homebrewandbeer.com

I'm new here . I have been happily home brewing for yonks. Usually Coopers Ales , luv 'em .
Disaster, The Doc has banned the grog till I lose a shitload of weight , and I am not in a position to ignore her . As much as the expression "Low Cal" horrifies me , is there anyone who has a recipe for same.....hopefully drinkable.
This is both serious and urgent.....my limited sanity hangs in the balance......Thanks.

The Legend ..

You will have to go AG. And you cant really eliminate the calories in the beer, just convert as many of them as possible to alcohol.

You could always switch to cider...

But cider still has the calories from the alcohol. Low alcohol beers have less calories in them than full strength. I'd rather drink less though.

Pedal-powered boiler and mash tun?

start running round the block.. but take a few roadies for the trip...

the exercise will metabolise the extra carbs you ingest, plus you get brwonie points for doing the exercise...

only problem is you'll probably shake the shit out of the beer while you are running... so you might need to take a glass.

Iron-Haggis wrote:But cider still has the calories from the alcohol. Low alcohol beers have less calories in them than full strength. I'd rather drink less though.

Yes, but cider does not require AG gear or the time required to make an AG brew.

I think that the best option is to just drink half as much. Aside from that, the beer will be pretty watery generally speaking.

You could try dry enzyme, but I do not recommend it for new brewers. It can be a very tricky little bugger to master! Plus it takes ages to ferment

Plus, most people would rather drink chlorine...

My dear, unassuming, "The Legend"!
Perhaps you need to rethink your strategy. You can save yourself a heap of effort and buy slabs of Hahn Light and give your bladder a good workout (and end up drinking the same number of calories albiet more slowly),or, you can ration yourself a modest quantity of quality, full strength beer. Ask your doctor what is an acceptable weekly consumption rate of standard beer - you might find that a few stubs on a Friday and a Saturday night will be ok - and you can live your life drinking limited quantities of quality beer (along with a good diet and regular exercise eg a walk etc) rather than tossing down litres of diet beer...

Cheers,
TL

Im an athlete and most of my mates are and I've never seen any peer group drink more

If you follow your diet and exercise there is plenty of room in your diet for a few beers. As said already. Drinking half the amount you normally do does the same as drinking the same amount with half the alcohol and calories. That and it means more time for your body to take care of the alcohol and probably a longer period between last drink and when you sleep.

Hi all.
I was also thinking about how to lower the calories in my beer this weekend.

I was enjoying my latest batch, when it occurred to me that all of my brews are more full bodied than most beers that I don't brew.

Firstly, is it true that full bodied = higher FG = more unfermented sugars = more calories?

I've been brewing partials, with LDM as the bulk of the fermentables. Would switching some (say half) of the LDM for Dex reduce the body and hence calories of the final beer?

Secondly, I haven't done AG yet, I'm intrigued as to how this will help reduce the calories. Please could someone expand on this or steer an interested learner in the right direction?

with thanks,
Rich

You can't change the calories in the brew. All you can change is the amount of them which come from alcohol.

With malt you get less alcohol per calorie, with dextrose you get far less calories per % alcohol because there are no residual sugars.

I see.
So does AG provide more flavour for less total calories?

bigturkey wrote:I see.
So does AG provide more flavour for less total calories?

No, it just gives you the ability to make extract which is more fermentable and produces more alcohol (with less residual sugar) from the same amount of grain. With bought extract concentrate you are left with whatever they have done with the malt, unless of course you use the dry enzyme.

thelegend wrote:The Doc has banned the grog till I lose a shitload of weight , and I am not in a position to ignore her.

I think that by drinking grog of any type will be effectively ignoring her expert (and expensive) advice, according to your initial post.

I am an ex-fatty. The first 23 years of my life, I carried excess weight because of a lack of understanding and discipline when it came to food. Alcohol was not the issue until the later part of my fat existence. Then I got educated and monitored my diet and changed my eating habits and made sure I exercised regularly - 1hr walking each morning before a healthy breakfast. I still got shit-faced a fair bit, but I lost a lot of weight and felt better.

Take your doctor's advice - lay off the grog for a while BUT THE MAIN THING is to watch your diet as a whole and exercise more than you do currently. Educate yourself and be a bit disciplined. When the weight comes off, reward yourself with a (moderate amount of) really good beer. This means going AG .

Good luck.

Tourist wrote:

thelegend wrote:The Doc has banned the grog till I lose a shitload of weight , and I am not in a position to ignore her.

I think that by drinking grog of any type will be effectively ignoring her expert (and expensive) advice, according to your initial post.

