Low dissolved oxygen brewing techniques

[kaiserben]

I gave it a go at the weekend. On a German Pilsner.

The parts of the LODO process I skipped were:

Did not pre-boil water (because I couldn't chill quickly without using a copper CFC).
I use a Grainfather, so I couldn't avoid dripping during the sparge and couldn't avoid copper in the counter-flow chiller when chilling and transferring into a fermentor.

What I did different to my normal process was:

Added 1.60g Sodium Met to 16.5L mash water) a few minutes before mash in.
Added 1.28g* Sodium Met to 16.8L sparge water a few minutes before sparging. (* I decided, because I couldn't avoid splashing/dripping during my sparge, that I'd add something approaching the same dosage as that recommended for mash water).
I pitched yeast before adding ~90 seconds pure O2 (usually I add O2 before pitching yeast, because I'd assumed that's the way to do it).

My observations were:

I definitely noticed less (almost no) malt aroma during the mash. A good thing according to the LODO paper.
I got occasional whiffs of honey and/or ocean/fish smell (but very, very faint).
It was really only after adding FWH that there was any obvious brewing aroma happening (obviously from the hops, Hallertauer MF & Tettnang, as it was mostly lemony as well as the very faint whiffs of honey and ocean/fish that were already there during the mash).
The OG sample didn't taste noticeably different to normal.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Came across this site last night which I thought may be of interest to you guys, apologies if it has already been posted.
http://www.lowoxygenbrewing.com/uncategorized/list-of-brewing-references/

 

[kaiserben]

Just tasted my first beer from the batch brewed post #161.

It's still very young for a lager, but the beer tastes good. Dunno how much that good taste can be attributed to LODO. I'll reserve judgement till I've let some of the beer condition at fridge temps for a couple of months (if it lasts that long, because I'll probably destroy this beer during summer).

 

[Aksarben]

RDWHAHB You all know that during the lag phase of fermentation that most of the O2 is scrubbed up and utilized by the yeast, along with carbon sources in building new yeasts, and during fermentation the remainder of oxygen is literally driven out by the CO2 being produced. Alcohol fermentation only happens when the Oxygen level is gone, otherwise yeast by products are CO2 and water (not EtOH) among other things. AND, at the end of fermentation the beer/wine/cider is literally saturated with CO2 and to get any O2, there has to be an event to allow exchange. Keep it blanketed with CO2 and purge vessels with CO2 before filling and your dissolved oxygen level is near undetectable. We have a DO meter at the winery and have used it to monitor the micro O2 addition of tanks of wine that have oak beans (cubes) in the tanks. We purposely inject O2 into the wine in a special O2 injection set up sold by The Wine Lab to emulate barrel aging. Now for beer, there have been some pretty interesting beers finished out in oak barrels and I can guarantee you that in that condition there is no chance of not getting O2 into the mix.

Think about all the wonderful beer made by Norwegians in their barns. I am sure they are loosing sleep thinking about any air getting to their beer. You don't want to increase O2 to beer unless it has a specific purpose, and for all practical matters, methodical purges of vessels with CO2 will get you a beer with minimal issues later on of oxidation.

It's like a solution in search of a problem.

 

[MHB]

Wine making is very different to brewing!
Much of the harm O2 does is early in the process (mashing), where we are making the sugars that wine makers take for granted, there are enzymes like Lipoxygenase that make lipids effectively rancid if oxygen is available.
The is one and only one time where O2 is good in beer, that is when you are pitching the yeast, even that does measurable harm. The rest of the time there are only upsides to reducing exposure to O2.

We also don't have the luxury of being able to throw another shovel full of Metabisulphite at the wort the way many wine makers do. Some of the lengths people making "organic" or Sulphite free white wine have to go to would be much more analogous.
Mark

 

[Aksarben]

Yes, it's true that wine making is different than beer making. I won't deny that. We have grapes that have already achieved fermentable sugars, crush, press(whites) and centrifuge adding enzymes to get rid of pectin and some SO2 to kill and stun yeasts and molds, then inoculate with yeast. Usually much higher acid and lower pH than beer at any given stage.

