Brewing a..."Malternative" Beverage.

[GlassCityBrewer]

Ok, feel free to scoff, raise eyebrows, and question my right to call myself a beer lover, but still.

I want to know how it's done.

I've searched high and low on this here worldwide web and only encounted recipes for making a mixed drink and a very strange genre of porn, and while both were educational in their own right, I still remain in the dark of how one actually makes these beverages.

[BMOOR]

Ok, while there is probabyl more than one way depending on what you want to make AND I don't endorse it, but here is how I've seen it done. (really-I saw it-I did not do it )
Make a very light lager of low alcohol and filter it(do not try to acheive flavor in this beer), and then filter it again with charcoal (in this instance it had to be done several times at a loss of final product) so that it is so filtered, you take the color out. Then add back sugar and flavoring-in this case a citrus type flavoring. It resembled a zima type thing and while you would assume it would sell with a certain segment of the population, it did not. Glad it was there brewpub and not mine. Again, this may not be the best way to do it, it was the way one small brewpub tried it out at the request of management.

[GlassCityBrewer]

Ok, well does anyone have any methods that they would suggest?

[nohandslance]

Try: Commerceindustrialchemicals.com, You can purchase pure grain alcohol, cut it with H2O, add your flavor of choice, Lemon, raspberry....etc. This will be far cheaper than brewing a light lager and taking up tank space. Also; I just had a wonderful beer called "Frambozen" out of Colorado, nice malt with alot of Raspberry flavor, a very nice alternative if you do not go the "grain alcohol" route.

[3DogsBarking]

Activated carbon/ charcoal is pretty standard for color removal.

[BMOOR]

Try: Commerceindustrialchemicals.com, You can purchase pure grain alcohol, cut it with H2O, add your flavor of choice, Lemon, raspberry....etc. This will be far cheaper than brewing a light lager and taking up tank space. Also; I just had a wonderful beer called "Frambozen" out of Colorado, nice malt with alot of Raspberry flavor, a very nice alternative if you do not go the "grain alcohol" route.

Can you call that a malt bevarge then?? or "malternative". I don't know the specifics, but I think you need 51% of alcohol from malted barley??

Also, was the Frambozen from New Belgium? (I know they have a beer by that name). I would definitely drink that over a Flavored MAlt beverage-and this beer is indeed a beer and not an FMB.

[einhorn]

Sounds like your looking for something like www.bionade.de

I went to Doemens with the son of the "inventor" back in '96 and he couldn't give his Bionade away. After the partial takeover and expansion through a larger mineral water company (Rhön Sprudel), it's taken off like a rocket (it's all about distribution, ain't it?). If I'm not mistaken, they did 1 mio. HL in 2007 and major brewers (Inbev for sure) are coming with similar alternatives.

Sorry, though, can't tell what he's doing differently than a regular brewing process. They have threatened to go up against any plagarists/copycats, as his process is patented. The products are truly excellent and very "in" right now.

BTW: these are all non-alcoholic beverages. Maybe I missed the boat...

[Øl-sheik]

Maltonade

Hi,

i have been researching on this topic aswell, focusing on malt based, low alcohol beverages.

The Bionade mentioned by Einhorn is fermented with a Gluconobacter and then probably sweetend and flavored. They make a big secret out of it.

Another interesting aproach would be a fermentation by a Kefir yeast ( fermented milk) together with a Lactobacillus, the VLB in Berlin is working on that and have a process ready for production.

I guess in the end it all comes down to finding one or a blend of microorganism that ferments our normal wort, without producing alcohol or only small amounts of it to a refreshing beverage. You can always adapted flavor and the level of sweetness

You see, many people are working on this and imagine the load of stinking fermented wort they have to taste untill they finally found the one organism that will do the trick, of course it is extremly hard to get infos out of them.

Maybe Chris White has some ideas of what organisms would be worth trying ?

Hope you keep as posted and share your secret :-)

[pennbrew2]

I don't think the OP is asking about a low/non-alcoholic beverage.

[Øl-sheik]

I don't think the OP is asking about a low/non-alcoholic beverage.

sorry if i have been totally off topic, but what exactly is a "malternative beverage" then?

[pennbrew2]

Stuff like this:

https://www.smirnoffice.com/

or this:

http://www.mikeshardlemonade.com/

[wildcrafter]

Isn't a "malternative" just an unmalted grain beverage? If so, there are some real interesting old recipes from the southwest using lupulo(hops), corn, golden barley, peloncillo, and yeast for a cervesa casera. It used to replace wine in all uses- including as a sacrament. I surely don't think it was carbonated. No mention of malting the grains.

[GlassCityBrewer]

I'd listen to PennBrew2 on this one.

"Malternative" is the buzz world for all of the fruity alcoholic malt beverages.

Smirinoff, Mike's Hard, Seagrams, Bartles and James, etc.

although I'm really trying to shoot for something like BJ's kind of product.

you know, Malt/wine coolers.

[pbutlert]

I worked at a brewery in Colorado long ago that made a fruit "beer" that was really more like a malternative. It was all 2 row, and then a big addition of dextrose in the kettle. Just a handful of hops to keep it from boiling over, and that was it; VERY low IBU's, I don't remember the number. It would be almost clear colored, and ferment out to something like 1 plato. We would then add aseptic fruit puree after fermentation to give it some color and body. It was a RPITA to filter. Not much beer character to the finished product. I have thought about doing something like it in later years, but then I remembered how much "fun" it was to brew, slapped myself and forgot about it. I have yet to do any kind of fruit beer in the last 10 years of professional brewing, and I don't regret it.

[Jephro]

I have yet to do any kind of fruit beer in the last 10 years of professional brewing, and I don't regret it.

..and your tap lines thank you!!