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> very low ABV between 0.5 and 2.0% How did they brew such small beers? Nowadays the non-alcoholic beers (basically 0.5%) are mostly made by removing alcohol a
by gniv 3y ago
> very low ABV between 0.5 and 2.0%
How did they brew such small beers? Nowadays the non-alcoholic beers (basically 0.5%) are mostly made by removing alcohol after brewing, which greatly affects the taste. I think it's a highly desirable skill to be able to brew good small beers. (Or maybe those beers were just not very good by today's standards.)
- pazimzadeh 3y agoWouldn't you just interrupt the fermentation process before it gets that high? Or add less nutrients for fermentation?
- Sander_Marechal 3y agoYes. Also, the yeast strains are much less pure and will probably die sooner.
- gniv 3y agoI'm not sure you get a full enough taste though. I've made low-alcohol beers with fewer grains and lots of hops and it was unbalanced, the base was not there.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoI think this is the key point. We want something that tastes like a 21st century beer but otherwise with the properties of an 18th century beer.
- pazimzadeh 3y agoThat reminds me of Belgian beers which have double the alcohol of your regular beer but tastes like there is barely any alcohol.
- aftoprokrustes 3y agoActually, my impression is that the main driver of that "alcohol free beer taste" is the absence of the taste of alcohol. I kind of want to test this hypthesis by adding pure alcohol to an alcohol free beer, but pure alcohol is not really something you find in the supermarket. Germany has a non-alcoholic drink called "Malzbier" (malt beer), which is basically the liquid you would ferment to make beer. It is _insanely_ sweet. So I would expect that a lightly fermented beer would be much closer to a sweet drink than to what we expect under the name "beer".
- avar 3y agoI have an experiment for you, pour e.g. a 0.5L Erdinger Weißen upside down and observe the resulting mess, then do the same with the 0.5% version of the same beer. There's much less foam in low alcohol beers, so it's not just the alcohol content (unless that affect it directly in some way I don't know about).
- aftoprokrustes 3y agoAs far as I understand a Hefeweizen is put into the bottle with live yeast, which continue the fermentation and create the characteristic thick foam. So indeed, in that case, you cannot have that effect without alcoholic fermentation. But I am more of a Pilsener guy, and there are a few good alcohol free Pils which I am convinced would taste like the "real deal" with the added taste of alcohol.
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoAll beer, historically, was bottled with live yeast. That's how you got the carbonation. Some times we cheat today.
- ouchjars 3y agoAlcohol does change the surface tension so foaming will be different. Ever seen a security guard shake someone's water bottle to check if it's really water? The thing that makes beer foam stay there is the protein content. Yeast contributes some, but it's also in the grain. The foam should be less different if you compared something filtered like Heineken and Heineken 0.0.
- somenameforme 3y agoI semi-regularly brew kvass, a [delicious] low alcohol content carbonated probiotic drink, and it's quite similar to beer: - Toast 300g sliced [rye] bread to near burning - Boil 3 liters of water, turn off, insert/soak bread - Let sit covered for 6 hours - Add 150g sugar, 6g instant yeast - Let sit covered for 18 hours - Remove bread, strain out extra liquid from it. Birds love it, once it dries out. - Bottle up the liquid (leave headspace for gassing), and occasionally burp it. - Wait. Longer bottling period = smoother, less carbonated, more alcohol, less sweet. ~12 hours, but this is very subjective. - Chill + drink. Take the lid off very carefully, aim away from eyes.
- tremon 3y agoWhat makes it probiotic? I don't see any addition of bacteria, other than yeast. I thought regular "probiotics" usually contain multiple strains of bacteria?
- pavlov 3y agoI suspect it’s the latter. The beers were nothing like the highly polished industrial lagers or ales of today. In Finland, a home-made small beer (kotikalja) remains a popular drink in the countryside. The alcohol content is around 1%. It’s a sweet brown mush that you can make in one day at home using rye malt sold in every grocery store. Here’s a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtgWBCnOt4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtgWBCnOt4M
- resolutebat 3y agoKotikalja is the Finnish version of kvas, which is ubiquitous across Eastern Europe. There's a Tibetan/Bhutanese/north Indian barley version of this too, known as chhang.
- alephnerd 3y agoChhang generally reaches around 4-6%, but it is also a generic word for that fermented barley drink, so maybe other regions brew it at a lower ABV.
- avar 3y agoYou can brew a 5% beer, then mix it 10:1 with water, and you'll get 0.5%. It's not up to modern standards for "alcohol free" beecs, but it works if you're just aiming to hydrate while avoiding pathogens in your water supply.
- brewdad 3y agoBut you just added 10x water from the questionable supply to your beverage.
- Sander_Marechal 3y agoYes, but the alcohol kills the bacteria in the water
- 0xFF0123 3y agoIs that true at 0.5%?
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y agoNo, typically what made beer safe to drink was the boiling, not the alcohol.