Discussion on malty German beers

[Northern_Brewer]

Thanks, I also didn't know

Grape Nuts are available in mainstream British supermarkets - they were my dad's favourite, I guess a habit he picked up Stateside. Not had them in ages, they're a bit of an acquired taste though....

 

[schematix]

ah so typical typical here... someone with vastly more knowledgeable than most provides a very reasonable diagnosis. In exchange he's called a zealot.

I <3 HBT.

 

[Bilsch]

Interesting to see people do all these mental gymnastics to dismiss the obvious, or what should be obvious by now.. that the Beerery has been right all along about how to attain and preserve the low oxygen flavors of macro German lagers. You know, Themadking could prove to himself pretty easily if the beerery is right be simply re-brewing this exact same beer but spunding instead of a still transfer and force carbonating.

 

[ba-brewer]

For anyone that have not had experience with grapenuts, they are hard little nuggets that sound like BBs hitting the cereal bowl, but within a short time of adding milk they transform to mush. They make them in a flaked version that seemed to hold up better to milk.

It has been sometime since I had them but I recall the flavor as being a bit sweet for an unsweetened cereal not really sure about tasting nutty but it was quite grainy maybe with a slight gram cracker like flavor. We also had wheat germ in the cereal cupboard and I think that had a similar flavor to grapenuts. Is that the correct flavor profile for grapenuts?

 

[dmtaylor]

For anyone that have not had experience with grapenuts, they are hard little nuggets that sound like BBs hitting the cereal bowl, but within a short time of adding milk they transform to mush. They make them in a flaked version that seemed to hold up better to milk.

It has been sometime since I had them but I recall the flavor as being a bit sweet for an unsweetened cereal not really sure about tasting nutty but it was quite grainy maybe with a slight gram cracker like flavor. We also had wheat germ in the cereal cupboard and I think that had a similar flavor to grapenuts. Is that the correct flavor profile for grapenuts?

Grape Nuts cereal tastes like Vienna malt. Toasty. Similar in flavor also to Wheaties. I love this cereal and keep some on hand. Good bit of fiber too. Healthy. Mild malty sweetness but no significant sugar added. I have used Grape Nuts in a beer once for approximately 15% of the grist or thereabouts. Gave the beer an enormous creamy head and some haze, not unlike a hefeweizen, along with a slight toast flavor. I was sure to reduce chloride addition as the cereal is slightly salted.

 

[ba-brewer]

I was thinking they tasted somewhat like Wheaties too but did not want to reference another brand of cereal. Thanks for the information Dave.

 

[bierhaus15]

For those worried about 02 exposure from force carbonating.... even with cheap C02 you'll rarely see PPB levels increase above 25 ppb, with an average closer to 7-8.

You have more of a chance oxidizing your beer, or doing greater harm to it, via the transfer from fermenter to keg, or through improper use of antioxidants.

 

[schematix]

For those worried about 02 exposure from force carbonating.... even with cheap C02 you'll rarely see PPB levels increase above 25 ppb, with an average closer to 7-8.

You have more of a chance oxidizing your beer, or doing greater harm to it, via the transfer from fermenter to keg, or through improper use of antioxidants.

this is just plain wrong, no way to sugar coat it.

 

[ba-brewer]

A while back I bought a can of bitburger to see if I could taste the "it" flavor. That beer had a very strong honey flavor, which I am assuming was caused by poor handling(it was room temp on a store shelf).

now that it is winter I should try again to see if I can find a better example.

 

[doug293cz]

For those worried about 02 exposure from force carbonating.... even with cheap C02 you'll rarely see PPB levels increase above 25 ppb, with an average closer to 7-8.

You have more of a chance oxidizing your beer, or doing greater harm to it, via the transfer from fermenter to keg, or through improper use of antioxidants.

this is just plain wrong, no way to sugar coat it.

I'm not so sure it is wrong. The mistake most people make with CO2 is they think that it usually contains somewhere near the max allowed by the spec for the specific grade (which I seem to remember is 30 ppm for bev grade CO2, someone correct me if I'm remembering incorrectly.) All the spec means is that they have to measure to insure that the amount is less than the spec. Turns out that testing for lower levels gets expensive, so they use a test which has a min detection limit of ~30 ppm, so that's all they can "guarantee." I found a paper that used more sensitive methods to measure the actual CO2 levels in bev grade CO2, and they were down around 50 ppb IIRC. Unfortunately, I lost the link, and haven't been able to find it since (I'll continue looking. If anyone else has seen it, please post a link.)

