Experimenting is the fundamental base of which discoveries are made, without knowing where the limits are, we may never reach our full potential to find absolute balance. Experimental homebrewing is how we learn to create fun and exciting new ways to create our favourite beverage. Without experimenting, brewing a delicious non-alcoholic or ultralow alcohol beer at home would be a nothing more than an unattainable idea, held secret by the gatekeepers of the commercial sector.

Something that has truly helped to build my skill set is pushing standard practices as far as I can into uncharted territory to reach my desired goal. This hasn’t always led to good tasting beer, BUT it has helped me to better understand the limits of what I can modify, and how much is too much in some cases. I have brewed many terrible batches to find the answers I seek, but it has also led to some of the best tasting NA beer I’ve ever had!

It has also led me down multiple rabbit holes, researching many different variables that are usually not considered, to help develop better beer. For example, the impacts of glycerine in NA beer. This was something completely irrelevant to what I was initially studying at the time, but something that quickly took my interest and down the hole I went, investigating how Vinters improve body and mouthfeel in lower alcohol wines.

With so many variables to play with, I started documenting my experiments, and their effects on my brewing to better help others understand how and why we make certain suggestions. We hope to continue adding more experiments as we discover more variables to improve our processes.

Check out some of the great experiments below and see if you can add them to your processes to improve your beers!