroma and flavor?

[Tom]

I raise some valid points! Not the first, maybe, but with your hedgerow skills the second is not absurd.

My overall feeling is that there's got to be a better way than cooking it. Either yeast selection or handling.

[shweeney]

"Malta" (Vitamalt etc) is popular in the Caribbean & Africa.  Never had it but there's instructions for making it here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Malta-Soda/