Non-Alcoholic Beer Poll

[S-Met]

was surprised how bad most of them were.

May be the pessimist in me, but I would expect them to be bad. The opposite would surprise me.

I have been toying with the concept of low abv sours in hopes of adding complexity to make up for body. Though I am rather inexperienced with sours having one kettle-sour faux berliner weiss. It ended up about 6% but I think I could reasonably cut it down to 3.5-4%. Maybe with time I could work it down to under 3%

 

[Localhopper]

I found a kombucha that is made with hops in Western Canada had slightly NEIPA vibe. Was very good and would drink it again.
As for recipes, brewdog in their recipe book (which is free from the website) has a non alcohol IPA beer in there.

 

[Wm. Styler]

I keep seeing news articles about how popular NA beer is becoming. Might be in markets or people I don't interact with, though I only interact with my goats and chickens, so not the best judge.

So what is your take on NA beer. Have you brewed it? Do you want to brew it?

Do you see it trending?

I stopped drinking alcoholic beverages at the beginning of the summer. I like the taste of brews, so I'm looking at brewing some low/no alcohol drinks. In many cases, like mine, it is a health-related choice. Couldn't control my weight (hence blood pressure and blood sugar) so I quit. Weight has steadily dropped, as did blood sugar. I completely understand the negative comments, but there are good reasons that a non-alcoholic homebrew is the way I'd like to go. I am sure some very good recipes and post-brewing methods will be (maybe have already been) developed for the homebrew folk.

 

[CraftyZA]

I'm in the process of drastically reducing my booze intake. It's been getting out of hand as of late. This weekend I've had some Heineken 0.0. Not bad. But I've had better. There is one of the South African Craft breweries that makes a NA IPA. Man that thing is awesome. Unfortunately, it is as scarce as hen's teeth.
At some point I might try to make one. Basically aim for a 2.5% lager or pilsner, then slowly bake it in the oven to get rid of the ethanol. Will add hops during baking process, and then some hop extract just before kegging. That will be 1st attempt. No idea if it will work.

 

[Qhrumphf]

IIRC getting to NA by heating (without putting under a vaccuum) is horrible for the beer and largely ineffective (I'd have to look up the reference).

Modern methods use an RO filter, remove the water AND alcohol, distill the alcohol off, and add the water back.

Basically removing the alcohol isn't the most practical at home.

Simply brewing for a very small ABV from the start is gonna be the best home route. Lowest I've done has been 2.5%.

 

[willjamr]

Most NA's are too close to water.

I'd like to clone Kaliber by Guiness.

 

[user 263363]

May be the pessimist in me, but I would expect them to be bad. The opposite would surprise me.

I have been toying with the concept of low abv sours in hopes of adding complexity to make up for body. Though I am rather inexperienced with sours having one kettle-sour faux berliner weiss. It ended up about 6% but I think I could reasonably cut it down to 3.5-4%. Maybe with time I could work it down to under 3%

In my neck of the woods the average Berliner is around 3.5%, some have less and some have more. A 6%er would be considered imperial lol. So yes a well done Berliner at <4% is very achievable. I tend to like the heavily fruited versions myself.

 

[user 263363]

I tend to only imbibe on the weekends unless it’s a special occasion but I could definitely see myself settling down after work with a nice brew sitting at less than 3% that didn’t taste like BMC beer. I might have to try a small batch of a small beer. I wonder how a hoppy mild would do? Hmmmm

 

[bobeer]

My brother quit drinking years ago and has asked me several times if I'd be interested in making him a NA beer for him. He used to love SN APA and SN Stout which he said nothing comes close to in the NA market.
Honestly, I'd love to help him but with my 2 little kids, and owning a sizeable yard, I really don't have the time to squeeze in a beer that's not for me. I have enough issues brewing my wife's beer because it puts a hole in my pipeline but I make it work because, well, she's my wife. There's obviously a market for NA beer but I'd think breweries would have the same issue I have; unless it sold really really well.

If I were to make a NA beer I'd go the path of a beer like Nanny State where you use just enough fermentables to make the beer .5% instead of having to heat up a finished beer.

 

[sunny_jim]

I keep seeing news articles about how popular NA beer is becoming. Might be in markets or people I don't interact with, though I only interact with my goats and chickens, so not the best judge.

So what is your take on NA beer. Have you brewed it? Do you want to brew it?

Do you see it trending?