However, can you tell me how much dissolved Oxygen is in the water at 170 deg. F, ? Probably not much at all. When I worked for the fisheries dept many years ago it was critical to keep the water very cold on the trout eggs for hatching and subsequent growth of the hatchlings. Many fish, like bluegill, bass, catfish and others can tolerate a fairly low dissolved oxygen content in the water, but not Salmon and their kind. You could find abundant small farm ponds that would have sunfish and Bluegill, and sometimes Bass in there, and there was abundant water weeds and plants that contributed to Oxygen, but the water was around 60 or above and trout would simply perish in that environment, even though there was much water plants. Water has a hard time holding on to O2 when it's warm. I can't imagine how little O2 is actually left in the water by the time it hits 165-170 deg F. If you mashed at 35-45 degree F, then yes there would be a source of O2 to oxidize enzymes, etc.

How did all those great beers get to be made in the early days of the late 1970 - 1980s, Charlie Papazian's era of beer making, when there was no internet and very little worry about oxygen in the mash water?

 

[Aksarben]

I wouldn't want any winemaker to throw a shove full of Metabisulfite into the wine. You add only that much as needed an no more, or end up with the smell in the nose. In adding 10 ppm SO2 to a wine, if that is where we want, is only 80 grams of Potassium Metabisulfite. Sodium Metabisulfite will leave behind sodium ions, and I have seen beer have a bitter aftertaste from using soft water for brewing because of the sodium / calcium exchange. You would not get that with KMBS as yeast like the potassium and can utilize it.

Tonight I'll bring home the Hach DO meter from the winery and test water before, when at room temp and after it has attained around 160 degrees to see where the dissolved oxygen is at that point. I'm curious to see.

 

[Aksarben]

Can't edit, but that 80 g will raise 1200 gallons 10 ppm in free SO2.

 

[Aksarben]

http://brulosophy.com/2014/11/18/is-hot-side-aeration-fact-or-fiction-exbeeriment-results/ for those interested. I stand on the fact that thousands of home made beers won countless awards and contests without nary any thought of Hot Side Aeration better known as AHA. As for me, I'll not loose sleep over it.

 

[Aksarben]

Also, here is Dr. Charlie Bamforth in Beersmith podcast #74 and he does mention Hot Side Oxidation, and that enzyme Lipoxygenase, created actually during malting process,

During fermentation yeast do a wonderful job of not only creating alcohol and CO2, but also mopping up some of those off flavor oxidized constituents. After fermentation keep the beer cool and minimize exposure to oxygen as best you can. It should be all gone before any stale beer flavors have a chance to develop. Cheers!

 

[GalBrew]

http://brulosophy.com/2014/11/18/is-hot-side-aeration-fact-or-fiction-exbeeriment-results/ for those interested. I stand on the fact that thousands of home made beers won countless awards and contests without nary any thought of Hot Side Aeration better known as AHA. As for me, I'll not loose sleep over it.

Once again I feel compelled to add that Brulosophy results generally mean nothing due to flawed experimental design (as I saw recently in a water chemistry experiment) or the fact that you could lay a turd in one of the cups used for the triangle test and the ‘tasting panel’ wouldn’t pick it up.

As a retired neuroscientist it irks me to the core when I see this shite used to justify anything. The only exception to this is the handful of experiments when they sent samples off for some lab analysis.

 

[MHB]

A few points
First up, we are a metric country, if your too lazy to convert your units from silly non-system to something rational please... well I for one couldn't be arsed doing it just to make sense of your posts.
Second - was going to venture very similar thoughts on Brulosophy to those GalBrew posted - I refer to them as the Myth Busters of brewing science, higher in entertainment value than science.

HSA (hot side aeration) as we call it (never seen AHA, nor has Google, in this context), yes Lypox is made during malting, but so is B Amylase and a bunch of other constituents that in part make malt different to barley.
True HSA except at extremes isn't really going to be a major factor in a home brew, on the other hand when one can take simple steps to minimise a known harm why not.
Sodium or Potassium Metabisulphite (KMBS as you called it) serve a lot of functions in wine making as you mentioned, one is to de-oxygenate, unfortunately although wine yeasts are breed to cope with 50ppm of SO2 beer yeasts aren't, so any use of NaMBS or KMBS has to be very tightly managed, some used to de-chlorinate mash/sparge liquor and in some cases late as a preservative (not common outside big brewers or at least those who can chill and filter beer)

Lipoxygenase is something of a coming thing in bigger breweries and attention is being paid in the home brewing community, mashing at lower pH's (5.1-5.2), excluding oxygen as much as is practicable (I wouldn't go insane over it - but do what you can) protecting crushed malt from O2 pickup again take reasonable steps, the list could go on but I think you get the point.

