> Low Alcohol Beer- Hip Hop 3.4% Session Pale Ale
It’s time for another seasonal release – number four in our Trial Hop series! This time I wanted to brew something very easy drinking for sitting out in a sunny beer garden, and as I also didn’t have quite as much of the hop this time around it made sense to scale back the ABV a little.
Hip Hop is therefore a light 3.4% ABV, with CF321 producing fruity, almost bubblegum notes, backed up with the subtle hop Archer. One of the big risks with lower alcohol beers is a lack of body and flavour as there’s just less of each ingredient involved; the bold character of CF321 easily provides enough flavour despite the lower quantity used, and the body is helped by a large portion of chit malt, which contains more protein than standard base malts. The result is a beer which I hope has all the character of something in the 4-5% range but doesn’t leave you needing to switch to soft drinks after one or two.
Over the last couple of decades average beer strength has been creeping higher, however recently lower and alcohol free beers have become much more popular. This is partly due to changing habits of drinkers and partly because they’ve got much better! In the UK, the government have suggested that beers should not be labelled as alcohol free unless they contain below 0.05% alcohol by volume1; currently the term can be used up to 0.5% 2. You may be thinking alcohol free should mean 0%, but at this level it can be metabolised by your body faster than you can consume it, and anything with easily fermentable sugars can exceed this alcohol content naturally – for example fruit!
I’ve been looking into the possibility of producing an alcohol free beer to add to the range at The Hop Shed for about six months, but there are a number of challenges involved. The beer can either be designed to ferment normally but produce as little alcohol as possible, or be de-alcoholised. The latter is ‘safer’ but would potentially be very costly on a small scale and essentially impossible to test before committing to; my thoughts have therefore been focused on the former.
The first idea that may come to mind is to simply make a beer and then not add any yeast so no alcohol is produced. The problem with this is that yeast actually does a lot more than just consume sugar and create alcohol – it’s involved in a huge number of flavour-altering processes that make the taste recognisable (and pleasant). Instead, the most common method is to reduce the amount of fermentable sugar available, either by ingredient selection or altering the brewing process. The issue with this is that a large quantity of sugar remains in the beer and could potentially be broken down into a form the yeast can consume later – as well as possibly exceeding the allowed alcohol content, a by-product of this process is carbon dioxide, which means you’re potentially creating a timebomb! If you’ve ever had a can or bottle explode in your cupboard, this is probably the reason.
As part of the definition of cask beer is that it is a ‘live’ product (still contains yeast), it is practically impossible to create an alcohol free beer in this format. Our beer is filtered as part of the bottling process but the large material that remains in the beer makes this very difficult for alcohol free products without repeatedly blocking the filter – it is instead recommended that they are pasteurised (similar to milk or fruit juice). I’ve looked into this too, but apart from the fact that heating the beer up may negatively impact the flavour profile, as with dealcoholisation the minimum quantities required are significant.
All of this means that I’ve unfortunately decided not to pursue brewing an alcohol free beer for the time being. While it would certainly be possible to brew sub 3%, in my experience people are generally looking to drink alcohol or not, which leaves this range unappreciated by both groups. Brewing a session beer with all the flavour of a regular strength one is definitely possible though, and hopefully you’ll agree that Hip Hop fits that description!
