As I said before, I'm open to new ideas. I'm all for advancing knowledge in any way, shape or form.
However, you cannot open up with: "This will make the best beer ever! All other beer will suck in comparison!" and not expect a little skepticism, especially when you're making very bold claims with little to no evidence to back it up. When you propose a new idea, the burden of proof is definitely on you. You cannot make a claim and state, "Trust me, it works!" and expect that no one will question it.
Yep, fair. This is totally expected!
I'm not fighting a war. I'm saying that their claims are grandiose with little to back them up.
Had to grab attention and make a statement. Marketing.
That said, I side with Kunze to help me make the beers I want to brew.
When I tried their suggestions as far as my equipment would carry them and didn't get the results they claim I was told that I 'did it wrong' because I didn't ferment in a corny keg with a spunding valve, and I dry hopped the beer. It's very hard to ferment 5.5 gallons of wort in a 5 gallon corny keg, and making a hoppy beer without dry hopping is impossible. I fermented in a carboy, dryhopped near the end of fermentation, cold crashed under CO2 and fined with gelatin (including pre-boiling the water for the gelatin and dosing it with SMB). I purged the keg by filling it to the very top with a sanitizer/SMB solution that they suggested and pushing it out with CO2. I took *every* precaution I could reasonably take in regards to O2, following suggestions made by the LODO crowd. When the results of my test didn't knock my socks off with it being the best version of this beer ever (I have brewed this recipe before), I was told that I did it wrong even though I accommodated their suggestions in regard to deviations from the paper they presented and that the CO2 I was using was only 99.9% pure and as compromising the results. How do we push beer out of a keg then?
I'm not trying to be confrontational in regards to the process they propose. I'm merely asking for some evidence that it actually produces a better beer, not a difference in the mashing process. My experimentation showed it did not, in this case.
Keep working on it. First of all, know and define your goal for what 'better' means to you and for what style(s). To say a LODO APA is my goal, you will likely not notice it on the first go around. If you (and this seems to be really specific to certain people) find a German Helles from Germany that you can buy today to have a unique taste, this is for you. If not, your mileage may vary.
I did take umbrage with the fact that some of the LODO crowd explicitly said (several times) that anyone not brewing in accordance with their 'bible' was making bad beer. There are a hell of a lot of talented brewers here that make fantastic beer without $400 D.O. meters or going to the extraordinary lengths to preclude O2 from the mashing process, or fermenting in kegs with spunding valves.
By saying 'bible', you're kinda playing your card that this is a religious war to you. Nah dude, let's talk. A little over a year ago a couple of dudes came together to say...damn, why don't any "German lagers" in the US taste like the ones in Germany? And we've been trying to figure that out and adding to the group. And some really bright folks, I might add.
We can all agree that it's good practice to reasonably limit O2 exposure of the wort prior to the pitch of the yeast and post ferment. It's probably not a good idea to stir air into the mash like a blender using a stirrer on a drill, and avoiding hot side splashing or aeration takes a few common sense precautions.
I'm skeptical that the somewhat excessive precautions they're advocating will produce a better beer. I tried their suggestions to see for myself, and didn't get the results they're claiming. It's possible that in a very small subset of beers their process might be beneficial, but without testing and experimentation it's strictly a theory.
Or...the results came and went, without you noticing. I have brewed some of the most delicious and simultaneously most bizarre beers in the past year. We're talking about a living organism tied to our taste buds with about as many variables to tweak as anything on earth. I'm sipping some lodo Pilsner now that, while a completely freakish recipe, actually tastes characteristically right to me (I'm on a quest to brew East German style Pilsners). When you stop trying to mash the thing out of existence, then ferment it into oblivion, interesting subtleties start to happen (blaming myself on these issues). Too little sulfur, too much sulfur, great malt flavor, then poof, it's gone.
Regarding the mash blending with a drill, apparently that was tried and no difference was noted...that's the point, it's more precise than that.
