Who is afraid of HSA?

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Baldy_Beer_Brewery

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This month's BYO has an article on whirlpooling in which i take it they are suggesting you can whirlpool before or after chilling the wort. I'll need to reread tomorrow as I have been mixing a pale ale and a robust porter all evening. But I digress...

On one hand, I'd think the before cooling would push a lot of panic buttons. On the other hand, looking back I definitely stirred the bejeebus out of the first batch of beer I ever brewed before it reached pitching temperature and I just had a bottle of that brew yesterday that was very smooth and malty.

My only wet cardboard tasting beer has been at the bottom of a keg from the first batch I kegged not knowing that I needed to purge the head-space with co2. This makes me wonder... Just how important is it really to avoid exposing unfermented wort to oxygen? Has anyone really ever hosed a brew that they can look back and say "Yeah I stirred the heck out of that hot wort"?

As for me, I usually only whirlpool after cooling, but this just makes me think that that aeration from stirring while cooling is one less thing to worry about.
 
I always stir vigorously to get maximum effect from my chiller. I just take care that I don't splash while I do it. I don't imagine that a surface in motion would absorb much more O2 than a stationary surface.
 
Agreed. My current "pumpless" system has me using a pair of 5 gallon buckets as lauter grants. I dump those buckets directly into my keggle - splashing hot wort all over the place. No evidence of HSA yet, and that includes my 888 RIS which has now aged for 8+ months.

A little splashing during stirring no longer frightens me.
 
I do a hot-side whirlpool before gravity draining through my CFC. I've never had a problem - but I do take care not to splash while getting the whirlpool going.
 
HSA is a bogeyman for home-brewers. You have to work really hard to develop HSA-derived staling compounds in a home brewery. Minimize oxygen pickup during the brewing process, but don't sweat the odd bit of splashing.

If you can't whirlpool without aerating, you shouldn't be whirlpooling. Inlet and outlet should both be beneath the surface of the wort.

Cheers,

Bob
 
I agree, you'd have to really try to see any affects from HSA. I remember listening to a podcast on bbr (at least I think it was bbr) and they did an experiment where they beat the crap out of the wort and as I recall it was barely noticeable.
 
Read Ashton Lewis's Mr Wizard column found here:

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif]"Hot-side aeration can be demonstrated in medium and large commercial breweries because the brewing equipment is so big that splashing is a really dramatic event. Think of liquid flowing through a six-inch pipe at 400 gallons per minute and cascading 12 feet through the air before hitting the bottom of a tank. This — not roughly stirring a five-gallon mash with a wooden spoon —is what commercial brewers are trying to minimize."

Cheers,

Bob
[/FONT]
 
Read Ashton Lewis's Mr Wizard column found here:

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif]"Hot-side aeration can be demonstrated in medium and large commercial breweries because the brewing equipment is so big that splashing is a really dramatic event. Think of liquid flowing through a six-inch pipe at 400 gallons per minute and cascading 12 feet through the air before hitting the bottom of a tank. This — not roughly stirring a five-gallon mash with a wooden spoon —is what commercial brewers are trying to minimize."

Cheers,

Bob
[/FONT]

+1 ^^^^^^

This is my usual answer to the HSA Homebrewing Boogeyman as well...

Cardboard (oxydation) flavors take a long time to develop in beer, if they develope....Most of us will have long finished drinking a beer long before it would develop.

People have mentioned on Basic Brewing that the amount of O2 needed to cause oxygenation is quite higher than even the most boneheaded mistake that we can make during "normal" brewing processes.

And Chris White and Whitelabs are coming up with some interesting new data as well, and suggest things like, for higher grav beers, hitting the beer with 2 minutes of O2 betwenn 10 and 12 hours after piching yeast...

All of this lends one to believe that our beer is heartier than we give it credit....Even post fermentation.

Anyone got that video from Youtube of the cascade of wort falling from one tank to another? I think it's dogfish head or stone.

So it, like so many things in homebrewing that is of concern to BMC breweries where ANY flavors, off or otherwise, are a big concern...it doens't necessarily mean we have to lose any sleep over it.
 
Afraid? No.

Respectful? Sure. As others have noted, it's OK to stir - but be careful while the wort is still hot. Once it's below 120° or so, I'll start stirring real aggressively and not stress HSA at all; at that point, "splashing" = "aeration".
 
Sounds like those that describe HSA as a bogeyman are spot on, I'm going to worry less about stirring from now on. And it sure does help the immersion chiller cool beter when the wort is moving.
 
I'd like to point out, that avoiding HSA doesn't hurt the beer either.
And the theories change so often.... I won't be suprised when in a few months we will hear that HSA is dangerous..
 
I've always like this quote on Maltybrew.com

Hot-side aeration…myth?
I listened to a great podcast from Basic Brewing Radio yesterday on hot-side aeration. Everyone seems to debate whether or not this is a concern for homebrewing. The podcast covers an experiment done by some homebrewers in Austin where they try hard to cause HSA in a small batch.

I was never too concerned about HSA in my brewing and now I think I’m even less concerned.

The way I figure it is, I have enough worries in my life already, I worry about dying old and alone, I worry about the price of gas or food, I worry about the coming zombiepocalypse, I sometimes even worry about never getting laid again...I sure as heck am not going to worry about something within my hobby for chrissakes, especially since there has been so much evidence to convince me it's a non issue for the homebrewer.
 
The way I figure it is, I have enough worries in my life already... I worry about the coming zombiepocalypse
See, now this is something I look forward to. My incessant consumption of cinema has well prepared me. And look at it this way, even more reason to brew more and enjoy it more! Plus, you're in Michigan, so you have to be relatively close to the Lake. According to most movies (though not all!) zombies don't do so well with the water. So you're all good.