Brew on

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I was thinking they tasted somewhat like Wheaties too but did not want to reference another brand of cereal.

Yep, branded foods are way too culturally specific to be helpful in this context - we may be able to get Grape Nuts here (even if there's no general awareness of what they taste like) but we definitely can't get Wheaties or graham crackers outside expat stores (although it seems Tesco did stock GCs at one point). I see graham crackers take their name from a temperance campaigner, I'm not sure we really want them anyway...

 

[Bilsch]

A while back I bought a can of bitburger to see if I could taste the "it" flavor. That beer had a very strong honey flavor, which I am assuming was caused by poor handling(it was room temp on a store shelf).
now that it is winter I should try again to see if I can find a better example.

Noticed you live in the Bay area.. you might try Suppenkuche in the Hayes Valley neighborhood in SF. Every time I've been there for a palate calibration the beers have been decently fresh.

 

[Big Monk]

And within the limitations of the information provided (which is very little) one could at best provide a list of possible issues that might be worth discussing further. To claim to know the answer and even provide actual values without a measurement is just biased and frankly a little ridiculous. Hence my snarky comeback.

As long as we keep seeing such an attitude from some of the LODO people I think it should come as no surprise that lots of people will just stop listening to the whole LODO crowd at some point or other.

Opinions are like your Grandma’s lasagna recipe: Everyone has one and we all think ours is the most delicious.

No one cares about most people’s opinions on the internet. All that matters is the taste of the beer in your glass.

When you find something lacking and want to investigate more, we’ll be here.

@Die_Beerery has a confidence most of us don’t have because he has a level of experience and empirical brewery knowledge that most of use don’t have. That’s an objective truth. You gain quite a bit of wisdom from 1000 batches of beer. Add the fact that roughly half those batches were HIDO, and you start to get a sense of how relevant the other 50% is.

Say what you want about the delivery but it’s criminal to downplay the experience.

 

[ba-brewer]

Yep, branded foods are way too culturally specific to be helpful in this context - we may be able to get Grape Nuts here (even if there's no general awareness of what they taste like) but we definitely can't get Wheaties or graham crackers outside expat stores (although it seems Tesco did stock GCs at one point). I see graham crackers take their name from a temperance campaigner, I'm not sure we really want them anyway...

I did not know graham crackers were a north America thing. Modern graham crackers are basically a less sweet cookie(biscuit?) with a whole wheat flavor. Probably nothing like what the temperance campaigner had in mind. So my reference to graham cracker flavor may be a combination of caramelized sugar and toasted whole wheat flour with more emphasis on the toasted whole wheat.

Noticed you live in the Bay area.. you might try Suppenkuche in the Hayes Valley neighborhood in SF. Every time I've been there for a palate calibration the beers have been decently fresh.

Thanks for the tip. These are the pilsners they say have tap;

König Pilsner, Jever Pilsner, Weltenberger Pilsner, Allgäuer Pilsner, Radeberger Pilsner, which would be good examples of LOB/LODO produced beers?

​

 

[Vale71]

Opinions are like your Grandma’s lasagna recipe: Everyone has one and we all think ours is the most delicious.

No one cares about most people’s opinions on the internet. All that matters is the taste of the beer in your glass.

When you find something lacking and want to investigate more, we’ll be here.

@Die_Beerery has a confidence most of us don’t have because he has a level of experience and empirical brewery knowledge that most of use don’t have. That’s an objective truth. You gain quite a bit of wisdom from 1000 batches of beer. Add the fact that roughly half those batches were HIDO, and you start to get a sense of how relevant the other 50% is.

Say what you want about the delivery but it’s criminal to downplay the experience.

My Grandma was born in Bologna (my mother too but that was a WWII thing). She had THE ONLY TRUE lasagna recipe, everything else is just tasteless crap.

With every post from the LODO crowd I become more and more convinced that it's left the playground of rationality completely and finally turned into just another cult. It even sounds like you've already found your own messiah, whose word carries THE ONLY TRUE WISDOM.

Thanks, but no thanks. I really don't care for cults in general and I think I'll just stick to my own Grandma's recipe...

 

[Vale71]

A while back I bought a can of bitburger to see if I could taste the "it" flavor. That beer had a very strong honey flavor, which I am assuming was caused by poor handling(it was room temp on a store shelf).

now that it is winter I should try again to see if I can find a better example.

I've tasted very fresh samples when I was living in Germany and they all had that honey flavor. It seems that Bitburger, although by definition a Northern German Pils, exhibits levels of VDKs normally associated with the Bohemian Pils style. Judging by the color it's also likely that they still run a (possibly partial) decoction schedule.

