Low alcohol recipe

[macca]

I have never tried making a lower alcohol brew but I'm keen to try something 3%abv or lower. I believe these are a hard style to do so wondered if anyone had any recipe suggestions. I was wondering about a low alcohol mild for starters...

[Barley Water]

I really don't like to go below an OG of about 1.040 because in my humble opinion, the beer starts to get very "watery" and cheap tasting. Of course, on this side of the pond we are used to stronger beer than your average fare over there, an average quaffing beer over here is about OG 1.050. I will admit though, I do like to have a lower alcholol beer on tap so I can imbibe all evening and remember what happened the next morning. Anytime I get anywhere near the 1.040 range, I usually employ every dirty little trick I know to make the beer seem bigger than it really is, mash hot, use alot of crystal malt and pitch a very unattenuative yeast strain. All these things also work to reduce the adv in the beer so at least all these little tricks help with the end goal of keeping the beer quaffable. I recently had a taste of Black Cat, which was really good by the way, and my understanding is that this beer is very low gravity (but you sure couldn't tell just by drining it). If somebody has a good formulation for that one I would love to try making it sometime.

[Rookie]

Do you brew all grain, or extract?
I have some good low % recipes, but they are all grain.

[macca]

Hi,
I brew all grain. Would be great if you could share some of your recipes for lower gravity beers.
Cheers!

[Rookie]

Bone Idle Bitter
83% maris otter
10% carastan
7% victory
22 IBUs of challanger at start of boil
4 IBUs of goldings with 15 minutes boil time left
1/4 ounce goldings to steep
WLP013 or Wyeast 1318 or whatever yeast you prefer
I mash at 67
When I first brewed this I only used m.o, and carastan and wasn't quite satisfied, the victory added just enough complexity to make me happy.

Honorable Member Mild
78% mild malt
95 crystal 60
7% flaked oats
4% aromatic malt
2% light chocolate malt
15-20 IBUs goldings
Wyeast 1318 or Safale-04
Mash at 68

These are the two I brew most often, I usually brew three gallons at a time and my grain bill is usually 5.5-5.75 pounds. I listed %s in the recipes so you can adjust the actual amount of grains to whatever size batch you brew.

[macca]

That's great, thanks for these. I will put these on my to-do list of recipes and let you know how they go..!

Cheers!

[Rookie]

That's great, thanks for these. I will put these on my to-do list of recipes and let you know how they go..!

Cheers!

I usually schedule the Bone Idle Bitter to brew when the goldings in my back yard are ripe and I use fresh hops for the last two additions.

[macca]

Dumb quastion, but is that 3 US gallons or 3 UK gallons?

[dave-o]

You could consider using some Imperial malt. Good for adding flavour and depth to ales with smaller grain bills.

[Rookie]

Dumb quastion, but is that 3 US gallons or 3 UK gallons?

U.S.

[Barley Water]

Mr. Rookie, both those recipes look nice, can you let us know what OG you target so I can scale them up to my system (if I were a betting man I would guess around 1.040 based on the bitterness but maybe they are even a little lighter than that)? I have been meaning to design a bitter with a bunch of either bisquet or victory malt so I could get that really nice British character. I also like the idea of using flaked oats in the mild, that should help the mouthfeel as many come across very watery to me. Anyhow, the ratio of IBU to OG is a very big deal with beers like these, you could experiement for a lifetime before you got it right without some guidance.

[TheMumbler]

Rookie/Barley Water - What is Victory Malt like? I see it crop up on US forums but you don't really see it in the UK.

[Rookie]

Mr. Rookie, both those recipes look nice, can you let us know what OG you target so I can scale them up to my system (if I were a betting man I would guess around 1.040 based on the bitterness but maybe they are even a little lighter than that)? I have been meaning to design a bitter with a bunch of either bisquet or victory malt so I could get that really nice British character. I also like the idea of using flaked oats in the mild, that should help the mouthfeel as many come across very watery to me. Anyhow, the ratio of IBU to OG is a very big deal with beers like these, you could experiement for a lifetime before you got it right without some guidance.

I usually get 1.036-1.039.

[Rookie]

Rookie/Barley Water - What is Victory Malt like? I see it crop up on US forums but you don't really see it in the UK.

It's a lightly roasted malt around 25 on the scale we use in the U.S., biscuit or honey malt, or amber malt or a little brown malt could also work.

[TheMumbler]

Cheers