LODO and BIAB

[stevehaun]

I use a 3 vessel system but I was wondering if it is even possible to do LODO brewing with a BIAB system?

 

[Iseneye]

I use a 3 vessel system but I was wondering if it is even possible to do LODO brewing with a BIAB system?

Do you mean single vessel BIAB? It is difficult to do on single vessel because you should underlet the grains and then gently drain after mash. Single vessel BIAB means a lot of oxidation happens during those steps.

If you have three vessel then I would stick with that. That is assuming you have a herms where you can do step mashing.

 

[stevehaun]

I do have a HERMS and I do step mash my lagers but what does step mashing have to do with LODO?

 

[day_trippr]

It doesn't

I recall there have been threads with BIAB brewers working out LoDO strategies. See what Google can find (site:homebrewtalk.com with whatever search terms make sense).

Otherwise, I don't think BIAB precludes underletting, though I recall some BIAB folks just lower the bag wicked slow so the air in the grist is gently motivated up and out, and then at the other end, an equally wicked slow bag removal to minimize splashing. In the middle - I don't know that BIAB lends itself to a mash cap or not (not a BIAB practitioner) but I suppose even that could be worked out...

Cheers!

 

[Iseneye]

I do have a HERMS and I do step mash my lagers but what does step mashing have to do with LODO?

Yes you are right. I am so used to LODO being used as a full process from start to finish, not just the reduction of oxygen, so that is my mistake.

 

[enkamania]

It doesn't

I recall there have been threads with BIAB brewers working out LoDO strategies. See what Google can find (site:homebrewtalk.com with whatever search terms make sense).

Otherwise, I don't think BIAB precludes underletting, though I recall some BIAB folks just lower the bag wicked slow so the air in the grist is gently motivated up and out, and then at the other end, an equally wicked slow bag removal to minimize splashing. In the middle - I don't know that BIAB lends itself to a mash cap or not (not a BIAB practitioner) but I suppose even that could be worked out...

Cheers!

The issue for me, is draining after mash. Not sure how you do that without splashing. Mash cap isn't an issue, grant I have a basket, so it's probably easier than a bag.

 

[NeoBrew]

Why don't you make a CO2 tent to surround the top of your pot when you pull the grain bag? That way you could purge oxygen out of the area when you pull the bag.

[Just for the record, green is a little used convention for sarcasm here on HBT. ...if you are going to go down the complex and complicated science of LODO, don't do something easy like BIAB. ]

 

[Bilsch]

I use a 3 vessel system but I was wondering if it is even possible to do LODO brewing with a BIAB system?

There are some brewers over at lowoxygenbrewing that are doing biab Lodo. You might check there for best practices on that.

 

[jdauria]

I do Low Oxygen with BIAB. I mill the grain right into the grain bag and very very slowly lower the bag into the water and then slowly stir it. Zero problems with dough balls. I do not pre-heat and chill water first, I pre-treat the water with DME and baker's yeast and wait 1.5 hours before heating the water.

To toot my own horn, I have made many award winning beers with this process and had two LoDo beers, a Helles and a Czech Dark make the NHC finals this year and both advanced to the final table for their categories.

 

[brewbama]

I do Low Oxygen with BIAB. I mill the grain right into the grain bag and very very slowly lower the bag into the water and then slowly stir it. Zero problems with dough balls. I do not pre-heat and chill water first, I pre-treat the water with DME and baker's yeast and wait 1.5 hours before heating the water.

To toot my own horn, I have made many award winning beers with this process and had two LoDo beers, a Helles and a Czech Dark make the NHC finals this year and both advanced to the final table for their categories.

What is your dosage on DME and yeast to pretreat you’re strike liquor?

Congrats on your success!

 

[jdauria]

What is your dosage on DME and yeast to pretreat you’re strike liquor?

Congrats on your success!

2 grams per gallon of each.

Thanks!

 

[Unicorn_Platypus]

2 grams per gallon of each.

Thanks!

Do you treat mash or boil with sulfites as well? If so, in what dosage?

 

[Jocky]

I do Low Oxygen with BIAB. I mill the grain right into the grain bag and very very slowly lower the bag into the water and then slowly stir it. Zero problems with dough balls. I do not pre-heat and chill water first, I pre-treat the water with DME and baker's yeast and wait 1.5 hours before heating the water.

What ppm Oxygen do you end up with?

 

[RPh_Guy]

Do you treat mash or boil with sulfites as well? If so, in what dosage?

