- I don't use SMBS (or however that is - Na2S2O5). So I could start using that. One major issue I have here is that they only sell PMBS (K2S2O5) at my LHBS. I'm heading to the states for Christmas so I can pick some up, but eventually that will run out.
- While Potassium may give you acceptable results, we read instructions that said it can be damaging. So, we used sodium metabisulfite, instead. I believe that was mentioned, somewhere early in this thread. If not, it is in the original paper that was released.
- I need to find a proper adapter for my water hose to fill my kettle from my sink inside. Until then I've been filling up a smaller pot twice, and just pouring it in at the top of the BK (splashing and all).
- I recommend you stop splashing & find a means of gentle transfer.
- My #1 goal when mashing in has always been avoiding dough balls. So I've been using a whisk and pour the grains onto that while I whip up the top layer vigorously. I can stop doing that. Plus I could pour the grains into the bag before hand and slowly and gently lower it in. Still worried about dough balls here, but I'll at least trust the experience and suggestions from others doing this. Also, because BIAB grain has been crushed at the LHBS at a tighter gap. First question:
1) Nothing I can do at the moment to solve it being crushed at the store, but should I just be going for a typical crush?
- I do fill up the kettle pretty much to the top already, and I have a lid that sits down inside the kettle a bit. I believe this is just as good as some of the pictures of the mash caps I've been seeing.
- I have been stirring 4 times during the mash. I just recently got a pH meter and am still working in dialing in my pH predictions, so I've been measuring them 4 times to be able to see the changes. I've been stirring in order to get a more "reliable" pH reading, and also because I've heard that with full-volume mashes, this could help with saccharification. Not sure if this makes a gigantic deal breaker (though from the phrasing of some of the extreme LoDOs here, they'd probably dump out the batch). So next question pops up here.
- Put your whisk in your kitchen & use it for eggs & cream...Not mash.
- Typical crush is fine.
- I use a grain bag, as well. Your first investment should be a pump. With a pump, you can gently/slowly fill your mash tun from below & immerse your grain, without creating dough balls. This eliminates the vast majority of problems & stirring.
- Stop stirring so much...For the most part, leave the mash alone.
2) how are the full-volume mashers experiencing their conversion rates? I already for some reason don't have the greatest mash efficiency, so it'd suck to take a major hit here. I've seen about a 3-4% increase just from doing this.
- After the mash is done, before I'd just pull the bag out and let it drain while the boil gets going. Now I pull the bag out and let it drain. If I'm just having a relaxed brew day, I'll literally just get on to some other task while it drips practically dry. If I'm constrained for time, or just feeling impatient, I'll squeeze the hell out of the bag. I generally try to brew on a relaxed day off, so slowly letting the bag drain with no splashing or dripping isn't a problem most of the time. Question number 2:
- I pump my wort from tun to kettle & see very little conversion difference from what I used to see, with single infusion non-biab.
- After all my losses & whatnot...I believe I'm getting roughly 80+% conversion & 80+% brewhouse efficiency (in English terms) at this point...(64+% total efficiency, for German brewers).
- Don't squeeze the bag & don't be impatient.
- While I don't completely recommend it...If you want to extract more liquid, let the bag sit in your tun, after you have pumped to the kettle & re-pump, once your boil is ready to begin.
There will definitely be oxygen ingress, but this will allow you to recover some losses.
3) Isn't this long time with some surface area exposed to air allowing in quite a bit of oxygen?
Yes.
4) The water at the beginning is meant to be boiled (for 15 minutes?), but for some reason here we don't want a strong boil. What's the difference? Why would the first one drive out oxygen and the second one encourage its uptake?
Water & wort can be treated somewhat differently.
With water, you can boil the hell out of it & have few impacts, aside from hardness changes.
We recommend being gentle with the wort boil, to stop the reactions that heat stress cause. Heat stress can ruin wort, very easily.
- Time to quickly chill the wort quickly with our 8C water. Again, until I get the sink adapter, I've just been doing a tap-water bath in the sink. But I only have a copper IC. The IC would chill the wort to pitching temps for ales (17c) in 4-5 minutes right now, probably 7-8 minutes for lagers (10c). But, the ice bath takes significantly more time than that - about 20 mins for ales. I also stir constantly throughout the chill time, going smoothly and calmly at first, and more vigorously once I don't see any more steam coming off (approximately 50C)
I recommend a stainless chiller, as your second investment, after the pump.
5) Would the trade off of submersing the IC for a much shorter time be worth the amount of time that the wort is exposed to oxygen while cooling? Or should I just stick with an ice bath and put the lid on the pot? Not possible at this point for me to buy a SS IC.
Not sure what to tell you, except "Use the copper, until you can replace it".
- Time to oxygenate the wort! Pour the wort into the bucket from a height and let it splash around, then pull out the whisk that I used to vigorously mash in and to vigorously aerate while chilling (put it the pot at the end of the boil to sanitize) to stir it up some more! This time the yeast has been added already.
- DO NOT AERATE, WHILE WARM.
- Get your wort down to pitching temps.
- Add a vigorously active batch of yeast, with a proper cell count.
- Aerate while your yeast is very active, so they can consume the oxygen, before it reacts with wort's natural anti-oxidents.
