September 2021

Our malt beer has run out, so we brewed a new batch of 150 liters on September 11. A lot has been written about malt beer in the various hobby brewing forums and also in the relevant textbooks, and yet there is a lack of practicable solutions for small breweries. We sometimes hear criticism that commercial malt beers and malt beverages are too sweet. At some point, we therefore decided not to brew according to textbooks or recipes in hobby brewing forums, so we tinkered, tinkered again and then brewed. After not too many attempts, the result was a tasty dark malt beer with an original gravity of around 14 °P and an alcohol content of approx. 0.5% by volume, which is also brewed in this way at the Zellerfeld Brewing Academy and can be drunk in the beer mint. We don't reveal too much about the production process, but our malt beer is brewed from the whole grain, naturally soured to a minimum during the brewing process, we don't use any malt extract, molasses or sugar syrup, and we only use a small amount of dextrose to increase the sweetness a little. We adjust the barely perceptible bitterness (approx. 12 IBU) with Hallertau Magnum bitter hops. We only pasteurize malt beer under pressure, as it contains a lot of fermentable sugars, and even a single yeast cell could cause trouble if stored incorrectly. The new malt beer should be ready at the beginning/mid-October.
 

Beers with less than 0.5% alcohol by volume have been classified as alcohol-free by law, as the body of a healthy person breaks down these small amounts of alcohol so quickly that an alcohol level does not build up. Special cases are a genetic deficiency of alcohol dehydrogenase and alcohol allergy, in the latter case even very small amounts can be life-threatening.

On September 4, we brewed another 200 liters of top-fermented "Laerdal Kveik" with our 150L Brewtools system and the Braumeister 50. This time we mashed Pilsner malt, Pale Ale malt and Carahell at a constant 72 °C, the wort was only mildly hopped with Hallertau Magnum. According to the manufacturer, the Laerdal Kveik produces aromas of pineapple and fruit salad, but unfortunately it sediments rather poorly, so that bitter substances from aroma hops turn out badly despite a sufficiently low pH value. So we were not satisfied with the beer, which was brewed with aroma hops on July 3 and whose fermentation was completed after less than a day, until the end of August, when it was ready to be filled into kegs. As the Kveik yeasts actually contribute enough aromatic substances to the beer, we only used bittering hops this time. Fermentation was completed after 24 hours at 30 °C under controlled pressure build-up, and over the next few days the temperature will be lowered to 2 °C to allow the beer to undergo cold maturation for around 4 weeks. The alcohol content should be between 3 and 3.5% by volume. The next brew planned for the 200 liter tank will be a classic Pilsner with an alcohol content of approx. 4.5% by volume.