Circadian Rhythm

[AZCoolerBrewer]

Often on HBT we assign scientific protocols, findings and expertise as reasoning for doing one thing or another. While my personal opinion is that doing so is fraught with philosophical cul-de-sacs, what else are we supposed to do to make reasonable decisions.

So I read this article on circadian cycle and of course judge my way of fermenting to be superior to others based on it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2836648/

So the article says that yeast comunicates with itself by ammonium levels and that with temperature levels being consant these levels eventually peak and then remain constant. In the circaidian cycle the higher ammonium levels prepare the yeast for a night cycle.

I have noticed that my attenuation is better than most reported or expected attenuation for similar beers. In my process a circadian cycle is created by my own, I wake up in the morning and put an ice pack in my cooler. My question is are fermentation chambers spoiling the circaidian process and there by putting the yeast to sleep early?

Now anyone who has read this far will see that this post is a bit of a satire. Science is usually too specific to reasonably use as a reason to do this or that, but I would be interested what interpretation if any others have about this article and why the findings make your brewing method superior.

 

[UndeadFred]

Well.. maybe so, but exposure to light will eventually skunk the hops. Everything in life has its tradeoffs...

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

I'd never consider cicadian beer.

Too buggy for me. They'd overpower the grain weevil character.

 

[ajdelange]

Well, and I am not kidding here, a guy in my club was up in the wee smalls during the last big brood emergence collecting the poor things as they came out of the groung. They wound up in his brew pot as what he called simply Cicada Ale. I tasted it but that was long enough ago that I certainly cannot recall anything unusual about it.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

Well.. maybe so, but exposure to light will eventually skunk the hops. Everything in life has its tradeoffs...

In the article. It mentions that circadian cycles can also be trained by 24 hour cycle temperature changes, so you don't have to leave your beer in the light.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I'd never consider cicadian beer.

Too buggy for me. They'd overpower the grain weevil character.

I can only detect grain weevil in lighter beers anyway.

 

[Singletrack]

My question is are fermentation chambers spoiling the circaidian process and there by putting the yeast to sleep early?

...and why the findings make your brewing method superior.

My answer: No. Life will, uh, find a way.

I think my way is superior, because I think I know when to call b.s. (I admit I have been nearly wrong before. ((That wasn't easy for me.)))

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

My answer: No. Life will, uh, find a way.

I think my way is superior, because I think I know when to call b.s. (I admit I have been nearly wrong before. ((That wasn't easy for me.)))

I would respond to your post, but I am busy cold crashing my beer that I bell hopped 5 days ago.

 

[dyqik]

To make a serious answer to the OP:

Brewer's yeast has been highly adapted by repeated breeding in stainless steel and other closed or indoor fermentation vessels over the past few centuries. So if you are using commercially derived years, you are choosing the yeast strain you brew with based on its past performance, which was probably mostly in closed fermentation vessels.

I can imagine wild yeast strains changing character over time of being used to brew with, but they're going to do that anyway, because they aren't adapted to breeding in wort.

 

[GHBWNY]

Around these parts, our circadias usually appear in mid- to late July, usually during the first spell of really hot weather. They sing pretty well, but they don't seem to have much rhythm.

Seriously, RDWHAHB.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

To make a serious answer to the OP:

So if you are using commercially derived years, you are choosing the yeast strain you brew with based on its past performance, which was probably mostly in closed fermentation vessels.

This may be true but apparently based on the experiments in the article saccharomyces cerevisiae still has the mechanisms to take advantage (if it is one) of a circadian cycle. The answer I'm really looking for is rather what differences if any occur in the properties of my beer when the yeast I use are trained to a circadian cycle. If I owned a ferm chamber, I would try myself and report back.

 

[FatDragon]

Higher attenuation isn't necessarily "better" attenuation, and in many cases it's actually worse. Case in point: my second shot at the oatmeal porter recipe I've been working on finished at 1.008. It was not a good beer. My third attempt finished at 1.024 because of recipe changes I made, and while it still needs work, it's much better at 1.024 than it was at 1.008.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

Higher attenuation isn't necessarily "better" attenuation, and in many cases it's actually worse.

Absolutely. If attenuation was the only thing anyone cared about we would all add alpha amylase to our fermentors along with the yeast. Really it was tongue in cheek to say I get better attenuation. What I am interested in is to provoke a discussion about what benefit using or not using this "knob" could provide.

 

[mbobhat]

Around these parts, our circadias usually appear in mid- to late July, usually during the first spell of really hot weather. They sing pretty well, but they don't seem to have much rhythm.

Seriously, RDWHAHB.

Haha, I remember a buddy of mine ate one of the "circadias" on a bet...it was screamin the whole way down!:rockin:

 

[dyqik]

This may be true but apparently based on the experiments in the article saccharomyces cerevisiae still has the mechanisms to take advantage (if it is one) of a circadian cycle. The answer I'm really looking for is rather what differences if any occur in the properties of my beer when the yeast I use are trained to a circadian cycle. If I owned a ferm chamber, I would try myself and report back.

It appears that the circadian rhythm discussed in the paper is triggered by temperature oscillations in the small fermentors, with other conditions being kept constant. The constant condition part definitely doesn't apply to wort fermentation to make beer - O2 levels drop, the yeast population grows, the wort is converted to alcohol, etc. EDIT to add: Reading the methods section, it took two weeks of constant media (~wort) conditions for the cycle to assert itself and stabilize, after the initial growth phase. The media was kept constant by continuous inflow and outflow of the media from the fermentor.

With large commercial fermentors fermenting typical wort, the thermal mass, and heat production from yeast activity is going to heavy damp the daily cycle, likely enough that it is overwhelmed by the temperature ramping of fermentor over several days by the yeast metabolic heat output, or deliberately introduced by temperature control. Where temperature control is used, there will inevitably be thermal cycles triggered by the cooling system switching on and off due to the thermostat hysteresis. But these are highly unlikely to line up with anything close to a daily cycle, and are likely only significant on a homebrew scale.

So I think a) it's unlikely that commercial fermentors experience a noticeable 24hr temperature cycle during the main part of fermentation, or that such a temperature cycle could easily be introduced; and b) small homebrew scale fermentors in fermentation chambers probably do see small temperature cycles, but they probably won't be close to a 24hr period, although you could try and program one to do that. Most importantly though, during beer fermentation, the other conditions for the yeast are changing constantly, so I'm skeptical that any cycle would get set up.

 

[Singletrack]

I would respond to your post, but I am busy cold crashing my beer that I bell hopped 5 days ago.

"Bell hopped?" Typo? Probably meant to say "cold hopped."

Be sure to cold hop at the max daily temp and cold crash at the min daily temp. This matches the yeast's expectations and prevents off flavors. There's a future research project to prove it.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

"Bell hopped?" Typo? Probably meant to say "cold hopped."

Be sure to cold hop at the max daily temp and cold crash at the min daily temp. This matches the yeast's expectations and prevents off flavors. There's a future research project to prove it.

How about "wood hopping". Since the original dry hoppers put the hops right into the barrel before transport and also I get "wood" every time I taste a beer thats been dry hopped.

It's interesting that you mention it, but my dry hops sink and float each day as the temp goes down and up in my cooler.