My wife likes to brew beer with me. Now she’s a big help but she doesn’t drink. Now that’s great because I don’t have to brew as much beer. But we were bottling today and we decided to give na a go. So after we bottled 4gal. We put a gallon in a pot and heated it to 180deg for 30 min after which we chilled it threw in a 1/2 oz of krausen and capped the bottles. Anyone know if that will be enough yeast? And also do you think if I threw in some hops at the end of the “boil” would it be enough time to impart some flavor and aroma or would it be a waste of hops?
Are you saying you put the new, unfermented wort in bottles with the leftover yeast from your last batch, or are you saying that you only heated up the already fermented beer from your last batch and racked that onto krausen?
+1 to previous post but also 1/2 oz krausen per bottle or 1/2 for the whole gallon?
Is he saying that they gave “NA” a go? Like non-alcohol? Can’t do that at bottling as the alcohol is already there. I assumed he meant NA because his wife does not drink. I’m confused but it’s not the first time. 
I initially read it as pitching yeast to unfermented wort and fermenting in bottles…if this is the case, bottle bombs aren’t far off.
I think the OP bottled 4 gallons as usual. Then they heated the last gallon to 180 degrees for 30 minutes to drive off the alcohol, rendering the beer somewhat non-alcoholic. Since the yeast were killed, they added 1/2 oz of krausen to prime the beer.
So yeah - is that 1/2 oz per bottle, or 1/2 oz for the entire gallon?
BYO has a detailed writeup of the NA process here.
They recommend saving 5% of the original wort and making a starter with it to prime the beer with actively fermenting wort. So for your 1 gallon batch, you should have added 12.8 oz of that to the batch, or just over 1.25 oz per bottle.
I’ve considered giving this a shot buy haven’t done so yet. Let us know how it goes for you!
[quote=“El Capitan”]I think the OP bottled 4 gallons as usual. Then they heated the last gallon to 180 degrees for 30 minutes to drive off the alcohol, rendering the beer somewhat non-alcoholic. Since the yeast were killed, they added 1/2 oz of krausen to prime the beer.
So yeah - is that 1/2 oz per bottle, or 1/2 oz for the entire gallon?
BYO has a detailed writeup of the NA process here.
They recommend saving 5% of the original wort and making a starter with it to prime the beer with actively fermenting wort. So for your 1 gallon batch, you should have added 12.8 oz of that to the batch, or just over 1.25 oz per bottle.
I’ve considered giving this a shot buy haven’t done so yet. Let us know how it goes for you![/quote]
This is correct. I heated the 1gal of fermented wort to drive off the alcohol. Then chilled it and pitched 1/2 oz of left over yeast to the 1gal and then bottled. The yeast was washed so I think maybe I shouldn’t call it krausen it was more concentrated I assume. I didn’t make a starter just washed at room temp and re tossed. The next time I will add some hops toward the end of the de alcohol heat . Or maybe drop a bud in each bottle. I am hopping to make a nice na for my wife and also have requests from pregnant and nursing mothers. I hope it won’t be under carbed
This is an interesting experiment, and I think it might actually work! Not sure if you’ll get any carbonation, though, unless you added priming sugar. Did you use priming sugar? It needs that. If not, you could uncap the bottles, add some, and recap, and it should still work as long as the yeast is still alive. You need roughly 1/2 teaspoon cane or corn sugar per 12-oz bottle, or 1 teaspoon per 22-oz bottle.
If you added more hops late, this is actually a great idea and not a waste. The hops will help to preserve the NA beer, as well as adding flavor obviously. Hops have preservative properties, which is especially important when there’s little alcohol present.
Best of luck to you! Report back after a few weeks when carbonation will hopefully have taken hold!
I already had added the sugar as I was bottling the rest of the beer. I believe alcohol removing heat would not affect the sugar. I used 5oz for the whole 5gal
Sounds like you should be just fine then. I sure hope it works out for you! Give it a couple weeks then report back.
Unfortunately, this won’t drive off the alcohol. Some small amount of the alcohol (and water, etc.) may be lost due to normal evaporation processes at the elevated temperature, but not simply because the solution is at a temperature that’s higher than the boiling point of EtOH (173 F). The EtOH doesn’t flash off by itself at its own boiling point and leave the rest behind. Rather, the entire solution, as a whole, must reach its boiling point.
The boiling point for say, a 5% EtOH-H2O solution, is about 96 C (about 205 F). That’s where the molecules can “escape” from the liquid (vaporization occurs) … and the vapor will contain a higher percentage of EtOH than the liquid (in this example about 36% abv).
Snipe is right. You won’t be able to get rid of all the alcohol. But perhaps half of it?! Something like that. It will be a bit lighter for sure.
Dave & Friends,
I finally took the time to read the BYO article. Athough I’m sure it was well-intended, it ignores the laws of physics and thermodynamics. If you don’t bring the beer to a boil I seriously doubt you’ll lose even a single point in abv.
It’s a very, very common misconception that ethyl alcohol (EtOH) when mixed with water will flash off when the mixture reaches (or slightly exceeds) the boiling point of the EtOH. This misconception is so prevalent that I’m sure you can find many examples on the web. Even the wikipedia page on “Non-alcoholic Beer” isn’t very precise on the matter. It’s typical to hear things like “bring the mixture to 180 F so it’s above the boiling point of alcohol. Then the alcohol will boil off.”
EtOH and water form a binary mixture (with an azeotrope). Without vaporization (getting to a boil), you’ll get very little loss of water, much less EtOH. Think about how much you would lose in your kettle if you were well below a boil. The boiling point of that binary mixture lies somewhere between the boiling point of EtOH and water … and depends on the relative mole fractions of each. For 5% abv it happens to be 96 C. The dew point/bubble point curves are distinct (which is why distillation works for producing spirits).
So let’s say you boil your 5% abv beer (at standard pressure), then later you measure the temperature and see that it’s boiling at 98 C. This would indicate that your beer is now at about 2.5% abv. Then again later, it’s at 99 C (about 1.7 % abv). If you reach 100 C (at standard temp) you probably have a very low alcohol beer.
Sorry to be long-winded … and I’m not trying to argumentative by any stretch of the imagination. But I would feel absolutely terrible if one of our members took a misleading article at face value … and offered what they believed was a “non-alcoholic” beer to someone who was on the wagon. That could be a life changing misunderstanding.
I appreciate that. Now when I open one of the beers and boil it I can tell the ABV?
I always wondered about that, but assumed that other more experienced brewers knew better than I. Glad someone is here to assure me my chemistry lessons are not as poorly remembered as I had thought.
I think Snipe is right again. My old chemistry classes are coming back to me, slowly…
Ok , I don’t know about any of you but I love problem solving. So I am going to work on this one. When I make maple syrup I boil the sap which is mostly water at 212deg I have a thermometer in the sap, maple syrup boils at 222deg. As soon asit hits that temp,done, bottle. Now if we boil the beer until it hits 212deg it should be free of alcohol. I will then add distilled water to get back my volume. I think low IBU beer will work better. Now if this doesn’t work, does anyone know how to make a vacume distiller?
