Silver_Is_Money
Larry Sayre, Developer of 'Mash Made Easy'
It appears to me that the methodology of All In One brewing systems makes them inherently hot side aeration machines. Is anyone concerned by this?
It appears to me that the methodology of All In One brewing systems makes them inherently hot side aeration machines. Is anyone concerned by this?
The Brulosophy test is interesting.
If it is true what Palmer says, that " Aeration of hot wort will cause the oxygen to chemically bind to various wort compounds. Over time, these compounds will break down, freeing atomic oxygen back into the beer where it can oxidize the alcohols and hop compounds [...]" then in order to test the side effects of hot side oxygenation the best would have been to brew a beer which is most susceptible to oxidation, i.e. a beer where hop aroma (aroma additions in the kettle at the last minutes of the boil) are an important part of the overall taste of the beer.
This beer has several hop additions besides bittering: 20', 10', 5' and "flameout". I consider those the ideal aromas to test the damages of oxidation. (A "dry-hopping" on both batches would also have been meaningful).
IF the panel of tasters is sophisticated enough to give quality-answers, then one might really conclude that HSA is not something to worry too much in our brewing procedure.
(Which means: one must always try to do things with a certain care, but not stress too much over this problem).
Even with sparging, I can really reduce any splashing by slowly raising the malt pipe so that the bottom always just below the level of the liquid.
This is an interesting suggestion. I installed a pulley above my all-in-one kettle. The pulley helps with various lifting jobs in my homebrewing activity, and also with lifting the grain basket before sparging, which is better done with less effort than with more effort.
Considering that the basket is hung to the pulley, I could actually lift be grain basket with the pulley and lock the pulley when the bottom of the basket is more or less at the beer level (which is something that must be estimated because I don't have the external transparent pipe).
I could then lock the pulley for the entire sparging operation.
In my AIO kettle, and supposedly also in the Grainfather, the grain basket is normally lifted until it rests on some supports which are at the top of the kettle.
This pulley thing, if working, might even induce me to install the transparent external recirculating pump pipe, which I so far excluded doing because it is made of plastic. The external transpart pipe would allow me to see where the beer level is inside the kettle and put the grain basket as you describe.
Full disclosure: I am not part of the low oxygen brewing movement. However, there is now an enormous body of scientific evidence supporting the effects of wort oxidation on everything from flavour to long term stability. The main question is how relevant this is to an individual homebrewer, who is making choices for themselves.
In my case, I am not sensitive to the flavours that are apparently preserved by avoiding hot side oxidation. Also, my go to beers - like IPAs and hoppy PAs - don't really benefit from preservation of these flavours and never last long enough to manifest the long term damage of hot side oxidation. So, I never worry about it much with those beers, although I do avoid "splashy" brewing. I am totally obsessed with avoidance of cold-side oxidation, which has a MAJOR impact. My pilsners, however, have benefited from attention to hot side practices. Because of the extended fermentation, longer storage times, slower consumption, and less hops to cover up issues, the staling over time did start to show up. My pilsners now stay fresher and brighter for a longer time, which I attribute to adapting my all-in-one to minimize hot side oxidation. Of course, this is just my personal experience.
Re PU, this is a go-to commercial pilsner for me. Even though I really like it, I'm pretty sure it is not an optimal product, at least by the time it gets to the west coast of Canada.
I think Hot side aeration on a homebrew scale was shown to not be an issue.
https://brulosophy.com/2014/11/18/is-hot-side-aeration-fact-or-fiction-exbeeriment-results/
There is a second Hot Side Aeration exbeeriment at Brulosophy:
https://brulosophy.com/2016/12/26/h...uating-the-impact-of-age-exbeeriment-results/
These two "experiments" make little sense to me, as no real action was taken to avoid hot-side oxidation: no water deoxygenation, no floating cap, no anti-oxidants, no purging... both the beers were oxidized. All an experiment designed like that could show, even if perfectly executed and evaluated, would be the effect of intentionally oxidizing the wort as much as possible as opposed to just not paying attention to it (which is very different from avoiding oxidation).
These two "experiments" make little sense to me, as no real action was taken to avoid hot-side oxidation: no water deoxygenation, no floating cap, no anti-oxidants, no purging... both the beers were oxidized. All an experiment designed like that could show, even if perfectly executed and evaluated, would be the effect of intentionally oxidizing the wort as much as possible as opposed to just not paying attention to it (which is very different from avoiding oxidation).
Braumeister has a LoDo accessory which also slightly increases its grain capacity.
