Discussion on malty German beers

[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.

 

[Schlenkerla]

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

Not much CO2 is required to meet/maintain equilibrium if you spund to the desired volume of CO2. It should be the same volume of CO2 at your serving temperature and pressure. At the point it's very low egress of CO2 if it's already hit the saturation limit for the temp and pressure. It just needs to fill the void as you pull a beer and maintain that pressure.

 

[Vale71]

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.

Speak for yourself please. I've never done injection as I find the idea of quick carbonating a beer that will then sit in maturation/lagering for weeks to be just a pointless gimmick, adding complexity and increasing the risk of infection through the use of unsanitary carbonation stones.
I've always carbed just fine by attaching my CO2 tank to the gas-in port, setting the right pressure and then letting the CO2 diffuse into the beer until equilibrium is reached. No wasted CO2, minimal O2 pickup according to Henry's law.

BTW I tried to start a discussion on this in the LODO section but it got almost completely ignored. Guess a discussion on the best way to force carbonate while minimizing O2 pickup didn't really fit your agenda? It must necessarily be "Spund or die!", right?

 

[Vale71]

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.

No it's not. As a matter of fact if doing lagers at proper lager temperatures you'll need about 1.5 vol of CO2 to get the beer fully carbonated. To push the same beer out of the keg at 1 bar overpressure (2 bar absolute) you'll need 2 vol of CO2, os if anything the opposite of wha you say is true for lagers. For ales you'll need slightly more than 2 vol to carbonate so what you say would be correct if you substituted "slightly more" for "quite a lot more".

 

[brewbama]

... attaching my CO2 tank to the gas-in port, setting the right pressure and then letting the CO2 diffuse into the beer until equilibrium is reached. No wasted CO2, minimal O2 pickup according to Henry's law.

This is what I thought most homebrewers do: set it and forget it.

Even setting the keg on its side, gas port down, and rocking it seems to describe sparging vs injection.

An inline carbonation stone apparatus like Blingman’s Quick Carb or a Soda Stream would be required for injection would it not? (BTW I tried the Quick Carb and did not like the results so I returned it)

And if CO2 was injected via some sort of apparatus, a CO2 scrubber could be used inline to remove the O2. https://www.vici.com/matsen/co2.php or oxygen trap https://www.vici.com/matsen/t_oxygen.php which is what was suggested on the German Brewing Forum not so long ago http://forum.germanbrewing.net/viewtopic.php?t=510

 

[Schlenkerla]

This is what I thought most homebrewers do: set it and forget it.

Even setting the keg on its side, gas port down, and rocking it seems to describe sparging vs injection.

An inline carbonation stone apparatus like Blingman’s Quick Carb or a Soda Stream would be required for injection would it not? (BTW I tried the Quick Carb and did not like the results so I returned it)

And if CO2 was injected via some sort of apparatus, a CO2 scrubber could be used inline to remove the O2. https://www.vici.com/matsen/co2.php or oxygen trap https://www.vici.com/matsen/t_oxygen.php

Regarding quick carb. Where you over pressurize and shake the living flock out if the keg and redo the pressure and repeat the shake thing. I have always found it to have this carbonic bite that I don't like verses just letting it sit on gas at serving temp and pressure, where two weeks later it's fully carbed.

Just recently I've liked my first goes at spunding. The first beer was not all that clear but I liked how it tastes and the head retention was good and slightly creamy. It started dropping clear after a week chilled. I had forgotten to add Irish moss.

I'm currently using a Menards regulator that I got for $4.99 and a 0-60 psi gauge for $3.99 and gas-in quick disconnect. The regulator is set to vent at 25-30 psi. It vents slowly through the valve. It's worth noting, I ordered a spunding valve from Beverage Connection on Jan 7th and it's still on back order. I decided to go the Menard's route cause I was tired of waiting for the thing. Need to cancel that order.

Pictures below.

 

[brewbama]

This is how I built my spunding valve years ago. http://seanterrill.com/2015/06/25/build-a-better-spunding-valve/comment-page-1/#comments

 

[Vale71]

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

Brew on

Careful my friend, if you go down that route you'll also start questioning homeopathy and crystal healing and magic water...
'cause we all know they work, right?

 

[Schlenkerla]

Speak for yourself please. I've never done injection as I find the idea of quick carbonating a beer that will then sit in maturation/lagering for weeks to be just a pointless gimmick, adding complexity and increasing the risk of infection through the use of unsanitary carbonation stones.
I've always carbed just fine by attaching my CO2 tank to the gas-in port, setting the right pressure and then letting the CO2 diffuse into the beer until equilibrium is reached. No wasted CO2, minimal O2 pickup according to Henry's law.

BTW I tried to start a discussion on this in the LODO section but it got almost completely ignored. Guess a discussion on the best way to force carbonate while minimizing O2 pickup didn't really fit your agenda? It must necessarily be "Spund or die!", right?

I don't think the standard method you mention is bad. I have done it that way for 12 years, up until last month.

The biggest problem I have is really is the closed transfer and the hose size from my fermentor to the keg. My ball valve is outlet is 1/2" and the keg in line is 3/16. Its really hard to find the right step down connection from my anvil fermentor. I resorted to using two barbs 1/2 to 3/8 and 3/8 to 1/4. I had to heat the 3/16 hose and force it on the 1/4 barb. The thing I don't like it all the bubbles in the closed transfer. I think I have this venturi thing going on that I can't stop. Doesn't matter how fuggin tight the fittings are on the line.

I have resorted at least once to opening the keg cover and done gentle transfers with my standard 1/2" line and racking cane connected to the ball valve. I've already purged the keg via fermentation. To me its the lesser of two evils.

BTW - Send me the link that you started.

 

[Big Monk]

BTW I tried to start a discussion on this in the LODO section but it got almost completely ignored. Guess a discussion on the best way to force carbonate while minimizing O2 pickup didn't really fit your agenda? It must necessarily be "Spund or die!", right?

Not really. That sub forum is low traffic and we never asked for it so we don’t feel any obligation to check it. No one really posts in there.

So in this case, it’s just a matter of not many people seeing it. The Low Oxygen subforum is where topics on Low Oxygen go to die.

 

[Schlenkerla]

Not really. That sub forum is low traffic and we never asked for it so we don’t feel any obligation to check it. No one really posts in there.

So in this case, it’s just a matter of not many people seeing it. The Low Oxygen subforum is where topics on Low Oxygen go to die.

Even at LOB its low traffic. http://www.lowoxygenbrewing.com/ There's only a few daily regulars on there. @Bilsch being one of them. On the only difference is there's no trolls. The subforum was created to eliminate or minimize the LODO/LOB debate threads. Even then some venture in to troll for awhile.