Brewing Slightly Mighty Low-cal IPA

BREWER’S PERSPECTIVE

founder of on the difficulty of nailing down a winning low-cal IPA.

How would you describe the challenge of building a lighter-framed IPA that has plenty of hop flavor?

Our first couple of attempts [at Slightly Mighty] didn’t turn out so great, but once we discovered the power of monk fruit, our luck changed. Using monk fruit, we were able to brew a full-flavored, low-cal IPA that’s slight in calories and carbs with mighty hop character.

Typically, when brewing super-hoppy IPAS, brewers rely on malt sweetness to balance the hop bitterness, but more malt means more carbohydrates and more calories. The biggest challenge we faced when developing Slightly Mighty was trying to create enough body in the beer to withstand some serious doses of hops, and we were able to do that with monk fruit. Sweeter than sugar per ounce, monk fruit acts as the beer’s skeleton upon which we can build hop muscle.

What were the specific obstacles in developing Slightly Mighty? Bringing Slightly Mighty from ideation to fruition was challenging in and of itself, but once we honed the recipe, we ran into an even more interesting obstacle: Monk fruit was not on the TTB’S list of preapproved brewing ingredients—no one had ever used monk fruit in a commercial brew! That said, we got our brewers and legal team together, formulated a plan of action, and advocated to the TTB that monk fruit be added to their list of preapproved ingredients.

How did you stumble on the idea to try using monk-fruit extract? I discovered monk fruit online while researching alternatives to adding additional malt—and therefore sugar—to Slightly Mighty. I saw that it was being used as a calorie-free sweetener by many healthconscious folks. It was then that we decided to try using monk fruit to brew Slightly Mighty, and it worked splendidly. It allowed us to add body and complexity to the beer without adding calories. The result was a full-bodied, hoppy IPA with only 95 calories, 3.6 grams of carbs, 1 gram of protein, and 0 grams of fat per 12 oz serving—something that was absolutely unheard of when it was first brewed.

Any advice for homebrewers who want to try brewing a lighter IPA at home using monk extract?

A little goes a long way.

Slightly Mighty is still an IPA, after all—what can you tell us about the hop varieties and the hopping process for it?

For homebrewed iterations, I would focus on tropical Northwest hop styles such as Ciara and Galaxy.