These steps are all part of refining ones brewing process in an attempt to make better beer.
One of my favourite sayings is "Everything ends up in the glass" good I think to encourage sensible examination brewing processes that help improve brewing and beer.

Just a couple of other points - next to nobody ever fermented beer or stored beer in un-lined (pitched) barrels, not at least until the US west coast brewers started playing around with oaked beers.
Beer stored in a cask (old English) or wooden keg (somewhat different approaches) has over pressure, again kegs were sealed, the amount of O2 uptake was/is very small - granted not zero but miniscule.
Have no idea what/why Norwegians have to do with the matter under discussion.
Agreed, back in the way back when no one knew about HSA, that doesn't mean we cant learn and improve what we are doing today.
Lastly, Charlie is a good egg, have spent quite a lot of time and money to listen/read what he has to say. I would recommend reading Foam offers some interesting insights into some reasons to minimise HSA.

OK HSA is far from the be all end all, getting a lot of other things right first is going to be way more important, that doesn't mean it isn't worthy of out attention.
Mark

 

[Coodgee]

Once again I feel compelled to add that Brulosophy results generally mean nothing due to flawed experimental design (as I saw recently in a water chemistry experiment) or the fact that you could lay a turd in one of the cups used for the triangle test and the ‘tasting panel’ wouldn’t pick it up.

As a retired neuroscientist it irks me to the core when I see this shite used to justify anything. The only exception to this is the handful of experiments when they sent samples off for some lab analysis.

I'm a statistician/data scientist and I think the experiments are quite useful. He's not trying to prove anything in the mathematical or scientific sense, he's just trying to test something at the scale of his own brewery. Surely you've heard of GP's being happy to recommend a course of action that 'works for you'? i.e. if that stretch or heatpack etc works for a particular patient to alleviate the pain then keep doing it. He's just testing different aspects of brewing on the home scale to see if they have a noticeable effect on flavour or other qualities of the finished beer. If you send something off to a lab and the results come back with a difference in chemical composition but 20 home brewers can't taste the difference, then surely the latter is all that matters to us as home brewers?

 

[GalBrew]

I'm a statistician/data scientist and I think the experiments are quite useful. He's not trying to prove anything in the mathematical or scientific sense, he's just trying to test something at the scale of his own brewery. Surely you've heard of GP's being happy to recommend a course of action that 'works for you'? i.e. if that stretch or heatpack etc works for a particular patient to alleviate the pain then keep doing it. He's just testing different aspects of brewing on the home scale to see if they have a noticeable effect on flavour or other qualities of the finished beer. If you send something off to a lab and the results come back with a difference in chemical composition but 20 home brewers can't taste the difference, then surely the latter is all that matters to us as home brewers?

I disagree with that, why use stats and invoke the magical p<0.05 if you are not trying to prove something on some level? It is a gross misuse of statistical methods in my opinion anyhow as the experiments themselves are usually poorly designed and/or implemented. The worst part about them is the ‘tasting panel’ of random blow-ins from the local homebrew club or wherever they come from. You can’t run a series of experiments with different and entirely invalidated detection apparatus and expect anything meaningful to come out of it.......and then to use a p value seems to me a crafty way of giving the work a level of legitimacy.

This is why you don’t see treatments for cancer coming out of some guy’s garage.

 

[MHB]

I'm a statistician/data scientist and I think the experiments are quite useful. He's not trying to prove anything in the mathematical or scientific sense, he's just trying to test something at the scale of his own brewery. Surely you've heard of GP's being happy to recommend a course of action that 'works for you'? i.e. if that stretch or heatpack etc works for a particular patient to alleviate the pain then keep doing it. He's just testing different aspects of brewing on the home scale to see if they have a noticeable effect on flavour or other qualities of the finished beer. If you send something off to a lab and the results come back with a difference in chemical composition but 20 home brewers can't taste the difference, then surely the latter is all that matters to us as home brewers?