I pay attention to oxygen post-fermentation but have never worried about hot side aeration. I can see that no-sparge would be the way to go to reduce adding oxygen to the wort pre-boil. But don't most commercial breweries fly sparge, which would introduce a ton of oxygen? As I said, I'm not an expert in this, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
Truth be told, I don't think the goal of the Brulosophy experiment was to validate or invalidate the LoDO method. It was just to analyze the "hot-side aeration" vs "careful to avoid HSA" in conventional (non LoDO) homebrewing.
It might be taken as a confirmation of the LoDO doctrine, in that it shows that only caring about one ring of the chain doesn't reduce oxidation.
For a "conventional" homebrewer, the question is whether caring about HSA would make a difference. The results from this test appear to suggest that they wouldn't.
The lesson that one might take home is that either one converts to the LoDO doctrine or it's not meaningful to stress over HSA. In this sense the HSA can be seen as a "myth" to be burst if taken in isolation.
(I don't have a horse in this race, I am here to learn)
Have you considered rewriting the experiment and getting a number of people to try it out?evaluating the effect of HSA without taking measure to avoiding it.
I believe cold water is capable of holding more dissolved oxygen than warm water, and the same goes for wort. With a low pressure recirculating mash, hot side aeration can be kept to a minimum, although not eliminated completely. With that said when the wort is boiled it is no longer able to retain a good portion of the dissolved oxygen absorbed in the mash. How much harm can that do and to what extent will it adversely impact a batch of beer?
I do closed Co2 transfers from the fermentor to StarSan purged kegs and see a big improvement in beer stability and taste BTW.
I believe cold water is capable of holding more dissolved oxygen than warm water, and the same goes for wort. With a low pressure recirculating mash, hot side aeration can be kept to a minimum, although not eliminated completely. With that said when the wort is boiled it is no longer able to retain a good portion of the dissolved oxygen absorbed in the mash. How much harm can that do and to what extent will it adversely impact a batch of beer?
Have you considered rewriting the experiment and getting a number of people to try it out?
I believe cold water is capable of holding more dissolved oxygen than warm water, and the same goes for wort. With a low pressure recirculating mash, hot side aeration can be kept to a minimum, although not eliminated completely. With that said when the wort is boiled it is no longer able to retain a good portion of the dissolved oxygen absorbed in the mash. How much harm can that do and to what extent will it adversely impact a batch of beer?
I do closed Co2 transfers from the fermentor to StarSan purged kegs and see a big improvement in beer stability and taste BTW.
Do you have a suggested reading list?scientific/technical/professional literature has greatly studied wort oxidation on the hot side.
Do you have a suggested reading list?
Thank you for the references! The "edited" link won't be hard to figure out.Kunze is probably the book where I found the most comprehensive treatment of the effects of oxidation, though it is scattered through the book because different chapters deal with different steps of the brewing process, but you may have some luck using the index. Also you can find a lot of pointers here and here.
Ok but on a scale of 1 to 100 to what extent will this adversely impact a batch of beer? With 1 being unnoticeable to the average beer drinker and 100 meaning the beer is rendered undrinkable? I'm not trying to be snarky but actually trying to justify the additional costs in time and equipment in relation to the added benefit.
Ok but on a scale of 1 to 100 to what extent will this adversely impact a batch of beer? With 1 being unnoticeable to the average beer drinker and 100 meaning the beer is rendered undrinkable? I'm not trying to be snarky but actually trying to justify the additional costs in time and equipment in relation to the added benefit.
Ok but on a scale of 1 to 100 to what extent will this adversely impact a batch of beer? With 1 being unnoticeable to the average beer drinker and 100 meaning the beer is rendered undrinkable? I'm not trying to be snarky but actually trying to justify the additional costs in time and equipment in relation to the added benefit.
I'm in the camp that believes the greatest bang for the buck likely comes from controlling cold side aeration.
I pay attention to oxygen post-fermentation but have never worried about hot side aeration. I can see that no-sparge would be the way to go to reduce adding oxygen to the wort pre-boil. But don't most commercial breweries fly sparge, which would introduce a ton of oxygen? As I said, I'm not an expert in this, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
I believe cold water is capable of holding more dissolved oxygen than warm water, and the same goes for wort. With a low pressure recirculating mash, hot side aeration can be kept to a minimum, although not eliminated completely. With that said when the wort is boiled it is no longer able to retain a good portion of the dissolved oxygen absorbed in the mash. How much harm can that do and to what extent will it adversely impact a batch of beer?
I do closed Co2 transfers from the fermentor to StarSan purged kegs and see a big improvement in beer stability and taste BTW.
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