Brewing Your Own Alcohol-Free Beer at Home – Track It with EasyDens & SmartRef

Non-alcohol and low-alcohol beers have come a long way. Once seen as a compromise, they’re now everywhere – from trendy craft breweries to supermarket shelves. And it’s easy to see why: more and more people are choosing a mindful lifestyle. They want the taste, the refreshment, and the social side of beer – just without the side effects.

The exciting part? You don’t have to rely on store-bought bottles. With a little curiosity, some homebrewing equipment, and the right measuring tools, you can create your own non-alcohol beers right in your kitchen.

Non-Alcohol vs. Low-Alcohol – What’s the Difference?

Before we get into brewing, let's briefly look at the difference between non-alcohol and low-alcohol beer:

• Non-alcohol beer: This doesn’t always mean 0.0 %v/v (unless clearly labeled as “0.0”). In most countries, non-alcoholic beer can contain up to 0.5 %v/v (depending on local regulations).
• Low-alcohol beer: Usually falls between 1.2 and 4 %v/v, depending on local regulations.

Knowing the difference helps you set the right goal for your homebrew – whether you’re aiming for absolutely alcohol-free, or just keeping it light.

EasyDens & SmartRef with Brew Meister App –
Your Brewing Companions

One of the biggest challenges in making non-alcohol beer is keeping alcohol levels low while still getting full flavor. That’s where EasyDens digital density meter and SmartRef digital refractometer together with the Brew Meister app come in –smart, compact tools that give you professional-level control at home.

Monitor Your Fermentation either with EasyDens or SmartRef to Track Alcohol Content 

• Measure your Original Gravity (OG) after boiling and cooling the wort.
• After starting fermentation, measure the Final Gravities (FG).
• The Brew Meister app shows you graphically how your beer is developing, tracks sugar conversion, and calculates the estimated alcohol content for you - all values at a glance.

No guesswork. Just clear, reliable numbers that make brewing more fun – and more successful.

Directly Measure Alcohol Content of the Finished Beer with the EasyDens & SmartRef Combo

Want to know exactly how much alcohol is in your finished beer? By combining EasyDens and SmartRef, you can measure ABV directly. That’s precise enough to see whether your beer is truly alcohol-free or just low in alcohol – and it gives you peace of mind when experimenting.

Think of EasyDens & SmartRef as your brewing partners. They don’t just measure; they help you understand what’s happening in your brew, so you can create the beer you imagined.

A Quick Note on Labelling: For homebrewers, EasyDens and SmartRef are perfect - they give you control, confidence, and insight at every stage. If you ever plan to sell your alcohol-free beer, though, an accredited lab will need to provide the final certification for labeling.

Your First Recipe– Alcohol-Free Wheat Beer

Ready to brew your first alcohol-free beer? Let’s make a refreshing wheat beer together. This recipe is simple, approachable, and a great way to start experimenting. Along the way, we will show you exactly where EasyDens and SmartRef come into play.

Ingredients

• 1.25 kg wheat malt (pale)   
• 0.75 kg Pilsner malt    
• 0.15 kg caramel wheat malt  
• 10 g Hallertauer Mittelfrüh hops   
• Wheat beer yeast (e.g. W68, W175, WB-06,…)   
• About 12 liters brewing water   
• Optional: oats or lactose for more body

Step 1: Mashing

Start by heating your mash to 55 °C and holding it there for about 15 minutes. This encourages the enzymes to convert starches into fermentable sugars. Next, raise the temperature to 72 °C for another 30 minutes. At this stage, more unfermentable sugars are created, which helps your alcohol-free beer feel fuller in body. Finally, perform a mash-out at 78 °C.

pH tip: 
For optimal enzyme activity, keep your mash pH in the range of 5.2 to 5.6, ideally around 5.4. This ensures efficient starch conversion and contributes to a clean, well-balanced flavor. You can adjust pH using lactic acid.

Why mash out?
At 78 °C the enzymes are deactivated, so no further sugar conversion takes place. The mash also becomes thinner and easier to lauter, while the sugar profile of your wort is “locked in.”

Step 2: Boiling

After lautering, bring your clear wort to a steady boil. Keep it boiling for 60 minutes. Add 5 g of hops after 15 minutes to build a balanced bitterness, and another 5 g toward the end of the boil for aroma.

EasyDens or SmartRef tip:
Once the wort has cooled down to 20 °C, measure your Original Gravity (OG) and save it in the Brew Meister app. This value is the foundation for later alcohol calculation. 
(Typical OG value: approx 1.032 SG 20/20 (8°Plato))

Step 3: Fermentation

Cool the wort to 18–20 °C, pitch your yeast, and let fermentation begin. For alcohol-free beer, timing is crucial: instead of letting it ferment for a week, stop fermentation after 24–36 hours by cooling the beer down to 2 - 4 °C. This halts yeast activity before too much alcohol is produced. Why stop early? Early cooling preserves sweetness and body while preventing a significant rise in alcohol content.

EasyDens or SmartRef tip:
Take Final Gravity (FG) measurements now and store them in the app. The software will automatically calculate the estimated alcohol value—usually very little if you stopped fermentation in time. 
(Typical FG value: approx 1.028 SG20/20 (7°Plato))

Alternative Step 4: Dealcoholization

Another option is to brew a standard wheat beer and then gently heat it to 75–80 °C. Because alcohol evaporates at approx. 78 °C, this process removes alcohol while preserving much of the beer’s flavor. Be sure to cool the beer quickly afterwards and, if desired, restore aroma with dry hops or fruit peel.

EasyDens & SmartRef combo tip:
Measure the alcohol content with the EasyDens & SmartRef combo before heating, during heating and afterwards. You’ll be able to see in real time how the alcohol level drops. 

Step 5: Bottling

EasyDens & SmartRef combo tip:
Before bottling, use your EasyDens & SmartRef combo to check the alcohol level of your finished beer.

At the end of the process, there is always some residual sugar left in the beer. In a normal fermentation, this sugar would have been consumed by the yeast.

That creates a special challenge: if you bottle your beer and any residual yeast activity kicks in—or if a small contamination occurs—you run the risk of producing “bottle bombs”.

For safety reasons, it’s strongly recommended to package alcohol-free beers in kegs rather than bottles. Ideally, use kegs that are equipped with an overpressure relief valve. This way, excess CO₂ can escape, and you avoid dangerous overcarbonation.

Another important point: traditional bottle conditioning with priming sugar is not a good fit for alcohol-free beers. Adding sugar before bottling triggers renewed fermentation, which inevitably produces more alcohol and undermines the careful work you put into keeping the beer alcohol-free.

Best practice: Fill into kegs, keep the beer cold, and enjoy it fresh. Alcohol-free beers are not designed for long storage, so plan to drink them relatively quickly after packaging.

Brewing Tip: Special Yeasts for Alcohol-Free Beer

While you can brew alcohol-free beer by stopping fermentation early or by heating, there’s another smart approach: use special yeast strains that naturally ferment only certain types of sugar.

Most brewing yeasts consume a wide range of sugars in wort – glucose, fructose, maltose, and even maltotriose. But special yeasts, such as Saccharomycodes ludwigii behave differently:

• They ferment only simple sugars (like glucose and fructose).
• They leave maltose and maltotriose untouched, which means most of the sugar remains in the beer.
• The result is a flavorful beer with body and sweetness, but very little alcohol – often below 0.5 % v/v.

Time to Brew!

With EasyDens and SmartRef, you have the confidence of knowing exactly what’s happening in your brew. No more guessing – just brewing with insight, precision, and fun.

So why not roll up your sleeves, grab some malt, and start your first batch of alcohol-free beer?