We backed into this (I should say technically techbrau and rabeb, though as part of a team trying to figure this out) accidentally after trying everything else on Earth to do. But...there is still a long way to go to truly nail it for many different styles. We are homebrewers and we're trying to reproduce centuries of accumulated brewing skill and knowledge "Fingerspitzengefühl" as my wife puts it, based on trial and error, brewing texts and reverse engineering.
We figured this proposed approach is useful for, at best, 2% of homebrewers. And for folks that already have the basics nailed and can brew a great Helles to begin with. But can't brew THE Helles. If this isn't for you, I totally get it. (however, whether you realize it or not, I suspect it is and that you're exactly who should be working on this).
There have been several claims that larger breweries in Germany use this LODO process. I'm not saying they don't, but I'll wager they're not using SMB and pre-boiling the brewing liquor. They have degassing equipment that doesn't alter the mineral composition of the water.
Yes, most, if not all are likely not using SMB (I'd be shocked if any do)...you're missing the forest for the trees. Go stand in your brewing room and say, hmmmm, if I were trying to mitigate oxygen, how would I do it?
Then...you can go say, hmmmm, if I was Augustiner, and I was trying to mitigate oxygen, how would I do it? Entirely different problems to solve, with entirely different solutions (though I truly hope some resourceful entrepreneur comes up with a turnkey mechanical vs chemical solution for me).
I've done some cursory research on the concept, and haven't found much aside from the references made in the paper presented. There are several references in the paper I find questionable, such as steam purging brewing plumbing to reduce/eliminate oxygen (The steam may initially do so, but when it condenses it will create a vacuum that will draw in atmospheric air) and mashing under a 'blanket' of inert gas (gasses do not behave that way, diffusion will rapidly mix all gasses in the headspace.)
Solve it...how would you mitigate this issue?
My postulation is that this is a big-brewery process to make a more shelf-stable product for a limited subset of beers, and not necessarily something that needs to be emulated on a home brewing level. You must keep in mind that Helles (and other delicate beers) will show off flavors as if there's a spotlight pointed at them, and on a commercial production level they need a product that will keep for months in sub-optimal storage conditions. This commercial low dissolved oxygen process facilitates those conditions and is not necessarily a process that home brewers (or even small craft breweries with high turnover rates) need to adhere by. In fact, Krone's (cited several times in the paper) craft beer systems employ none of these low dissolved oxygen techniques.
My postulation is that this is a big-brewery process to make a more shelf-stable product for a limited subset of beers, and not necessarily something that needs to be emulated on a home brewing level for every style. Helles (and other delicate beers like Pilsner) will both not reach their potential and will show off flavors as if there's a spotlight pointed at them. Low oxygen brewing opens a door to helping to preserve these subtle flavors, and that when combined with additional techniques and perfection of process produce an authentic Helles or Pilsner. Note: this may apply to other styles as well, but the results may taste different than expected.
I think the original posters of the paper may have misconstrued some of the concepts they've read about, a sentiment echoed by Burghard Meyer of the Research and Teaching Institute in Berlin according to Brewfun.
Perhaps. I am curious to visit more local breweries on my next trip to Germany. I agree. And wonder where oddballs like Square-cube law fall into this in terms of oxygen affect on flavor relative to volume and process. I'll try to meet up with Matthias at Bayerischer Bahnhof again and any other breweries I can stop at and try to get compare beers and get a better understanding of their process. A contact at Weyermann said they don't treat their water nor deoxygenate (go figure they gave me, the American, an IPA to try instead of Pilsner when I toured there). To me, low O2 is a door (now open), it's not the entire answer. There's a lot to it, at least for what I taste in German beers that I love.
With this, I've voiced my dissenting opinion and I'm done unless anyone has any questions. I'll return to brewing my horribly oxidized beer.
. From their data LowLOX Malt doesn't do anything to stop oxygen uptake. What they did was selectively breed 2-row to come up with a strand that does not contain the 
