How to make non alcohol beer
In the video below we will be demonstrating not one, but two exciting developments!
The first, is we will be demonstrating a technique for brewing a low or non alcohol beer that still has good head retention, full mouthfeel and tastes great!
The second, is we will be showing a unique method for knocking wort down very fast, from boil to fermenting temperature, with the wort never leaving the “boil kettle”. BREWHA customers know the many benefits of the BREWHA system. One key benefit being that by boiling in the fermenter, the fermenter is thoroughly heat sanitized. Having the fermenter perfectly sanitized is especially relevant when brewing low alcohol beer, since alcohol won’t be present to help preserve the beer.
Today we are brewing a delicious traditional tasting lager that only has 1% Alcohol by volume, or ABV. (It can be taken right down below 0.5% ABV using a maltose-negative yeast, but we are just using regular beer yeast with this batch.) How is this possible, you might ask, to have a delicious, low ABV beer that tastes great? Most low alcohol beers struggle to come even close to the flavor and body of higher alcohol beers, and they often come with unpleasant flavors. Well, how we will accomplish this is by using the cold-mash method developed a few years ago by Dan Bies of Briess malt company (and a shout out here to Brulosophy for discussing it.). As the name indicates, a cold mash (or ‘no enzyme mash’) method mashes at fridge temperature instead of the typical 65C or 150F. What Dan’s research showed was that while the flavor compounds and proteins and other compounds we associate with great beer still come out into the wort at low temperature, the sugar packed starches do not, or do but at much lower levels. So by mashing at low temperature, the malt flavor and body can be present in the wort, but the sugar source, the starches will not. And it really works! As you can see, the beer has good head retention and color characteristics. For flavor you have to take my word for it —but do take my word for it, it’s delicious.
While it sounds simpler to just mash at low temperature, and in some ways it is, there are several considerations that need to be made to ensure the brew finishes successfully. So let’s get into it!
Today we are brewing a 1.5BBL/1.8HL lager. The recipe is on the recipe page on the BREWHA website. It is a basic lager recipe but you can use whatever recipe you like with this method. We added the strike water to our BREWHA fermenter yesterday and connected the water chiller to cool the strike water down overnight to 10C/50F. Sparge water can be withheld if desired but the water grist ratio should be kept high as you are trying to minimize conversion and maximize flavor extraction.
The method recommends crushing the malt on the coarse side. We set our malt mill at 1.5mm gap, and verified this by passing a piece of solder through the mill. Flour should be minimized as this contributes more starch to the wort, so if your mill produces a lot of fines, you can consider a screened malt product Briess produces call Malt Gems. Before we add the malt, we added 10% by malt weight of rinsed rice hulls. It’s important to include the full volume of rice hulls as the starches and flavor bodies will likely cause vorlauf and lauter to be difficult. (If using Malt Gems where the fines have been screened out, then less hulls could be used.)
Rice hulls and malt can be added with the Mash Colander installed in the fermenter, or they can be added to the Mash Colander before it is lowered into the water and then let the water work its way up. Either way, once the malt is immersed, brew salts can be added and the grain only very gently mixed to ensure thorough wetting and no air pockets. Over mixing will compress and pulverize the malt more, leading to more starch getting into the water which will increase difficulty in vorlauf and lauter.
About 10 minutes after mashing in, open the bottom dump port and drain out any grain that has settled down there, returning it to the top of the Mash Colander. Then connect the pump hoses and open the valves to let the lines and pump fill with water. Then close the diaphragm valve on the pump exit, turn the pump on and slowly start to open the diaphragm valve and begin vorlauf. Monitor the recirculation rate to ensure that water does not start accumulating above the grain bed; if it does, slow the recirculation rate down. If the water flow to the top of the grain bed exceeds the rate at which water is passing down through the grain bed, it will start to empty beneath the Colander, increasing the risk of a stuck mash.
Let the mash proceed for 60 minutes then turn the pump off and remove the Colander. If the grain has not been stirred heavily, and if sufficient rice hulls were added, lauter will be quite quick. Sparge water (if in the recipe) can be added during lauter. With the Colander fully removed, the wort level should be 2-4cm (1-2”) above the upper cylinder port on the 5-in-1 fermenter. We want it to be about 2cm or 1” above the port at the end of boil so water should be adjusted accordingly for the amount of boil off. (With this brewing method a full 60 minute boil is not necessary, and a shorter boil limits ‘cooked’ flavors, but if using light malts, a longer boil may be beneficial to remove DMS.)
After the Colander has been removed move the 1” pump return hose to the upper port on the cylinder. Then connect a ¾” hose from the diaphragm valve on the pump return to the racking arm and rotate the racking arm so that it is pointing just barely upwards. Then open the valves and turn the pump on. The wort returning into the fermenter in this way will cause it to whirlpool. Let it whirlpool for a minute or two then turn the pump off and let it sit for 10 minutes. The purpose of this rest is to encourage any solids in the wort to settle to the bottom port. At the end of 10 minutes remove the solids out of the bottom dump port. (If solids ever bridge at the bottom and fluid will not drain, attaching a Gas in Post and injecting a little CO2 into the bottom will typically dislodge it.) If deemed necessary (by the amount of solids in the wort) the whirlpool step can be repeated. This step is very important to help prevent scorching. Because the starch has not been broken down at all by enzymes (like it would at typical hot mash temperatures) they are floating around as solids in the wort and will easily scorch when they contact the heaters. So by removing as much of this starch before we even turn the heaters on, we minimize their presence and therefore minimize the risk of scorching.
