Discussion on malty German beers

[Vale71]

What would I know with tons of lab equipment and testing.

Which you have actually had a chance to use on the actual beer which we are actually discussing now? Who's the true believer here? You're nothing but biased and are obviously continuously just trying to push your own agenda.

 

[TheMadKing]

To get back on a more serious track, when PH is <7 and you have both alcohols and fatty acids in solution these will spontaneously form esters over time in a process that is neither mediated by yeast nor by enzymes.
It's among other things one of the reasons while lagers are more stable over time than ales since ales have a higher level of alcohols (including glicerol) than lagers. Very delicate ales such as Kölsch will tend to get "fruitier" over time as ester levels increase and there is no other prominent character, be it hops or dark malts or fruity yeast such as Weizen yeast, that will succesfully mask it up to a certain point.
Out of curiosity, at what temperature did you pitch and how did you conduct fermentation post-pitch as far as temperature is concerned?

I suspect you've nailed it here. This is a Helles Bock so at 7% it's pretty high in alcohol compared to most light lagers.

I pitched a big starter (600 billion cells) of Omega Bock yeast at 48F, oxygenated with an oxygen stone and fermented at 50F for 7 days, at which point I began to ramp the temperature 5 degrees F per day until it was at 68F for a diacetyl rest. Total time in the primary was 15 days. At which point I did the closed transfer to the keg and chilled to 35 on CO2 for forced carbonation

Edit: terminal gravity was 1.010 at the time of kegging

 

[Vale71]

A 7% beer will have "more" of everything so any changes will in genreral come forward more strongly.
Nothing wrong with how you conducted primary but I find 68F for a diacetyl rest a bit extreme, especially in a non-pressurized vessel. As a rule yeast will produce more higher alcohols the higher the temperature, the most critical phase being the growth phase i.e. right after pitch but 68F even at the end is still a bit much.

 

[Cavpilot2000]

Which you have actually had a chance to use on the actual beer which we are actually discussing now? Who's the true believer here? You're nothing but biased and are obviously continuously just trying to push your own agenda.

So experimental analysis has no ability to be predictive?

Follow me here, okay? Take a pencil or other nearby solid object in your hand. Hold it out at arms length. Let go of it.
Did you do it?

OKay, so while I am not at your location and did not witness the event, I can say with a HIGH degree of certainty that the pencil or other object fell straight down to the floor at a rate very close to 32.2 feet per second squared.

Again, I'm not there and didn't witness it, but I can make the (likely very accurate) assumption of what happened based on the following:
A: personal experience, repeated to the point of reliable predictability
B: The scientific measurements and conclusions of others even smarter than me which tell me the same thing

So it is POSSIBLE that you got a different result when you dropped your pencil, but I doubt it.

Do you see the power of reliable predictability?
That exact same methodology is how (within the limitations of the information provided) Die Beerery is able to predict what happened with the beer in question.

 

[Vale71]

A more pertinent simile would be, "I have no idea what planet you're on or if you're even on the surface of a planet but I'll predict at what rate of acceleration the pencil you let go will accelerate beacause I have done lots of experiments in my living room on planet Earth. If you believe differently but have no actual measurements you are wrong and what I believe must be right without the need for actual measurement because I have done experiments".

BTW I believe "predict" is not the correct term if your "prediction" only comes post-facto. I believe "divination" would be a more appropriate term in the English language.

 

[TheMadKing]

So experimental analysis has no ability to be predictive?

I completely agree with your example, however when there is more than 1 variable present the probably of the prediction being correct drops for every new variable added.

In my situation, there are things such as:

secureness of my connections, air penetrations that I'm not thinking of, purity of the CO2, dissolved oxygen concentration before kegging, continuing chemical reactions unrelated to oxygen in the beer, etc...There's literally hundreds of variables in play here.

So if I say I have an change in flavor (which may prove to be temporary), and little else is known about the context, then making a prediction does indicate bias. He may well be correct though. I'm not discounting that. He's just a dick about it and I don't like that.

Theres a common denominator in all of these discussions becoming heated and it's not the subject matter, it's the source.

 

[TheMadKing]

Come on!!!

 

[Cavpilot2000]

Note that I did say “within the limitations of the information provided”.

In essence, when asking for an analysis of a situation, the analysis is only as good as the information provided. More information (assuming it is accurate) leads to more reliable analysis.

 

[Vale71]

Just to add more fusel alcohol to the fire...

You mentioned a "honey-like note". One cause of that could be low levels of diacetyl/pentanedione. At the right level the "butterscotch" character associated with higher levels of VDKs turns into a caramelly/honey note. At which level this happens is dependent on individual sensitivity and possibly sinergistic effects with other beer components. The behavior of VDKs is peculiar in that yeast does not produce them directly but rather releases precursors that will then spontaneously turn into diacetyl/pentanedione givene enough time (temperature dependent). In practical terms what happens is that a beer that does taste diacetyl-free after some maturation suddenly takes on a buttery or honey-like character. This often happens relatively quickly when lagered beer is warmed up to serving temperature.
I don't think what you're experiencing is due to this since you matured you beer at a pretty high temperature, but since I cannot rule this possibility out any more than I can rule out oxidation due to oxygen ingress during transfer I will just list both as a possibility. If I were to claim that it MUST be oxygen (or conversely, that it MUST be due to VDKs) I'd just be exposing my personal bias for everyone to see. Since I have a very shy personality I'd rather avoid exposure of any kind...

And now a practical example of this. I'm currently enjoying a Czech Pils that I've brewed with double decoction and fermented with Wyeast's StaroPrague yeast. During lagering the beer was malty but rather neutral, shortly after I raised the temperature to serving temp a noticeable honey note popped up rather quickly, which is fortunate since I not only have a higher-than-average sensitivity to VDKs but also enjoy the character they impart to some beer style very much.

If someone were to come along and say, "Your beer is oxidized. You have this much oxygen from packaging. I know because I have tons of equipment and have run extensive tests and can predict/divine what is happening to beer all over the world" I would calmly tell them they're full of it. The reason being, my beer was simply never packaged! It's currently being served out of a Unitank where it was fermented, spunded and lagered with no transfers and hence no oxygen ingress whatsoever. Hell, I even repleced the standard silicone gaskets with EPDM gaskets as silicone will allow some oxygen to diffuse back in over time. And still my beer tastes like deliciously caramelly honey with malt and hops complementing it all nicely...

 

[Vale71]

Note that I did say “within the limitations of the information provided”.

In essence, when asking for an analysis of a situation, the analysis is only as good as the information provided. More information (assuming it is accurate) leads to more reliable analysis.

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.

 

[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.​