 

[Vale71]

I'm not so sure it is wrong. The mistake most people make with CO2 is they think that it usually contains somewhere near the max allowed by the spec for the specific grade (which I seem to remember is 30 ppm for bev grade CO2, someone correct me if I'm remembering incorrectly.) All the spec means is that they have to measure to insure that the amount is less than the spec. Turns out that testing for lower levels gets expensive, so they use a test which has a min detection limit of ~30 ppm, so that's all they can "guarantee." I found a paper that used more sensitive methods to measure the actual CO2 levels in bev grade CO2, and they were down around 50 ppb IIRC. Unfortunately, I lost the link, and haven't been able to find it since (I'll continue looking. If anyone else has seen it, please post a link.)

Brew on

AFAIK the specs actually just address CO2 purity regardless of the nature of the contaminants. As long as the contaminants do not pose a health risk (for bev grade CO2) it doesn't matter whether CO2 with 99,9% purity contains 0,1% oxygen or 0,1% nitrogen or a mixture of the two, it will still be classified as 99,9% regardless. In other words, it's completely wrong to assume that the amount of contamination equals the amount of O2 as this will never actually be the case and without a specific measurement the actual amount of O2 will remain unknown.

For reference, here is what a CO2 purity testing apparatus looks like. Surprisingly low-tech and even more suprisingly still quite horrendously expensive...

 

[Big Monk]

My Grandma was born in Bologna (my mother too but that was a WWII thing). She had THE ONLY TRUE lasagna recipe, everything else is just tasteless crap.

With every post from the LODO crowd I become more and more convinced that it's left the playground of rationality completely and finally turned into just another cult. It even sounds like you've already found your own messiah, whose word carries THE ONLY TRUE WISDOM.

Thanks, but no thanks. I really don't care for cults in general and I think I'll just stick to my own Grandma's recipe...

At the end of the day it’s just people, with varying skill levels, talking about beer on the internet.

I plan to do less of it. Mostly because of posts like this but mainly because I like real life better.

 

[doug293cz]

AFAIK the specs actually just address CO2 purity regardless of the nature of the contaminants. As long as the contaminants do not pose a health risk (for bev grade CO2) it doesn't matter whether CO2 with 99,9% purity contains 0,1% oxygen or 0,1% nitrogen or a mixture of the two, it will still be classified as 99,9% regardless. In other words, it's completely wrong to assume that the amount of contamination equals the amount of O2 as this will never actually be the case and without a specific measurement the actual amount of O2 will remain unknown.

For reference, here is what a CO2 purity testing apparatus looks like. Surprisingly low-tech and even more suprisingly still quite horrendously expensive...

Ref

Brew on

 

[Bilsch]

Thanks for the tip. These are the pilsners they say have tap;

König Pilsner, Jever Pilsner, Weltenberger Pilsner, Allgäuer Pilsner, Radeberger Pilsner, which would be good examples of LOB/LODO produced beers?
​

I know Konig, Jever and Radeberger are made in low oxygen brew houses and it's more then likely the others are as well. But I think your best bet for sorting out it would be the Konig Pils or the Bayreuther Helles since they are less bitter and showcase the malt flavors. Always good to check with the barmann and see what he suggests is the freshest keg of pils or helles they have. One last tip.. get there early as this place is very popular.​

 

[Bilsch]

I've tasted very fresh samples when I was living in Germany and they all had that honey flavor. It seems that Bitburger, although by definition a Northern German Pils, exhibits levels of VDKs normally associated with the Bohemian Pils style. Judging by the color it's also likely that they still run a (possibly partial) decoction schedule.

Been to Germany many times since even before reunification and most recently in December. I've only tasted the honey notes related to oxidation a couple times usually from the bottle. Bitburger is not decocted, its color comes from a liberal munich malt addition. Wernesgrüner, also owned by the Bitburger gruppe, is a very similar recipe to Bitburger but is decocted and the difference is subtly more malty and quite delicious. Both beers do exhibit the characteristic fresh malt flavors from a low oxygen brewing process. I've drunk a sizeable amount of northern German pils style and never run into vdk's like one normally finds in Czech beers. First time in Pilsen it took some time to become accustomed to the diacetyl and begin enjoy the style but overall my preference is drinking in Bavaria where that flavor is considered a fault.