I am an ex-fatty. The first 23 years of my life, I carried excess weight because of a lack of understanding and discipline when it came to food. Alcohol was not the issue until the later part of my fat existence. Then I got educated and monitored my diet and changed my eating habits and made sure I exercised regularly - 1hr walking each morning before a healthy breakfast. I still got shit-faced a fair bit, but I lost a lot of weight and felt better.

Take your doctor's advice - lay off the grog for a while BUT THE MAIN THING is to watch your diet as a whole and exercise more than you do currently. Educate yourself and be a bit disciplined. When the weight comes off, reward yourself with a (moderate amount of) really good beer. This means going AG .

Good luck.

You used to be fat?

Wow, you are one of the skinniest HBers i have met!

Agree tho, if your Doc has said lay off the grog completely you should heed her advice. I've been told o cut down on many occasions but never to stop.

Apart from the fact too many people believe that low carb beer is better for them the fact remains, lower alc beers/ciders are better for you. I am trying (so far successfully) to have a low alc beer on tap at all times. Not just for mates who need to drive but for myself. Its amazing how refreshing a pint of my Rogers clone is after a few hours mowing the lawn.

Agree with Kev too, i doubt you could make a very nice tasting light beer without going AG. Mashing high to leave plenty of body in the beer is the key ingredient in my success (to date) in my beers of ~3.0% abv. Noone has picked it unless told.

Using kits or extract will give you a much thinner beer than will not handle much in the way of IBU or hop flavour.

Maybe I need to explain it a different way.

Lets say you have 5 kilos of malt to make a batch of beer. You are pretty much going to get a set amount of calories from that 5 kilos of malt. The difference comes in when you mash at a higher or lower temp. All of the starch will be converted to sugars, some long chain sugars are made, these are what we want to limit in a "low cal beer". They are not fermentable and add calories which do not come from the alcohol. We want to make a beer with as much alcohol as possible so that we can limit the calorie intake. So for a beer at 5% ABV if we mash at say 60C we will get a larger volume of beer with this percentage of alcohol and this beer at the same 5% ABV with the lesser volume mashed at 70C will have the same amount of calories. Thus we can drink more of the 60C beer even though it is the same amount of alcohol. It should be noted though that we are not talking about large difference in calories (not enough to make a difference on the scales unless you are doing a slab a day, really), but we are talking about large differences in taste, in fact it is my opinion that dry beers have no taste.

This is how the so called "low cal dry beers" are made. IMHO you are better off drinking less beer, or switching to brewing cider. All the effort of AG brewing is not worth making a dry beer! You could always use spirits and mix them with something like Pepsi Zero.

In the end I think your best bet is to watch what you eat, exercise more, and cut your drinking right down to a well deserved couple REAL beers on the weekend.

Yup, I totally agree with the issue of consuming quality rather than quantity.

I always applied that logic in the days when I still regularly drank wine. I preferred 1 or 2 good quality bottles a week, rather than 7 or more bottles of crappy quality slosh or plonk in a bag or box.

Brewing my own beer now, I find 2 or 3 stubbies a day is more than enough for me. It gives me all the variety, body, aroma, and taste I need. I can't take to the typical Aussie lagers anymore, no matter what guise they come in, full strength, mid strength, dry, extra dry, low cal, low taste, no taste, why bother etc.

And the advice about getting some regular exercise is all good. Balance in your life is the key. I'm sure you can find that balance and do it in a way not to damage your health but to improve it. Good luck.

drsmurto wrote:You used to be fat?

Wow, you are one of the skinniest HBers i have met!

Agree tho, if your Doc has said lay off the grog completely you should heed her advice. I've been told o cut down on many occasions but never to stop.

Apart from the fact too many people believe that low carb beer is better for them the fact remains, lower alc beers/ciders are better for you. I am trying (so far successfully) to have a low alc beer on tap at all times. Not just for mates who need to drive but for myself. Its amazing how refreshing a pint of my Rogers clone is after a few hours mowing the lawn.

Agree with Kev too, i doubt you could make a very nice tasting light beer without going AG. Mashing high to leave plenty of body in the beer is the key ingredient in my success (to date) in my beers of ~3.0% abv. Noone has picked it unless told.

Using kits or extract will give you a much thinner beer than will not handle much in the way of IBU or hop flavour.

Yep, always the fat kid. Once I hit 100kg (I'm 5-11) at age 22 or 23, I had enough of being complacent and sought to find out why I was fat and analysed what I was eating. As it turns out, having a meat pie or two for breakfast is not consistent with healthy living, so I stopped and am much happier with myself. Now, desperate not to go back to 100kg, I am very conscious of what I consume and how much I exercise. This includes the amount of beer I drink. I would rather drink, brew and eat on my terms, not on what the doctor has told me to do. Happy now to hover around the 75kg mark.

I would recommend this approach to everyone, as it is the best thing I have ever done (except going AG - just do it!)