Low Alcohol-High Crystal, Big Flavour

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Permalink Reply by jt on March 1, 2013 at 12:49pm

II started off my lower gravity brewing with Stu's Kid Chocolate recipe
That's good if you like a malt balanced beer, lots of character to it
Something like 10% pale Crystal, 5% brown 2.5% pale choc 1.3% black
Bitter to 50% of OG and maybe add some hops at 10 or so.
Depending what you're after you can play with the hops

I like pales in the 1034 region.
10 to 12% each caramalt and Munich or you can just go 20% cara
IBU to about 75% of OG with most of them at 10 & 1 minute to get more flavour opposed to straight out bitterness

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Permalink Reply by Ralph on March 1, 2013 at 1:54pm

Yup, and I did a 2.5% weemix... which is basically a Pot Kettle Black with the same amount of crystal etc as usual, but the pale malt turned right down. Was super yummy.

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Permalink Reply by Chris Banks on March 1, 2013 at 2:25pm

I can assure you JT really knows what he is talking about when it comes to low abv/big flavour beers...

Off on a bit of a tangent but Paul Wicksteed did a Melanoiden malt SMASH beer which came in at around 2% I think haven't tried it myself but from his comments on the vid sounds pretty good - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj4uARL5dng

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Permalink Reply by jt on March 1, 2013 at 2:54pm

I can't claim credit mate, it's mostly down to some good advice and great pointers from Stu, Jo, the North Welly Crew and many others here
Credit to the wider brewing community I think

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Permalink Reply by Chris Banks on March 1, 2013 at 3:58pm

Did I mention he was quite modest too......;-)

Sorry back to subject was someone on here discussing brewing very  high % crystal low abv beer at one stage quite a while back Mr Cherry perhaps?

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Permalink Reply by jt on March 1, 2013 at 4:32pm

Yes, Mr Cherry did one at 100% specialty malt from memory ...

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Permalink Reply by Tilt on March 1, 2013 at 4:48pm

Aye I think it was Mr Cherry - and IIRC he did a nice write up of the results of his experiments.

Also the Limbo comp group could lend some useful info as they hold a low gravity competition every now and then.

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Permalink Reply by jt on March 1, 2013 at 8:17pm

There's Minimus too, Banksy did a great tasting take on that.
There, now it's a North Welly appreciation thread...sorry

If you get a good mat base, you can heap in the hops

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Permalink Reply by Crusader-Rob on March 1, 2013 at 4:59pm

Sounds good, Hopefully Mr Cherry, shows up here soon. 100% Specialty, any idea what the specialist was?

I've got a Low ABV Old School Classic Porter, MO &Brown Malt 50/50 and Black Patent at around 4-5%, nice and simple. low Hopped.

Wheres the Limbo Comp group? can anyone post a link?

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Permalink Reply by Tilt on March 1, 2013 at 5:04pm

Check out the limbo group here.

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Permalink Reply by MrC on March 1, 2013 at 9:19pm

Ahh, the old "How Low Can you Go" conversation.  

Here's what I did

From what I remember it was not very nice at all and tasted like unfermented wort.  Since then I have brewed a 2.9% Mild which was average. Not something I'm pursuing.

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Permalink Reply by MrC on March 1, 2013 at 9:26pm

Here's a link to the Mild that I brewed.  

The recipe indicates 3.4% but my notes and gravity readings indicate that it was actually 2.9% ABV.

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