There are a lot of different ways to make non alcoholic beer. But we think we accidentally stumbled on the absolute best way to make NA Beer. It involves what is called a Parti-Gyle mash, which is a process whereby beer is made using spent grains from a previous batch of beer. We've tried this a half dozen or so times now and every single batch has been absolutely delicious. It's also completely passable for normal beer. Here's how to make non alcoholic beer.
How to Make Non-Alcoholic Beer
You can use this process for any beer you brew. However, in order for this to qualify as non-alcoholic, we recommend that the ABV of your original beer be 5% or less.
- Make a normal beer mash.
- Transfer the spent grains to another kettle (or bucket) and rinse (sparge) them with 5.5 gallons of fresh water.
- Boil for 60 minutes. At the beginning of the boil, add 1 oz of your favorite hops
- Chill to 70F and pitch your favorite yeast.
- Ferment completely under pressure in a keg (no airlock!) for at least 2 weeks
- Cold crash, and put on tap.
If you'd rather watch a video about the process, here's a tutorial on making non alcoholic beer with moving pictures:
There are some caveats. First, this will result in beer that has a half percent of alcohol or less, which meets the definition of an NA beer. To stay under this benchmark, the starting gravity of the initial beer mash should be for a 5% ABV beer (or less). Anything more will result in final alcohol of the NA beer that exceeds a half a percent. Below are some recipes we've made that you can start with
German Pilsner (Tesla Gigabeer)
Second, keep the hop additions to 5 ounces or less. Anything more will be overpowering. And you probably don't need an entire package of yeast either. Half will do.
N/A beer can be made a number of different ways. One of the better ways to do it is to just create a very small mash with a couple of pounds of grain. However, we prefer to make non-alcoholic beer how we've outlined above because spent grains are a waste product and are virtually "free." Cheers!
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