Non alcoholic beer is difficult to make and difficult to so that it tastes like a beer. It usually requires some expensive equipment and some sophistication to operate and evaluate. Starting in the brewhouse it is desirable to convert at high temperatures for relatively short periods of time. This drives the attenuation up so that not much alcohol is produced in Fermentation. there will be more dextrins than fermentable sugars. Run offs can be slow and yield is poor. Even then you may need an R/O device to remove alcohol so that you fall into line with guidelines, keeping the final product under 0.5% alcohol. If you are trying to make a "low alcohol" product it might be easier to do. Expect to lose hop components and delicate flavor notes in this or any other device used for dealcoholization. Heat is also used to evaporate off alcohol from a fermented product. I believe there is one brewing company experimenting with a yeast from trees somewhere south of the border. It make "0" alcohol. Whether that product will taste like beer is a separate issue. It is an interesting step though.

 

[bucketnative]

I have a friend who gave up alcoholic beverages. He will occasionally have a non-alcoholic beer, because he gets sick of club soda and Coke when we're out. It's nice to have an option for him.

I'm looking forward to trying the new one from Brooklyn Brewery. It's supposedly available in my area (as soon as Nov. 1), but not in my friends until next year. I was going to give him a report back on how it is.

 

[OreCreekBrewery]

I love BEER! Everyday at 5 I crack open or pull one from my Tap. I always have 2-4 corny's in the kegerator but my problem is that I can not stop at 1 or 2 I have to have 4-5 to satisfy the brain? not sure how that works but I am afraid that if I drank 1% or .5% N/A or so I would have to drink 10 or so to "satisfy the brain" I suppose I could buy a 6 pack of N/A and see if that helped before I actually brewed a batch!

 

[keithfm1]

Brewdog has a 0.5% "IPA" (Nanny State) they they've released a recipe for:
https://brewdogrecipes.com/recipes/nanny-state

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

In many cases, like mine, it is a health-related choice. Couldn't control my weight (hence blood pressure and blood sugar) so I quit. Weight has steadily dropped, as did blood sugar. I completely understand the negative comments, but there are good reasons that a non-alcoholic homebrew is the way I'd like to go.

My problem with that idea is that it's not the alcohol that is necessarily causing the weight/BP/sugar problems, it's also the empty calories. NA beer only solves one of those.

Kinda like the people that go low-carb (I'm one of them, doing low-carb October right now) and then when they lose weight think it's the carbs that make you overweight. No... It's just that it's WAY too easy to overeat with our American diets, and when you cut out the carbs you might THINK you're replacing those calories with meat/fat/vegetables, but often you're taking in less calories overall.

I like beer. If they made good-tasting NA beer, I'd definitely consider it for times / occasions when it's not necessarily appropriate to drink alcohol, i.e. if I'm working from home and I want something tasty with my lunch, or if I'm with the family at a BBQ and I need to drive home.

But if I'm trying to lose weight, cutting out beer entirely is the way to do that. Because it's the empty calories that cause the weight problems [although the alcohol itself can cause other problems].

 

[Imhoppy]

Malta is a lightly carbonated malt beverage, brewed from barley, hops, and water much like beer. However, Malta is non-alcoholic, it has a strong beer smell and flavor. Malta is often described as being like a beer that has not been fermented. It is similar in color to stout (dark brown) but is slightly sweet.

India Malta, Malta Goya, and Vitamalt are some of the beverages I have tried. Very common in the Caribbean, but not so much in the US, however. Give it a try. Pretty good stuff.

 

[BruceH]

Bitburger zero is my favorite non-alcohol beer.

A low alcohol beverage that tastes pretty good can be made fairly easily. It's called kvass. There are many recipes for it on the interwebs. The ingredients I used are burned dark rye toast, sugar, water, and yeast or starter unless you want to wild ferment it. IIRC it's called children's beer in Russia and Ukraine. Napoleons troops called it pig lemonade when they were there. When I made it all the time it was 3 days total time to drinking it.

I haven't made it in awhile but just thinking about it makes me crave a nice glass. It tastes like carbonated lemonade and beer to me. ABV ranges from under 1% to 3+% depending.

 

[stronk]

I have two low abv beers in the fermenters at the moment: a chocolate mild (with cacao nibs) and a light New England pale style. Mashed high at 72C (162F) and used a fair amount of unmalted grains to try to keep body high. My theory is that this way the beer won't feel thin and it will have similar unfermented sugar remaining to stronger beers. Similar to what others have reported above.