6) I won't be buying any kind of oxygenation equipment for a very, very long time. On this step should I just wait to do the whisking until I've poured the yeast in?
If you can get your hands on a cheap aquarium pump & a inline air filter, you're golden.
- Ferment in a bucket. Check it after it's seemingly had enough time to reach FG. Generally speaking along the same timelines. Since I keg, I'm only really concerned that it reached my predicted FG or lower. If it's a bit higher I'll let it sit for a couple more days. Then I'll cold crash in the bucket. There's no way for me to start fermenting in kegs, at least not for a very, very long time. The one thing that I've decided I should start doing is fermenting in my PET carboy, and then doing a closed transfer to a purged keg. The one improvement I could start doing here is priming the keg, as it's been shown how much more oxygen is making it in with forced carbonation. My main problem with that is that I have recently started racking the beer on top of the gelatin after I've cold crashed it in the fermenter for 2 days. With quick forced carbonation, this can result in commercial quality clarity in two more days stored cold. Doing this would add at least another week or so (I assume) onto the process, plus waiting for it to clear could result in another 1-2 weeks. Leaving me waiting for up to 5-6 weeks grain to glass. Right now I can get a crisp, clean lager in 3 1/2 weeks with my method. So this would put a major dent in my pipeline!
I'm pretty sure I had many more questions, but now it's gotten awfully late as I've typed this up, and can't seem to remember them.
On that note, I would like to say that if it weren't for some guys like Techbrau and some of the ones who attempted this LoDO method even though they were skeptical, I would left the thread early on and never thought of trying to implement as many of these steps as possible. As you can see, it's nearly impossible for me for the foreseeable future to go completely LoDO according to the PDF and what others have described as their processes. Although I go through my two kegs fairly quickly and don't often start to taste a downtrend toward the end (maybe the last 3 liters or so, if that), I still would like to be able to get better as a brewer altogether and be able to start entering competitions. So I'm looking into some of these things not to really find that "it" factor, but to just gain some longer-term stability in all the styles that I brew.
The problem with the way this method is portrayed, however, is that if you're not a very experienced brewer who happens to just have enough dispensable cash to throw at the hobby, you'll never be able to achieve this perfectly - and if you can't achieve this perfectly, there's no point in trying. The vibe from many of the LoDOs is very unwelcoming, regardless of how others might have seemingly responded to them. You can't possibly have put this out there without thinking there was going to be LOTS of criticism. The responses to criticism come off as haughty, to put it lightly. The entire wording from the beginning comes off as "our process is better than yours. If you can't brew like this, you suck and your beer is piss water." Just look at how many times the LoDOs have mentioned that they would dump beer! It's beer... that you're dumping out... instead of drinking... just because it wasn't absolutely perfect according to German brewery standards that have WAY better equipment and WAY more experience/education! Sure I've dumped beer in my brewing "career" (4 batches out of 59, which is really killer to a perfectionist), but just become something isn't perfect doesn't mean I'll be dumping out PERFECTLY GOOD BEER!
Seriously. It's beer! For most of us on here, this is simply just a hobby. Not everyone has the money or the experience or the time to just be throwing at this thing. So it's one thing for you to respond pridefully to someone criticizing the technique or the lack of more scientific proof without them even giving it a go. It's another thing completely to blow up on someone who genuinely says, "Well this sounds great, but I'll never be able to achieve this goal with my set up." The response to that shouldn't be, "Well this is what it takes to make a non-dumper beer. If you want the best, you gotta spend the money and follow these steps." It should be more along the lines of that maybe there's still a solution out there!
So again thanks to those of you here who are genuinely trying to help and seem really quite humble about this process. I'm willing to try to get much better with my beer, and try to improve it as much as possible - and I'm obviously looking for some help in that. At this time, however, I'll never achieve the perfection described by some here. But I do think I can get pretty damn close, and I, like others, wonder if that won't just improve my beer to a very slight notch below this "it" factor.
That's a lot to respond to...
All I can really say is that I know that our methods work, if the brewer puts in an honest effort. You'll see results, from the start.
Unfortunately, the results will quickly fade, if there was a hole in your layers of protection.
Our stance & responses were never meant to push people away.
We simply meant to put out warnings, so the readers knew how serious oxygen ingress is & how quickly the losses are apparent.
The Grail we seek is a quickly fleeting characteristic.
It will leave, if you don't pay attention to the minute details.
The solutions are definitely out there. The big boys use membrane deoxygenators & filters. If you think our methods are expensive...Whew, look out! Price even a small one of those suckers & you'll think we're the cheap ones.
For the record, we are a welcoming bunch & we're not selling anything.
We simply have a focus that many brewers don't & came up with a small-scale solution, to combat oxidation.
If any of our methods aren't for you, you are perfectly welcome to ignore any one of them. We simply provided a set of things that we know are working for us, from grain to glass.
On that note...Yes...It's beer.
Personally, I am very particular about what I brew & the quality I create.
I'm not looking at it as just some beer...
It's MY beer...
It's the beer I want to be proud of & serve to people I love.
I've dumped very few batches, in my 20+ years of homebrewing.
...Probably like 5 to 8, maybe???
Since adopting the low-oxygen methods, I like my beers, more than I ever have.
I'm sure that your beers will only improve, as you continue toward your fight against oxidation.
Prost!
