Looking for deceptively good low gravity recipes

[Ben711200]

I'm looking to start making lower strength beers for various reasons. I guess I'm just getting older and more sensible. While I understand the basics of what is required, I've never formulated a low gravity recipe and am afraid it'll just taste like wee. I'd greatly welcome your recipes for something deceptively full bodied and delicious. No boundaries to style- I'm not going to be entering any competitions!

I'm not looking for clones, but as a starting point, I tried the 2.7% Adnams Sole Star yesterday and really liked it. The subtle use of American hops really lifted it. I didn't think I liked most US hops until I started trying them in recipes that were a little more 'balanced' than what they are normally used in.

The Adnams website notes

A full-flavoured and great tasting pale amber beer, with a light floral/citrus aroma, gentle caramel notes and a good level of bitterness. Brewed with Pale Ale, Crystal, Black and Munich malts which are toasted to add more flavour. We use Chinook and Cascade hops to add bitterness to balance out the sweetness.

And the head brewer's tasting video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... DFi7dnk4Rk

So anything that gets close to this? Or your favourite mild? Tips for cheating my way to full body without cloying sweetness?

Thanks in advance

[dedken]

I'll start by suggesting that with whatever recipe you use, mash as high as 70 to get loads of dextrins. You could probably go as high as 72C (you'd have to trust your thermometer to not be 2-3 degrees out though).

[Barley Water]

Well the two ways to get a sweet beer are to use a whole lot of crystal type malt or under-attenuate the beer while at the same time using very little in the way of bittering hops. Once beers get into the 1.040 O.G. range it is very hard to keep them from seeming watery and therein lies the problem. If you want to get the beer to "drink big", using a low attenuator for yeast, adding alot of crystal and mashing really hot are the methods of choice to correct this problem. After that it is just a matter of screwing around with the hopping to avoid the sweet beer problem you mentioned. Note however, you can get alot of dextrans by mashing hop and still dry the beer out because the dextrans themselves have very little in the way of taste.

On this side of the pond we tend to brew bigger beers anyhow so we don't generally run into this problem. Of course, most of our beer is pushed using CO2 and therefore our stuff is more highly carbonated which accentuates the watery issue with smaller beers. Besides doing that, we also tend to serve our stuff colder which of course just adds to the issues. You don't see milds over here very often and I believe that is why. I do like having something on tap which is not so potent, I tend to stay out of trouble that way.

[Ben711200]

I like that theory. It makes sense that we favour drinks more suited to the way our pubs are traditionally set up to serve them. Fortunately, I favour the British serving style* so that's a positive from the perspective of this project.

So then. Mash high, use healthy quantities of crystal malts, presumably a decent amount of something unmalted (oats, torrified wheat etc.) to help a bit more with body and mouthfeel and then mess about with hopping to taste. I think I can manage that. I'll have a go at putting something together using the Sole Star as inspiration as I reckon that one has pretty much nailed it. I guess it'll essentially come out as a slightly overhopped (bittering and aroma) mild. Doesn't sound a bad thing really.


*Entirely through conditioning, no doubt. If I'd come from another part of the world, I'm sure I'd find the beer here watery, undercarbonated and too warm

[Barley Water]

Well I have an idea for you; make a Berliner Weiss. That stuff is extremely low gravity and you will certainly blow away all your friends if the beer turns out well. Of course, as soon as you start screwing around with the "bugs" needed to make that stuff correctly you essentially need two completely separate kits to avoid infecting all your standard beers. I confess that I have not yet tried one of these but I am definately interested. I don't believe I would even attempt to keg a beer like that, chamagne bottles with corks and cages would be the way to go since you also want to carbonate the hell out of the beer.