 

[Bilsch]

With every post from the LODO crowd I become more and more convinced that it's left the playground of rationality completely and finally turned into just another cult. It even sounds like you've already found your own messiah, whose word carries THE ONLY TRUE WISDOM.

Since the beginning of this thread the lodo people have been nothing but polite and willing to help. Because you disagree with someone of a different opinion doesn't make them a cult. Also effectively 'yelling louder' doesn't make you right.

 

[Vale71]

Since the beginning of this thread the lodo people have been nothing but polite and willing to help.

Let's just agree to disagree and call it quits, OK?

 

[Vale71]

Ref

Brew on

These are guidelines. The only binding requirements I know are from the FDA and they don't care about oxygen as long as nobody dies from drinking a pint on tap.

 

[Schlenkerla]

With every post from the LODO crowd I become more and more convinced that it's left the playground of rationality completely and finally turned into just another cult. It even sounds like you've already found your own messiah, whose word carries THE ONLY TRUE WISDOM.

One doesn't need to adopt all the tenants LOB. Some are just common sense under normal brewing practices. Whether or not you agree or disagree of the effects of hot side aeration. Some are easily done with just how you transfer liquids and what steps you take to retain heat in the mash tun.

1) For 12 years I hand poured strike and sparge water. It's stupid and dangerous. Underletting is safer. I'm over 50 not as steady as I was 20 years ago. I'm using gravity to my advantage.

2) A mash cap keeps my igloo cube more even temperature wise regardless of the volume. I use hollow balls for insulation. It also creates a barrier to keep out the egress of dissolved oxygen.

Those are two basic common sense things I've adopted recently.

 

[Schlenkerla]

Wanna see my balls in action.... LoL.

HLT
MLT
BK

 

[Schlenkerla]

Let's just agree to disagree and call it quits, OK?

Last post is to not pick a fight. I think I felt the same as you in December.

First two things I changed where to fix a few long time brewing problems I failed to address over the years. I really hated pouring hot liquids. That safety risk alone made limit my intake on brew day. Then my igloo cube mash tun was horrible on heat retention. Its a 12 gallon. If I didn't have a big grain bill. I had to step mash just to counter act the heat loss. Either that or use my 5 gallon mash tun. Which at times I felt it was too small. A 10 lb grist was the smallest practical on 12 gal cube. Even then it's bad for heat retention without the insulating balls. I'm happy with these two changes.

 

[Schlenkerla]

At the end of the day it’s just people, with varying skill levels, talking about beer on the internet.

I plan to do less of it. Mostly because of posts like this but mainly because I like real life better.

That's why I'm not in the debate forum anymore. It potentially taints any future relationship outside that forum.

 

[bierhaus15]

this is just plain wrong, no way to sugar coat it.

Yawn. Not worth the argument. Talk to a Hach or Haffmans rep about 02 ingress from force carbonating.

 

[schematix]

Yawn. Not worth the argument. Talk to a Hach or Haffmans rep about 02 ingress from force carbonating.

I'm sure they'll tell me all day long how it's no worse than the spec sheet states.

But my experience over about 70 10G batches is that the beer degrades significantly after ~2 weeks of force carbing. I was about to sell off my gear and give up on brewing because i couldn't get rid of that nasty staling flavor.

First time i spunded the problem went away. Fast forward a couple dozen more batches. Now kegs that are 4-6 months old (about as old as they get in my brewery) still taste fresh. But after a week or so it starts to go degrade slowly, especially if the spund was low and it starts to force carb a little. Not to mention the texture of the carbonation is so much better than force carbing ever was.

 

[bierhaus15]

I'm sure they'll tell me all day long how it's no worse than the spec sheet states.

But my experience over about 70 10G batches is that the beer degrades significantly after ~2 weeks of force carbing. I was about to sell off my gear and give up on brewing because i couldn't get rid of that nasty staling flavor.

First time i spunded the problem went away. Fast forward a couple dozen more batches. Now kegs that are 4-6 months old (about as old as they get in my brewery) still taste fresh. But after a week or so it starts to go degrade slowly, especially if the spund was low and it starts to force carb a little. Not to mention the texture of the carbonation is so much better than force carbing ever was.

That proves nothing. Might as well blame your stale beer on lipoxygenase... you're more likely to see that than staling from force carbing.

My first brewing job involved monitoring tank DO levels for a 6 million barrel brewery. Most of the industrial breweries have brite beer DO specs below 50 ppb, and about 70% of that comes from centrifuging and tank transfers. If force carbonating was even 1/100 the issue the LOWDO folks make it out to be, every industrial brewer would be spunding. They are not.

