Lately, I’ve been struck by all the low-ABV and nonalcoholic beers appearing on shelves. I’ve also been surprised by how tasty many of them are. And yet most of them seem to emphasize hops rather than malt—which makes sense, considering hops add aroma and flavor but not fermentable sugar. Plus, IPA sells.
Still, I’ve found myself wanting low-strength beers with more malty oomph.
These low- and no-alcohol craft beers are joining the usual suspects at the store, the NA macro beers, which I’ve always enjoyed for what they are: cheap, low in flavor, and pretty close to carbonated water. I don’t think there’s much need for us as homebrewers to venture into truly nonalcoholic brewing—the technical difficulty to do it well is incredibly high, and their high-tech equipment is out of reach.
Lower-alcohol beers, however, represent a worthy challenge—and delicious ones are relatively easy to brew, if we keep certain principles in mind.
Light but Flavorful
While the commercially available low-alcohol beers lean hoppy, what about other styles? What about porters, stouts, red ales, or the darker Belgian, British, and German styles? Where are those? And isn’t this why many of us get into homebrewing in the first place—to brew the kinds of beers at home that we couldn’t find in the store? I know that was the case for me.
So, I’ve lately started brewing lower-alcohol versions of some of my greatest hits. My goal is to enjoy these styles without the big buzz they might otherwise bring. I’ve begun to think of myself as a monk, of sorts, brewing smaller table beers for day-to-day consumption.
The challenge, then, is to pack in the malt flavor but keep it lower in strength. This is the question I’ve asked myself: How can I brew lower-alcohol beers that still taste full-flavored and full-bodied?
Fortunately, there’s no need to reinvent the brewing wheel here. There are existing tips, tricks, and methods that can get us there—and British brewing, with its modern history of full-flavored, session-strength ales, can help show us the way.
Building a Recipe
As a guiding light, I decided to use an English dark mild as a starting point. Roasted malts can then help bring that into porter territory. There are other options here—such as a table beer or “small beer,” possibly in the Belgian style, that could be in the range of 1.5 to 3 percent ABV. Whatever you choose, it makes sense to start from a style that you know is typically flavorful despite being low in alcohol.
Yeast choice is important for lower-alcohol beers, and it’s an area where we can let a yeast strain’s flavor profile really shine. British ale strains can add fruity esters and—in some cases—slight diacetyl, which at low levels can add a sense of richness to malt-forward beers. If you’re going more Belgian style, saison strains can add spicy complexity; they’ll also attenuate down to dryness without necessarily feeling “thin” in body. German weizen strains can also add banana and/or clove notes that can help a low-strength beer feel more substantial. For ambers, reds, or other styles where you might want to deploy New World hops, you can always lean into our old friend Chico, or another neutral strain.
The hops won’t affect the alcohol—you can stay true to your underlying style—but we want to keep balance in mind. With a lighter-strength beer, that often means easing up on the IBUs; if you’re brewing this for the first time, it’s best to use a brewing calculator or software to estimate your bittering rate.
My advice: Skip the neutral, high-alpha bittering hops, such as Magnum. Instead, use finer aroma hops to get your IBUs—you’ll get a smoother bitterness and enhanced hop character overall. Those could be floral English types, zesty-spicy Nobles, or even fruit-forward New World hops—but watch those alpha acids and use that calculator. Finally, if you’re dry hopping, it also makes sense to dial those quantities back, to help keep the hops in balance with the rest of the beer.
Malt is one of the easier aspects to manage in a lower-ABV beer—especially for extract and partial-mash brewers. I prefer to dissolve pale liquid malt in a bowl with a bit of warm water, then I add it to the kettle to help avoid any scorching. You can use the same method with any sugars. You can also go “beyond the pale,” so to speak, and use darker extracts to add some immediate flavor depth and color in lieu of—or in addition to—a combination of specialty malts.
If you do use pale malt extract, one combo I like is British pale malt extract with a debittered German dark malt, such as Weyermann Carafa II, to add color. A lower-Lovibond chocolate malt also imparts color and some chocolate character that enhance any small dark beer. Briess Midnight Wheat is another malt that can bring reddish or garnet hues in lesser amounts, or you can take it darker with larger quantities. Like Carafa, it provides a smoother, subtle roast flavor without burnt or astringent taste. Darker crystal malts can also lend color and sweetness. With all these specialty malts, however, a good rule of thumb is to keep them to no more than 15 percent of the total grist. And, as with the IBUs, a brewing calculator can help you estimate the color you’re likely to get.
Without being able to rely on a huge malt base for flavor, we can look elsewhere for added depth. British ales often include flavorful sugars, such as inverts, that can provide some of that. (For tips, see Zebulon’s Mike Karnowski Shares Four Ways to Make Invert Sugar.) Unrefined sugars such as turbinado and demerara can contribute, but it’s a good idea to limit these additions to no more than 15 percent of your fermentables. That sugar adds alcohol and lightens the body—and we want that body, right?—plus it can impart fruity flavors that may taste artificial. As with the hops, we should think of flavorful sugars that complement the malt.
After brewing several of these lower-alcohol beers in various styles, I’ve really come back to the classics, such as dark milds, porters, saisons, and lighter abbey beers—there are reasons why people have been brewing them for a century or three. These are beers for working people to quench thirsts or wash down meals and still be able to function.
I’m neither a farmer nor a monk, so my own reasons are slightly different. But here’s a truth that my beers share with theirs: Small in strength doesn’t have to mean small in flavor.