I brewed my first AG batch last week and due to some issues regarding my technique and equipment I came to realize that HSA might be a big problem... Once I started what I was doing I didnt have much of a choice, and I decided it wasnt worth worrying about... and now I read this thread and it makes me happy...
 
I've done some really stupid HSA in the past. I can honestly say I never noticed any bad effect from it. I don't even worry about it any more.
 
I'd like to point out, that avoiding HSA doesn't hurt the beer either.
And the theories change so often.... I won't be suprised when in a few months we will hear that HSA is dangerous..

Taking normal precautions isn't going to hurt anything, but since I've been reading online digests and forums starting back in 2001/2002 the overwhelming consensus has been that HSA is a myth.
 
I don't worry about it cause the microbreweries don't worry about it. Have you ever seen the way they sparge, its crazy. The cip ball sprays water all over the place and foam starts to form on top it just looks it a disaster waiting to happen but you taste the beer a few weeks later and its fine.

We all know that the colder the wort the easier it is to oxygenate, so it would be difficult to introduce oxygen into hot wort.
 
Years ago I read that Coors did an HSA experiment. They injected pure O2 into hot wort to try to induce HSA. The batch that received the HSA treatment had a reduced shelf life of something really small, like days or a week compared to the average. HSA is a myth.
 
Darn it all to hades, the_bird stoled my thunder.
I FEAR nothing, but I'm sure careful on some things.
HSA - My beers are usually so in your face a little cardboard would be a nice soft landing from the mouth slaps. :)
 
since I've been reading online digests and forums starting back in 2001/2002 the overwhelming consensus has been that HSA is a myth.

Sorry, I didn't follow the discussion. Are there any hard, experimental data involved, or just the "I made a beer with HSA and it is delicious" thing?
 
Well, I believe in HSA. It was a 100% stupid move on my part. My boil pot wasn't large enough for my big extract batch. I almost had a boil over, so I transfered 1/2 of the batch into another pot thereby splitting up the boils. I did this at boil temperature. The batch definitely has an overbearing wet cardboard taste. It hasn't gotten any better after 6 months, either!!! I usually drink one from that batch after I'm already buzzed. It was the first batch I built in 8 years so I was basically a newbie, again. I knew immediately after I transferred it that I made a mistake. I'm on to all grain, now and don't worry about it a bit.
 
Sorry, I didn't follow the discussion. Are there any hard, experimental data involved, or just the "I made a beer with HSA and it is delicious" thing?

There's some here. There was one published in an older Zymurgy magazine. And I read one on the HBD digest.

However, I mostly just pointing out that for quite some time it's been regarded as a myth by most circles of experienced homebrewers.

Well, I believe in HSA. It was a 100% stupid move on my part. My boil pot wasn't large enough for my big extract batch. I almost had a boil over, so I transfered 1/2 of the batch into another pot thereby splitting up the boils. I did this at boil temperature. The batch definitely has an overbearing wet cardboard taste. It hasn't gotten any better after 6 months, either!!! I usually drink one from that batch after I'm already buzzed. It was the first batch I built in 8 years so I was basically a newbie, again. I knew immediately after I transferred it that I made a mistake. I'm on to all grain, now and don't worry about it a bit.

Not to stir-up the debate on HSA anymore, but you might want to look at the link I noted above. HSA doesn't occur during the boil, but pre and post boil.

I mention this only because HSA may not be the culprit in your off beer and may be something else. I would hate for you to not properly correct the problem (if it is indeed something else) and end up with another bad beer on your hands.
 
I mention this only because HSA may not be the culprit in your off beer and may be something else. I would hate for you to not properly correct the problem (if it is indeed something else) and end up with another bad beer on your hands.

+1 on this...this is why I really don't recommend that inexperienced brewers self diagnose their beers if they haven't been brewing for awhile...

You wouldn't self diagnose a major illness based on what you read in a book, nor would you like a first year medical student to diagnose an illness on you, based on what s/he has only read about....A trained physician CAN diagnose an illness based on their experience as a doctor, combined with something they read in a book (think the tv show House with all the mystery diseases he treats) but minus the actual experience , it is really just conjecture.

A lot of the inexperience brewers on here who self diagnose this problem are extract brewers (like Salad) and panic that they are splashing around their hot extract. But as it says here,

The second class of HSA is wort aeration after boiling. The only real consequence I have seen cited about aeration after the boil is an increase in wort color. Keep in mind that very hot wort, wort right after the boil, does not permit much oxygen into solution and under normal brewery conditions this probably won’t cause much wort darkening.

This has been my theory about how so many things that are of concern to the commercial industry (but not for homebrewers) crosses into the homwbrew culture and become an urban legend to us...

The confusing part for the homebrewer is that many writers who write for homebrew publications also work in the commercial-brewing arena, and commercial-brewing concerns frequently become homebrew concerns.

We have to remember that we are not making BMC that is so stripped of flavor, and is made to taste the same everytime; where even the slightest FLAVOR (off or otherwise) translates into million dollars of lost revenue... They need to make sure that every drop has the same flavorless flavor, that people are accustomed to.

Think of there beer as anemic, and so weak that it can get "sick" at the drop of a hat, while our homebrew, which is unfiltered and un pansturized is "tough and manly."

To give you an example of how hardy our beers are, EVEN IN TERMS OF OXYGENATION DANGER, here are the instructions for a clone of DFH 120...

Oxygen was added once daily for 4 days. 30 seconds @ 1200 psi with 0.2 micron SS Stone.

What they mean is duiring the first 4 days after they pitched the yeast, they recommend that you inject 30 seconds worth of oxygen into it. Now granted this is a very high grav beer...But it goes to illustrate that it takes a lot of O2 to damage even our normal homebrew...more than we would do in a lot of our brewing activities.
 
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