In one way I fell inclined to the same point of view
On the other hand to take an extreme case; AntiVaxers feel that they shouldn't take any risk with their child's life because a bunch of unscientific mostly discredited wankers on the WWW say there is a risk! Personally I would like to see this sort of wacker charged with criminal negligent if not child endangerment.
I could also create a small study based in any rich suburb in any of Australia's capital cities that would "prove" there is no harm from not immunising a small number of kids and that there for immunisation is both unnecessary and potentially harmful. Provided you close your eyes, click your heals together and don't look at the big picture.
Seriously dude its science.
A bit like health, Brewing is a big picture based on a lot of well if not fully understood processes, many of the processes are "natural" like mash temp there are a range of right answers depending on what you want to accomplish, if you miss by a degree or two the world wont end - you will still make beer and a tasting panel might not pick up on the changes. That doesn't make it the beer you intended.
That doesn't mean that if you want dryer beer you don't set up one set of parameters, others for maltier beer, just means there is a bit of latitude.
Testing (used advisedly) one variable in isolation can be good methodology, but then it has to be tested against all the other variables which is where it gets complicated.
Say I designed a Super Dry beer, missed my mash temp by a few degrees, 18 of the 20 people on the tasting panel liked it - so mash temp isn't important - right
Mark

 

[Coodgee]

In my opinion, what Brulosophy does is both interesting and better-than-nothing. I'll leave it at that!

 

[Aksarben]

The AHA was a typo and I could not get back in there and edit it. Unless I'm missing something about being able to edit your own posts. It was always supposed to be HSA, and not AHA (perhaps I was thinking of American Home Brewer or such.

I agree, that if we can help out control to make better beer I'm all for it. What Dr. Bamforth main thought about Hot Side Aeration, at least what I undesrtood, was that even if there were some oxidized agents, that yeast will go a wonderful job of cleaning it up. That SO2 in the 5-8 ppm post fermentation also helps to stabilize and clean up things. We certainly don't try to over sulfur wine. And as I understood in the video of Dr. Charlie Bamforth, keeping oxygen from being introduced after fermentation as well as keeping it at a cooler temp will do wonders for keeping your home made beer tasty for longer period.

Couple weeks ago toured Bell's Brewery in Comstock. Took pictures and besides the 800 barrel fermentors I took some pictures of their beer again in barrels. Just thought I'd post the picture since the mention of barrels.

 

[GalBrew]

In my opinion, what Brulosophy does is both interesting and better-than-nothing. I'll leave it at that!

I don’t disagree that it is interesting (I still read it) and I am in theory supportive of what they are trying to accomplish, they just don’t do a very good job. The main accomplishment of Brulosophy thus far is to demonstrate how crap the palate of the average person is, even when they have an interest in brewing.

Unfortunately this is the take home message of the blog, that it doesn’t matter how you brew the average punter won’t know the difference. Ok, great I got that message a long time ago. Now it’s just the flogging of a dead horse.

 

[Alchomist]

Isn’t this a lively discussion!!

The use of SMB/CH3COOH/Brewtan as an O2 killer has always struck me as something coming from the mind of a food chemist. ie - how can we make this jam last until 2100. I do understand wine has more of an investment in time & ageing than beer, but one has to remember the great wines of the 17th & early 18 centuries (that the French think they’re still drinking) had none of these chemical additives , and if they did it was probably a fluke of nature.

The one thing I took away from the articles I’ve read from Kunze is the optimal level of “0.00” ppm O2 in Strike Water/Mash/lauter. Add his suggested technique of softening the grain before milling & a mash cap to reduce the surface area exposed to O2 during these processes, then I’m struggling to see the benefits of adding chemicals to achieve the desired 0.00 ppm (as apparently are the LoDO crowd by reducing their recommended Ale dosage from near 100 down to 25 ppm in the past year.)

The other area that intrigued me was Kunze’s experiments with using basic bread yeast & dme to scavenge yeast in the strike water. He only touched on this & id love to hear the thoughts of the experienced brewers amongst us.

 

[mkj]

A bit off topic, but would lower dissolved oxygen imply that it's best to bottle at a highish temperature rather than chilled?