Favorite this paper

The non-alcoholic and low alcohol beers market is growing each year due to the population healthier lifestyle. In spite of the economics scenery, the craft beers have been highlighted in the beer market by their originality. Then, the aim of this study was to make a low alcohol craft beer using the same raw materia and equipment to produce the ‘Pilsen’ beer. Therefore, to provide less available sugar to the yeast, it was used a quarter less barley malt than commonly used to make a regular ‘Pilsen’ beer. To reduce fermentation, the start water pH was slightly alkaline (pH=8.2) and the temperatures and times of the mashing were skipped to activate less β-amylase that is responsible to provide the fermentable sugars in the wort. It was used a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae generally employed to produce lager beers and the fermentation was conducted at 10ºC. The fermentation was interrupted in the second day and the yeast was purged. Then, the "green beer" was kept at 0ºC to mature up to 25 days. The physicochemistry parameters (pH, density, alcohol content, ºBrix, bitterness, color, conductivity) were evaluated to follow the fermentation and maturation steps. After 25 days, the final results were: pH (4.57 at 25ºC), ºBrix (5.0 at 20ºC), beer density (1.020 g/cm3 at 20ºC), conductivity (1045 µS/cm at 25ºC), color (4.7 EBC), bitterness (14 IBU) and alcohol content (1.4% (v/v)). Finished the maturation, the beer was bottled and has been submitted to a thermal treatment for 30 min at 70ºC to avoid beer contamination.