[Ben711200]

Well I have an idea for you; make a Berliner Weiss. That stuff is extremely low gravity and you will certainly blow away all your friends if the beer turns out well. Of course, as soon as you start screwing around with the "bugs" needed to make that stuff correctly you essentially need two completely separate kits to avoid infecting all your standard beers. I confess that I have not yet tried one of these but I am definately interested. I don't believe I would even attempt to keg a beer like that, chamagne bottles with corks and cages would be the way to go since you also want to carbonate the hell out of the beer.

Certainly a fun idea, not sure I'm brave enough to attempt that style yet though. I'll definitely post whatever I come up with

[jeddere]

Almost finished drinking a batch of 2.7% ABV pale ale which I've been very happy with. It had a reasonably high final gravity, but you could still notice a slight watery-ness, I think mainly because of the low quantity of alcohol on the tongue.

Main ideas were:
- Mash high
- Use a low attenuative yeast
- Keep the specialty malt quantities the same by weight as for a 1.040 to 1.050 original gravity beer
- All hops in the last 15 mins to get lots of flavour/aroma without overdoing the bitterness

Recipe:
OG 1.031

65% Low Colour Maris Otter
25% Munich malt
6% Pale Crystal
4% Medium Crystal

Mash at 70 C

15 mins, and same again at 5 mins:
Centennial 0.5 g/l
Cascade 1 g/l
Summer 1.5 g/l

Flameout:
Centennial 0.25 g/l
Cascade 0.5 g/l
Summer 0.5 g/l

Dry hop:
Centennial 0.5 g/l
Cascade 1 g/l
Summer 1 g/l
(odd quantities to use up the hop packet)

Wyeast Ringwood Ale

FG 1.012
Apparent attenuation 61%
2.5% abv out of fermentor, 2.7% after bottle conditioning to 2 vol CO2

[deanrpwaacs]

Have a read here.
http://www.themadfermentationist.com/20 ... e.html?m=1

And here .
http://www.themadfermentationist.com/20 ... n.html?m=1

I made a saison with 3711 yeast . Ended at 1.002 but had great mouth feel . I am looking to make a session ipa with this yeast and lots of late hops .

[Ben711200]

Thank you all. Some useful reading and common themes throughout. The links to themadfermentationist were great. I've come up with this. It's a 'user upper' in terms of hops but that's not to say they can't be adjusted. I've no idea if I'm in the ballpark in terms of yeast attenuation or mash temp but they are best guesses that can be changed. Any thoughts welcome

Ben's Low Gravity Safety Beer
Standard/Ordinary Bitter

Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 20.5
Total Grain (kg): 3.322
Total Hops (g): 54.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.038 (°P): 9.5
Final Gravity (FG): 1.013 (°P): 3.3
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 3.24 %
Colour (SRM): 8.6 (EBC): 17.0
Bitterness (IBU): 22.9 (Average)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 75
Boil Time (Minutes): 60

Grain Bill
----------------
1.329 kg Munich I (40.01%)
1.329 kg Pale Ale Malt (40.01%)
0.332 kg Crystal 15 (9.99%)
0.166 kg Crystal 80 (5%)
0.166 kg Flaked Oats (5%)

Hop Bill
----------------
10.0 g Northern Brewer Pellet (10.6% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil) (0.5 g/L)
6.0 g East Kent Golding Leaf (6.4% Alpha) @ 15 Minutes (Boil) (0.3 g/L)
8.0 g Styrian Golding Leaf (4% Alpha) @ 15 Minutes (Boil) (0.4 g/L)
15.0 g East Kent Golding Pellet (4.7% Alpha) @ 5 Minutes (Boil) (0.7 g/L)
15.0 g Styrian Golding Pellet (4.4% Alpha) @ 5 Minutes (Boil) (0.7 g/L)

Misc Bill
----------------

Single step Infusion at 66°C for 60 Minutes.
Fermented at 20°C with Danstar Windsor


Recipe Generated with BrewMate

[seymour]

Oh god I want a pint of that. That's my thought on that.

