OnTap Magazine

SafBrew LA-01, ™ the most versatile nolo yeast for the yeast. It’s also important to stop fermentation when the apparent attenuation is reached, especially to produce non-alcoholic beers. This can be done simply by cold crashing during fermentation. These are two ways you can really guide very precisely your brewing process and achieve the results you expect, whether you are brewing a low alcohol beer or a non-alcoholic one. You will need to pasteurize your beer however; this is to prevent further unwanted fermentation due to the remaining sugar. SafBrew™ LA-01 is a maltose-negative yeast strain, meaning it can only assimilate simple sugars such as fructose or glucose. Other brewing strains will consume the maltose (and in some case even more complex sugars), producing therefore more alcohol. With SafBrew™ LA-01, brewers can very easily brew low alcohol beers and even non-alcoholic beers (meaning less than 0.5% ABV) especially when adapting the brewing parameters to reduced alcohol production. There are several ways of doing this, but the starting point is to adapt thewort to reduce the sugar content available The no and low alcohol trend has been building momentum for several years now, to the extent it’s now becoming increasingly common to see no and low alcoholic beer on tap at your local brewpub. Although these no and low alcohol versions have existed for a while, notably thanks to dealcoholizing, what’s very striking is how they have improved in quality throughout the years. Fermentis identified the nolo trend nearly a decade ago, when we launched the very first dry yeast for no and low alcoholic beers. Words are important, and it’s good to note that the terminologies “low alcohol”, “non-alcoholic” and “alcohol-free” might have different meanings according to local legislations. To make things simple, we often refer to the “no and low alcohol beers” but in theory non-alcoholic beers need to contain less than 0.5% ABV and low-alcohol beers should be under 1.2% ABV. But again, this can vary from country to country. The product we launched back in 2017 was SafBrew™ LA-01, the first yeast of its kind, able to produce no and low alcohol beers. The strain has steadily grown, becoming one of the bestsellers in the Fermentis portfolio. Let’s look at the reasons why SafBrew™ LA-01 is such a versatile and strong choice for nolo beers. BREW LOW ALCOHOL BEERS AND EVEN NON-ALCOHOLIC BEERS So technically speaking, you can now brew a nolo beer quite easily, but what about the taste and mouthfeel… It’s quite a common flaw in the no and low alcohol beer world – they tend to taste a little ‘worty’ or just generally lack the mouthfeel that comes from the alcohol content. Through extensive trials and tests, we have identified several ways of adjusting these perceived defects and will also add some complexity to your low alcohol beers. Adjusting the pH, especially with kettle souring, will com- pensate for the lower mouthfeel and give that extra edge that can appear to be missing. Since alcoholic fermentation is very limited when brewing a no and low alcoholic beer, the additional bacterial fer- mentation beforehand is recommended, and definitely ADJUST FLAVOR AND MOUTHFEEL adds to the character of the beer. Having tried comparable adjustment just by acid adjuncts, the results is simply not as good as kettle souring, according to our tasting panel. The kettle souring process not only lowers pH, it can also provide some interesting flavours such as fruity and citrus notes. Dry hopping is also a good way to add some flavour and the best results we got were in fact from a combination of kettle souring and dry hopping – but we encourage you to run trials yourselves and find the best recipe and process for your no and low alcoholic beers drinkers.