Carl’s Zero-Carb IPA Beer

This recipe came out of a conversation with a friend’s wife, who told me her hubby ditched the keto diet because he couldn’t give up beer. I went to work on it right away, and came up with a reasonable facsimile.

Start with some dried hops and Irish Whiskey. Soak 4 cups of hops in 750ml of Irish Whiskey. I used Jameson. Make sure the hops are completely soaked, and store in the fridge for at least 5 days. Then you need to squeeze out the whiskey using a cheesecloth or even a pair of nylons. You might end up with about 350 ml of hops-soaked whiskey.

Irish whiskey is made from barley, which is one of the ingredients in an IPA, as is hops. At this point your concoction smells like a very strong IPA. Now you need to dilute it.

Add about a shot of this liquid gold to a glass of mineral water. You can use seltzer (club soda) if you like, but those tend to have “sharper” bubbles. I use San Pellegrino water.

That gives you the flavor, but it has no body. For this, dissolve a tablespoon of plain gelatin in a cup of hot water. Let it cool, and add a tablespoon to your glass of IPA. If you want a head, add the gelatin to the liquid gold before adding the mineral water.

Enjoy!

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Carl's Zero-Carb IPA Beer
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  1. Has anyone made this recipe? I am interested to hear what others say about it.

    It’s a shame that spirits are so expensive in Australia, the Jameson is worth about $36USD!

    I make low carb beer by using a dry enzme to promote the yeast to consume all the maltose in the wort, but it still has about 3-4g carbs per 375ml (12ounce) bottle. This is the only website I have found to calculate carbs, no one seems to really care for low carbs in the home brew world in my experience:
    http://www.mrgoodbeer.com/carb-cal.shtml

  2. Here is a report from reddit group called Keto_Brewing to calculate the carbs in beer with decent precision.

    How to calculate the residual sugars and carbohydrates of your beer

    Hi All,

    Edit: If you don’t have an deep interest how to calculate the carb count in your homebrew then https://docdro.id/uJDC4Pt

    this table will give you answer per 100ml just by knowing original and final gravity.

    As an avid keto follower I run into trouble of finding beer that would taste anything like the staff that I enjoyed pre keto.

    First for this purpose original and final gravity of the beer are needed. In these calculation gravity will be measured in the Plato gravity scale, the plato conversions scales should not be difficult to find with simple google search.

    OG(Original gravity)= OE Plato scale

    FG(Final gravity)= AE Plato

    Calories in 100ml of beer=(6.9A+4.0(RE-0.1)*FG

    Where 6.9 is calories/gram of alcohol (ethanol)

    Where 4.0 is calories/gram of sugar

    Where 0.1 is non digestible contribution to specific gravity

    A= alcohol content of finished beer in % by weight

    RE= real extract of finished beer in deg. Plato

    RE=0.1808OE+0.8192AE

    A=(OE-RE)/(2.0665-(0.010665*OE))

    An Example

    OG = 1.046= 11.5 Plato scale

    FG =1.004= 1 Plato scale

    RE=0.180811.5+0.81921=2.90 deg P

    A=(11.5-2.90)/(2.0665-(0.010665*11.5)=8.6/(2.0665-0.1226475)=8.6/1.9438525= 4.4 % of weight

    Calories per 100ml of beer=(6.93.8)+(4.0(2.9-0.1))*1.004= (26.22+11.2)*1.004=37.5cal per 100ml of beer

    Where (2.9-0.1)is the general amount of carbs in 100 ml of beer.

    RE gives the most general amount of residual sugars left. So just calculation the RE will give you the maximum carbs in your beer.

    To be more persistence you could go further

    carbohydrates per 100g of beer= RE( °P = degrees Plato, g/100g or % by weight)- protein % by weight - ash or inorganic mineral content % by weight

    Example carbs per 100g of beer= 2.9-0.7 protein by % of weight- 0.2 ash by % of weight.

    Proteins by weight and inorganic mineral content information I have still not found so if anyone has

    “Beer Analysis and Testing”. The New Brewer. Vol 34(4): July/August 2017; I would be very interested.

    In general it looks like they are not very important as by the RE you will already have the upper limit and the more exact number( that need laboratory analyses for the proteins and ash probably) will be important for those who will commercially want to sell their beer or somebody who does have too much money or just very good friends in some labs.

    Rev 2.

    An update on the protein content of the beer.

    By the article(ref 3) where 34 lager type of Czeck beer were tested the average protein content protein by % of weight was 0.5 with average deviation of 0.2( more simply maximum was 0.7 and minimum was 0.3). So I would say comfortably that in majority of beer calculations I would use the 0.5 for the protein by weight and be sure that I’m getting amount of carbs with reasonable preciseness.

    Rev 3

    Corrected a mistake in an ABV calculation. Thank to dukedevil0 for pointing it out.

    REFERENCES

    http://realbeer.com/spencer/attenuation.html

    REF 3 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280383247_Determination_of_the_Energy_Value_of_Beer

  3. OK just ordered the hops, they’ll be here Wednesday. So trying this! Especially since I haven’t been able to drink beer for years afterI was diagnosed with celiac.

    Who would have thought whiskey+hops+bubbles+gelatin=IPA?

  4. Ok…I just got thru 5 days…Notice the hops soaked up 750 ml of whiskey…but returned less than 750 for my beer product. Followed directions but was so impatient for the gelatin to cool that I made 1/2 cup water w/ 1/2 tbl of gelatin. I’ll have to make more gelatin water as I need it. no big deal. The taste is really good! Not enough bubbles but the flavor is so good, it doesn’t matter. My partner is a beer hound and he has been doing Keto w/ me but drinking gluten free beer (Omission) because he loves beer too much to give it up. He even thought the taste was very good. So we have a WINNER FOLKS! Our formula is 1 part whiskey/hops, 1 Tbl gelatin and 5 parts San Pelagrino mineral water.

  5. Sometimes I have good ideas… :slight_smile:

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