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/diy/ - Do It Yourself

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2049366 No.2049366 [Reply] [Original]

I don't know if this is the right board for this. I am in the USA.

I'm a bit of a beer history nut. The beer you get from the grocery store today is almost always around 5% alcohol by volume, but this wasn't always the case. For thousands of years beer was very low alcohol, usually around 1.5% alcohol by volume. It was the drink of the common man. It was a sports drink. You'd drink it out in the field on your farm, for breakfast, lunch, dinner, children would drink it, old people would drink it. It didn't have enough alcohol to impede your work but it had sugars to keep you going and the alcohol probably still lowered stress and mellowed people out.

This was the state of affairs until fairly recently, historically speaking. There were even great campaigns to try and foster consumption of this low alcohol beer when stronger stuff came about. During the Victorian era drinking beer, which was still around 1.5% abv, was seen as socially acceptable, while drinking much higher strength gin was seen as a societal ill.

And yet now 5% beer is considered a minimum, and more often than not people are imbibing 8% double IPAs or the like.

I wish to return to that simpler time of lower alcohol beer, but I don't believe there is a single brewery in the USA that makes beer of such low ABV. The lowest I'm aware of is Lowercase Brewing in Seattle which makes a 2.6% abv pilsner.

But in Europe these low alcohol beers are still alive and well. KB Hvidtøl for instance is a Danish beer that has been being brewed the same way for hundreds of years. It's 1.7% abv and is an example of that very early sweet nourishing beer that would have been extremely common hundreds of years ago.

I am keen to buy this beer. But how? Should I talk to my local international food store? I am well aware that to make this a worthwhile endeavor I might have to order a whole case of the stuff.

Anyone have any experience with this kind of thing?

https://www.carlsberggroup.com/products/kb/kb-hvidtol/

>> No.2049370

>>2049366
>I am in the USA
Insufficient information. Besides importing issues, each State has different laws.
Short answer: find a beverage warehouse type store. If you're willing to buy a whole bunch of cases, he can talk to his distributor. There's probably already an importer that keeps it on hand for restaurants.

>> No.2049405

Bevmo normally has these shitty Euro water beers. You can always just buy Icehouse/Natty Ice or the like and water it downj.

>> No.2049431

>>2049370
I'm in Washington State.

To the best of my knowledge this beer has never been imported into the USA. I don't think it's ever been sold by Beverages & More or any of the other big alcohol outlets or beer importers. There is very very little interest in low alcohol beers in the USA.

>>2049405
You are confusing "light beer" with low alcohol beer. Amstel Light and dogshit like that is still 4% ABV, they've just reduced the flavor to make it have less calories.

A proper old fashioned dark low alcohol beer might be 1.5% alcohol, but it will be dark, full bodied, usually fairly sweet, and have a vastly richer flavor than something like Amstel Light.

>> No.2049460

Seems like something you could just make yourself. Make yourself a strong beer, then sparge the mash again for a weak beer.

...or just drink Guinness....close enough.

>> No.2049462

"Table Beer" if you need another search term.

I'm partial to Belgian Quads, so I probably wouldn't be much help picking a good one, but I do know Wild Card out of London makes a Table Beer that's not bad.

>> No.2049485

There's states around the midwest that have 2% beer if that's close enough.

>> No.2049536

>>2049485
Are you referring to "Three Two Beer", which is 3.2% alcohol by weight, which translates to 4% alcohol by volume?

I've never heard of a common 2% beer in any state.

>> No.2049659
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2049659

>>2049366
I live in Denmark and try to avoid the type of beer you posted, I will drink it if it is free but I will never buy it, normal beer is better IMO. They are marketed "Christmas season beer". They taste like beer but with brown sugar, caramel and licorice.