Podcast Episode 424: For Jordan Childs of Mash Gang, Extreme Balance Is the Key to Great Nonalcoholic Beer

For Jordan Childs, cofounder and head brewer of the U.K.-based brand Mash Gang, you don’t hit the right balance in nonalcoholic beer by nudging a traditional beer recipe one way or another. “The best beers feel like a cohesive collection of a bunch of spiky parts pulling apart from each other,” he says. “The outlier flavors are what make craft beer interesting.”

If there’s a method for making nonalcoholic beer, he’s tried it, and in this episode he shares the ingredients and processes that don’t make great beer—as well as those that do.

Along the way, Childs discusses:

• their iterative creative process of testing, learning, trashing, and brewing again
• filling the gaps left by the absence of ethanol
• deliberately choosing poorly attenuating ingredients
• how ethanol removal is responsible for “a lot of bad beer”
• taking a low-intervention approach to nonalcoholic beer
• controlling sugar at a finite level and doing everything wrong, on purpose
• using modern hop products and modern food products for greater control
• hops that do and don’t work in nonalcoholic beer
• avoiding the unfermented wort character
• food safety in the nonalcoholic context

And more.

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Every beer menu could use a refresh button on the fruit flavors. That’s why it’s time to revisit Old Orchard’s flavored craft juice concentrate blends, where the latest additions include Fruit Punch, Guava, Kiwi, and Pomegranate. We aren’t stopping there and welcome flavor suggestions from the brewing industry. More information and free samples are waiting at oldorchard.com/brewer.

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If you’re launching a brewery or acquiring an existing one, consider our brewery workshop and new brewery accelerator, September 14 through 17 in Fort Collins, Colorado. Over four days, we engage in panel discussions, technical brewery tours, networking, and small working-group sessions that help you better understand and prepare for the challenges of brewery operation. Tickets are on sale now. Visit breweryworkshop.com for more information and to secure your spot.