I would've guessed Sole Star was more like 30 IBU, so you could probably increase the overall bitterness from early additions a little, but that's up to you. Adnams calls for Chinook and Cascade, but I like your hop bill better. They also use a tiny bit of Black Malt, so consider adding a handful if you got it. Excellent choice on the Windsor, too, by the way.

One last suggestion: I don't know if Adnams has started offering Sole Star in mincasks yet or not (the last I read on their website, they were still trying to determine demand...) but if so, this would be an excellent way to A) drink some beer you know you enjoy and B) get a cool, reusable serving vessel and C) capture Adnams' proprietary dual-strain yeast to reuse in your own brews, in a relatively low-grav, low-stress habitat.

Happy brewing!

[Ben711200]

Thanks Seemoar*

As you've picked up, I'm not specifically looking to copy it, but I will follow Adnams' lead using your suggestions and get the overall profile a bit closer to Sole Star as my starting point.

I can't say I've ever seen any of their minicasks for sale, and I doubt that demand would be sufficient for it (though I will check). If I can track one down, I wouldn't be at all offended by having to buy another of their brews. Their dual strain sounds fun to use, too.

*I've seen so many misspellings of your name on here that I thought I may as well join in the fun, sorry Seymour

[seymour]

Thanks Seemoar*

As you've picked up, I'm not specifically looking to copy it, but I will follow Adnams' lead using your suggestions and get the overall profile a bit closer to Sole Star as my starting point.

I can't say I've ever seen any of their minicasks for sale, and I doubt that demand would be sufficient for it (though I will check). If I can track one down, I wouldn't be at all offended by having to buy another of their brews. Their dual strain sounds fun to use, too.

*I've seen so many misspellings of your name on here that I thought I may as well join in the fun, sorry Seymour

That's funny! Sounds good, happy brewing.

[Monkeybrew]

Thanks Seemoar*

As you've picked up, I'm not specifically looking to copy it, but I will follow Adnams' lead using your suggestions and get the overall profile a bit closer to Sole Star as my starting point.

I can't say I've ever seen any of their minicasks for sale, and I doubt that demand would be sufficient for it (though I will check). If I can track one down, I wouldn't be at all offended by having to buy another of their brews. Their dual strain sounds fun to use, too.

*I've seen so many misspellings of your name on here that I thought I may as well join in the fun, sorry Seymour

I've seen the Adnams Southwold Bitter Minicasks in various Tesco stores. And believe me it wouldn't offend you

MB

[Barley Water]

I'll just throw this out there for your consideration. The problem with culturing up dual strain yeasts from commercial beers is that the proportion of the two strains to each other may well have changed from that which the commercial brewery uses. I'm not really a yeast expert so I don't know how the commerical guys do it but generally one strain will be just a little bit more robust that the other. When a dual strain is pitched into the wort, a Darwinian struggle ensues as the strains compete for the limited food stuffs available. One strain will replicate more than the other and is more sucessful from a biological perspective. It's rather like going into a bar full of women. Some will be hot, some not so much but at the end of the evening the mix will have changed (ie; the less nubile women are left as the hotties are picked up first). Now both the yeast strains are capable of fermenting the beer but the flavor profile may change (much like the women in the bar example above).

[EoinMag]

I'll just throw this out there for your consideration. The problem with culturing up dual strain yeasts from commercial beers is that the proportion of the two strains to each other may well have changed from that which the commercial brewery uses. I'm not really a yeast expert so I don't know how the commerical guys do it but generally one strain will be just a little bit more robust that the other. When a dual strain is pitched into the wort, a Darwinian struggle ensues as the strains compete for the limited food stuffs available. One strain will replicate more than the other and is more sucessful from a biological perspective. It's rather like going into a bar full of women. Some will be hot, some not so much but at the end of the evening the mix will have changed (ie; the less nubile women are left as the hotties are picked up first). Now both the yeast strains are capable of fermenting the beer but the flavor profile may change (much like the women in the bar example above).

ehhh yeah, yeast are like women, lots of buds.......