Mild has 11% unmalted flaked barley, 16% malted oats and a ton of caramalt (14.5%). Not sure about this one, hydrometer sample before fermentation tasted gloopy and flabby. Possibly under-did the hops (IBU expected around 15; OG 1.033).

Pale has 7% and 14% respectively and I've used 12% Weyermann carapils. From hydrometer samples, this was evidently thinner but in a good way.

Using a low-attenuating yeast - Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire - at the bottom of its temperature range. I am expecting to get them between 2.8 and 3%, which is hardly NA, but I think lower than that and they will just be water. I can always return to this and cut them back even further if successful the first time.

To my taste, all NA beers that have gone through a removal process are tasteless, and those which are brewed with very little malt are thin and watery. The other category where they stop fermentation early by killing/filtering out the yeast leaves the beer tasting 'worty' to me, which isn't pleasant... tastes like adding wort to finished beer.

Interested in what others have said about sour beers and yeasts and bacteria that don't produce as much alcohol but still consume sugar. There are some cultures on sale in the UK (albeit probably US manufacturers) which claim to be good for producing low ABV beers. Sourness is also a good way to make a beer with an interesting enough flavour with very little alcohol.

 

[shoreman]

These guys make the best N/A beers I've tried https://www.athleticbrewing.com/beer - they were on the Experimental Brewing Podcast last year too. I'd buy them more often but the $11/6 pack is a bit much for N/A beer. They should be a bit higher in price than seltzer water.

I'd drink way more N/A beers if they were flavorful and brewed in different styles. The taste/flavor in what I'm after in beer, I also enjoy the history. I really only drink water, tea, coffee and beer so a solid N/A at a good price would be great to have around.

British Beers and Belgian table beers are as close as you can get as a homebrewer IMO.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I keep seeing news articles about how popular NA beer is becoming. Might be in markets or people I don't interact with, though I only interact with my goats and chickens, so not the best judge.

So what is your take on NA beer. Have you brewed it? Do you want to brew it?

Do you see it trending?

I love the concept. I've never had one that stood up to my expectations, but I've said many times that I'd love a beer that tastes great and has no alcohol.

 

[beersk]

Brewdog has a 0.5% "IPA" (Nanny State) they they've released a recipe for:
https://brewdogrecipes.com/recipes/nanny-state

This is great, but, dang, that's a lot of specialty malts. I wonder if using something like flaked rye, wheat, barley, oats, whathaveyou, would help a lot.

I also wonder, one could do a Raw Ale or Lager and try to drink the beer quickly (which should be easy since it'll be super low ABV), as the non-boiledness leaves more proteins in the finished product thus increasing the body.

 

[IslandLizard]

Inspired by Oaty McOatface, a 2.5% (Dark) Oat Mild homebrew I enjoyed at the 2016 Homebrew Con, I brewed a 1.033 OG / 2.7% Oat Mild using WY1099.

It came out at 1.8 or 2.0% ABV due to mashing at 161F. That's as low as I've ever gotten. Plenty of body, flavor, and oaty silkyness.
Force carbonated in the keg but delivered a soda-like head of big bubbles that quickly dissipated, whatever I tried. Maybe due to the high mashing and/or oils from the 8.7% Golden Naked Oats I used that were not in the original recipe.

It was really good, though, could drink that all day... and I did.

We really gotta brew more of those. Maybe try some NEIPA versions in that vein, with full body.

 

[kh54s10]

I have no interest, I guess I could use one in the early part of the day or when I would be driving. I would have to have a really good tasting one or I would just as soon have a glass of water.

 

[NewJersey]

Erdinger NA is very good. Got em for my wife during pregnancies. I was gonna make her an NA beer, but decided to make her gingerale which came out AWESOME.
Lol @ earlier posters thinking people are gonna give up drinking

 

[Ullarsskald1988]

I love making cyser. Just curious if you would be generous enough to share your recipe (procedures) for making a NA cyser? Thanks

I'll dig through my notebooks and see if I can find my recipe and method. Things have been packed since we moved from northern Illinois to southern Maryland 7 years ago...started to set up the brew room when we got a house a year after moving, then fell ill, which ended up with a pancreatic cancer diagnosis. Fortunately it was early and treatable. Still no recurrence, and the wife has been asking about brewing again.

But, as I recall, used an English ale yeast (likely Nottingham or Windsor) and then cold crashed after the proper SG drop along with using potassium sorbate.