 

[doug293cz]

... Not to mention the texture of the carbonation is so much better than force carbing ever was.

Got any theories of how the CO2 in solution knows it came from yeast rather than a tank?

Brew on

 

[Bilsch]

Yawn. Not worth the argument. Talk to a Hach or Haffmans rep about 02 ingress from force carbonating.

Well funny you invoke the name of Hach to support your claim because.... right on their website, there is an article titled: How the purity of sparged carbon dioxide affects the oxygen concentration of beer.

And in this article you will find, near the beginning, this interesting sentence, "The thing we learned is that the purity of CO2 must be very high (99.99% or better) when using injection, or you will at the same time significantly increase your dissolved oxygen levels."

Wondering if you actually have looked into the science behind any of this or are just relying on the appeal to authority and hoping no one checks.

 

[Bilsch]

That proves nothing. Might as well blame your stale beer on lipoxygenase... you're more likely to see that than staling from force carbing.

My first brewing job involved monitoring tank DO levels for a 6 million barrel brewery. Most of the industrial breweries have brite beer DO specs below 50 ppb, and about 70% of that comes from centrifuging and tank transfers. If force carbonating was even 1/100 the issue the LOWDO folks make it out to be, every industrial brewer would be spunding. They are not.

The reason they can get away with it is they are saving and storing the essentially O2 free CO2 from their own fermentation tanks and then re-injecting it to carbonate. Spunding is a simply a hack for those that don't have the expensive capture equipment nor access to 99.99% purity carbon dioxide.

 

[brewbama]

Do most homebrewers use injection to carbonate their beer?

If you keep reading in the same article it says “However, injection isn’t the only method for adding CO2 to beer. Sparging, in which CO2 is bubbled through beer (usually in a tank with slight over-pressure) is another common practice for boosting CO2.”

“My final thought is that CO2 purity isn’t nearly as important if you are sparging rather than injecting, since the amount of gas that will dissolve into your liquid is much lower.” And “But a theoretical sparging of that same CO2 into the beer at atmospheric pressure would follow Henry’s Law, and your oxygen pickup would be about 7 ppb.

In real brewing situations, however, most brewers use tank overpressure to help get sparged CO2 into solution, so you would probably be picking up about 2 times the above amount, or 14 ppb.”

 

[Bilsch]

Do most homebrewers use injection to carbonate their beer?

Yes homebrewers do use injection and not sparging. Sparging would be way better but requires more headspace over the beer and very accurate pressure regulators. It also uses much more CO2.

 

[Schlenkerla]

I'm sure they'll tell me all day long how it's no worse than the spec sheet states.

But my experience over about 70 10G batches is that the beer degrades significantly after ~2 weeks of force carbing. I was about to sell off my gear and give up on brewing because i couldn't get rid of that nasty staling flavor.

First time i spunded the problem went away. Fast forward a couple dozen more batches. Now kegs that are 4-6 months old (about as old as they get in my brewery) still taste fresh. But after a week or so it starts to go degrade slowly, especially if the spund was low and it starts to force carb a little. Not to mention the texture of the carbonation is so much better than force carbing ever was.

Yeah. So, it's spund high, push beer just enough to a get a good flow and so your Perlick faucet checks good at shut off. That's how I'm preceding.

I've sworn that some of the CO2 that I've gotten has been tainted right off the bat. It's always when the gas supplier exchanges the aluminum bottle for steel. It's to the point I refuse to accept a steel bottle. My initial swap was a brand new aluminum bottle. I have no factual scientific proof other than a few days on gas and it had this weird taste that only I noticed.

There's some Brewers naturally carbonating. First one that comes to mind is Sierra Nevada. That's how many of us started before going to kegging.

I'm spunding my beer. If I miss that by a day I'm priming my beer, or I've planned to gyle or krausen.

 

[Schlenkerla]

Hell, I like spunding since my beer is ready to drink a lot sooner. Especially if you're talking hefeweizen. From brew day to kegging is 4 to 5 days. Another week it's can be ready to drink.

 

[ba-brewer]

If you spund carb a keg then push the beer out with a CO2 tank why doesn't the beer get tainted/oxidized?

 

[Bilsch]

If you spund carb a keg then push the beer out with a CO2 tank why doesn't the beer get tainted/oxidized?

That's a great question and it's simply about volume. The amount of CO2 you need to put into a beer to carbonate is quite a lot more then that which is required to simply push an already carbonated beer. You will will add oxygen to your keg either way but so much less when just pushing.