Once you are satisfied that there are little removable solids left in the fermenter, turn the heaters on at low output (I recommend about 7%) and begin to heat up. To avoid scorching this is critical to heat up at low output.
I’d recommend if you have a pilot system to brew your first trial batch with this technique in your pilot system. In the pilot system it is possible to check your heaters throughout the heatup period (at least until the wort gets too hot to touch comfortably), by shutting the heaters off, then reaching in to feel if the heaters are still smooth or if solids are starting to build up. Once solids start to build up on the heaters, they quickly accrete, so your technique (setting a good filter bed, removing solids first, circulating the wort and a slow heatup) is all intended to prevent any build up on the heaters.
Because you want to heat up gently, heating the wort takes longer than it normally would. It will take 10-12 hours at 7% output so I like to mash in the late afternoon and let the wort heat up overnight. Once the wort reaches 65C/150F let it rest for 10 minutes to ensure conversion is complete. Then continue heating up to boil. At this point, it is just like a normal brew and the heater output can be increased to 100% without additional risk of scorching.
The boil for this method does not need to be long—boil for just long enough to steam sanitize the lid and exit ports, about 10-15 minutes (it can be longer with high SMM malts to remove DMS). Include the Hop Spider and a mixer in the fermenter during the boil so they are sanitized. Hops will only be added after boil, so a long boil for bittering is not needed. With a much lower initial gravity, you will want lower hop bittering as the bitterness will be much more pronounced.
To get ready for cooling the wort, flush boiling wort through the racking and dump ports to sanitize them, and connect the Plate Chiller Assembly Kit for knock down. Using the Plate Chiller Hose Connecting Kit, the pump inlet should be connected to the upper port on the cylinder (just below the wort level) and the pump discharge connected to the inlet on the plate chiller. The plate chiller discharge is returned to the tank bottom through a tee. Returning to the tee rather than directly into the tank minimizes turbulence in the fermenter which is necessary for effective cooling. Before connecting the assembly to the bottom port, flush any solids that have settled there. For the last 5-10 minutes of the boil, circulate boiling wort through the plate chiller to sanitize the pump and plate chiller. Circulate the wort long enough that the temperature gauge on the tee, returning wort back into the tank, shows above 90C/190F for 5 minutes. Then stop the boil, turn the pump off and proceed to the hop stand.
To bring the temperature down for the hop stand, connect cold water to the fermenter jacket and pass water through until the tank cone temperature sensor reads 75C/170F. Shut the tap water off, raise the fermenter lid, and with the sanitized mixer, stir the wort. The wort will be hotter at the top of the tank, than at the bottom (hot liquid rises), so you want to mix this a little to break the stratification so temperature is even throughout. Once mixed you want the temperature throughout the wort to be 75-80C (165-175F). Then add about ¼ of your hops to the Hop Spider and stir them just enough to ensure thorough wetting. Every five minutes add ¼ more. Five minutes after the last hops are added, connect cold water to the cooling side of the plate chiller and turn it and the pump back on and proceed to crash the wort down to yeast pitching temperature.
On the return tee temperature sensor, monitor the temperature of the wort being returned to the fermenter and adjust the pump flow rate (and/or the cooling water flow rate) so that the cooling water has enough time to cool the returning wort to 3-5C/5-10F below fermentation temperature. As cold water gently enters the bottom of the fermenter, it forms a fairly defined layer beneath the hot wort, and as it fills in the bottom, it pushes the hot wort up and out the top port. The reason for returning the wort slightly colder than fermentation temperature is that there will be a small layer of hot wort above the exit port which will be blended in at the very end. For effective cooling, the chilling water should be at least 5C/10F below initial fermentation temperature, so if tap water is not cold enough, water from a cold liquor tank should be used.
Once the temperature of the wort coming out of the top of the fermenter has dropped below 25C/80F (as seen on the temperature sensor monitoring wort going into the pump) turn the pump off and close the upper valve on the hose leading to the pump. There will now just be a narrow shelf of hot wort at the very top of the fermenter above the exit port.
Close the exit valve and inject 2-5psig of carbon dioxide into the wort line through the Gas in Post at the top to empty the wort out of the pump lines and plate chiller. (Oxygen should not be used with low alcohol beers, and especially not with maltose-negative yeast but can be used when chilling regular ABV beers). Once gas starts bubbling into the fermenter let it continue for 1 minute. The gas bubbles rising in the fermenter will serve to break the temperature stratification and equilibriate the wort temperature throughout the fermenter.
And that is all it takes! It is the quickest and most sanitary way to cool wort. We completed the chill in under 15 minutes, and with our largest 5-in-1 tanks and this same apparatus it can be completed in under an hour.
After adding gas, remove the pump lines from the fermenter and run water (preferable hot water) through them and the plate chiller to rinse remaining wort out.
Now it just remains to pitch the yeast and seal the fermenter. Since your OG will be about 1.010 to 1.012 or about 2.5P, you can pitch at a lower rate. Fermentation can be completed as per usual – for this batch we will ferment at 14C for 1 week, let temperature rise for a couple days, then lager at 4C for 2 weeks. Final gravity will be about 1.003 or .77P.
Using this method you can make a great tasting beer, with great mouthfeel and an ABV of under 1%.
Cheers!