Low Sugar/No Sugar Beer

[Gaiter]

Hello All,

I'm new to this newsgroup, and have a question that I hope someone can
answer. My roommate has just been diagnosed as a diabetic, and has been
ordered not to drink alcohol. Now I know that alcohol is the byproduct of
sugar/yeast, but I'm just wondering whether there is a beer recipe that
substitutes sugar for something like Nutrasweet. I've made a couple of
home brews already, so I have no qualms about experimenting with recipes.
If anyone has any suggestions or comments, I'd like to hear them. Thanks
in advance.

Shawn McNiven

[Marc]

In article <34ius2$o...@search01.news.aol.com>, gai...@aol.com (Gaiter)
says:

>My roommate has just been diagnosed as a diabetic, and has been ordered
>not to drink alcohol. Now I know that alcohol is the byproduct of
>sugar/yeast, but I'm just wondering whether there is a beer recipe that
>substitutes sugar for something like Nutrasweet. I've made a couple of
>home brews already, so I have no qualms about experimenting with
recipes.
>If anyone has any suggestions or comments, I'd like to hear them.

You know that most beers are made using malted barley? The original
reason for doing this (many years ago) was because it was one of the best
sources of sugar at that time. This was where all of the sugar for the
brew was obtained. The sugar obtained from malt (maltose) contains both
fermentable and non-fermentable sugars. So, even if you manage to use up
all of the fermentable sugar, there will still be non-fermentable sugar
present in the brew. This is one of the main flavour giving constituents
in beer. One of the ORIGINAL reasons for using hops in beer was to add
bitterness to the brew to create a nice balance of sweet and bitter.

Anyway, the morale of this story is that without this non-fermentable
sugar presence from the malt, the beer would lack a lot of flavour.
However, I wouldn't let this deter you in your efforts - you can always
add other ingredients to make up for this. Your problem is to find a
process which removes all of the non-fermentable sugars from maltose
(brewer's wort/malt extract, or whatever), and brew your beer so that ALL
of the sugar turns to alcohol. Add artificial sweeteners to taste!

Ofcourse, one thing that I'm not sure about is: Which sugars your
friend can and cant have. If your friend is ok to have all of the
non-fermentable sugars available from malt, then your problem is much
simpler, because you merely have to be sure that all of the fermentable
sugar is 'eaten' by the yeast. There are well-known ways of doing this,
try any good homebrew book.

Good luck
Marc