Are you familiar with Low Oxygen methods?
Have a look here:
http://www.lowoxygenbrewing.com/

There's another summary here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/lodo-techniques.639753/

Sulfite is added to the strike water before dough in. The amount is system dependent, but 20-30ppm Na-meta is a reasonable starting point if you make a reasonable amount of system/process modifications like deoxygenating the strike water and capping the mash.

Don't forget good cold side practices as well; otherwise you lose the flavors you worked to protect.

What ppm Oxygen do you end up with?

Yeast Oxygen Scavenging may be the most effective method of lowering DO in strike water.

http://www.lowoxygenbrewing.com/brewing-methods/yeast-deoxygenation-method/

I also use this method. I cap the water while it's deoxygenating, so I should be achieving even lower DO than what's been shown. However I don't have a DO meter to know for sure.

 

[brewbama]

The only problem with linking to pages on the Low Oxygen site is they might be out of date. The discussion forum is a better source of updated information but digging thru pages of forum banter to find the latest and greatest can be a needle in a haystack. I can only image the chore it would be to keep the website updated with fast paced technique optimization.

 

[Bilsch]

There are members from that site, like me, RPH and others that do drive by's over here fairly regularly. You can ask here and get pretty good answers or spend some time looking through all the free archives over at LOB.

 

[tmendick]

I've seen a lot of overlap of members between the two forums, I appreciate that some of you guys come here to answer questions too. IMO the LOB forum is a bit harder to navigate for a "casual" LODO-interested brewer.

 

[Bilsch]

Yea I can see where it could be a bit daunting for anyone new to the method. So anyone interested can feel free to hit any of us up in one of the threads or via pm and we will help get you up to speed.

 

[jdauria]

Do you treat mash or boil with sulfites as well? If so, in what dosage?

I use SMB (Sodium Metabisulfite, basically campden tablets but I use a powder instead) in the mash also at a 20 ppm rate, or about .64 grams. That 20 ppm of Sulfate is usually all I add to most lagers as I am for a soft water profile, but if I was brewing Pilsner where I want to accent the hops I would add gypsum too for more sulfate.

 

[jdauria]

What ppm Oxygen do you end up with?

I don't have a dissolved oxygen meter, but tests presented on the LoDO site show that water with 6.5 mg/L of dissolved oxygen being reduced with the yeast/sugar method as follows:
1 hour - 0.33mg/l
2 hours - 0.27mg/l
3 hours - 0.31mg/l
5 hours - 0.36 mg/l
17 hours - 0.47 mg/l

So my assumption is I am in the ballpark of under 0.50 mg/L, then add SMB which will future scrub some oxygen. I usually wait an hour after treating water before mashing in, but a few times I have treated the water the night before, which has the numbers above show, is still a decent reduction of oxygen.

 

[moreb33rplz]

At the risk of derailing this thread, do commercial breweries adhere to LODO practices?

 

[RPh_Guy]

At the risk of derailing this thread, do commercial breweries adhere to LODO practices?

Small breweries in the US? Typically not, unfortunately.

 

[moreb33rplz]

Small breweries in the US? Typically not, unfortunately.

Do German/Belgian/British breweries do it?

It kind of begs the question, right? If the breweries who make your favorite beer don't do it, why would I do it?

 

[Broothru]

I use SMB (Sodium Metabisulfite, basically campden tablets but I use a powder instead) in the mash also at a 20 ppm rate, or about .64 grams. That 20 ppm of Sulfate is usually all I add to most lagers as I am for a soft water profile, but if I was brewing Pilsner where I want to accent the hops I would add gypsum too for more sulfate.

Am I correct in assuming 5 gallon finished batches? The reason I ask is 0.65 gr NaMeta is what I settled on for my ~9 gal. total water (yield 5.3 gal finished beer). Trial/error led me to this amount rather than empirical measurement, and has worked out well.

Also, is there any 'ballpark' rule of thumb measure for yeast:dextrose per gallon in pre-treating brewing water. Not looking for an in-depth analysis, just "Yeast Oxygen Scavenging for Dummies" primer. I've not yet experimented with this particular LoDO trick and would like to do a quick and easy test batch against a 'control' batch.

Thanks,

Brooo Brother

 

[RPh_Guy]

Do German/Belgian/British breweries do it?

It kind of begs the question, right? If the breweries who make your favorite beer don't do it, why would I do it?

Belgian, I don't think so. Not sure.
German breweries generally yes, but imports to the US are usually stale.
British beer, quite the opposite, it's generally very oxidized.

Low oxygen brewing (and the process recommended by the developers of this method) has a lot of advantages to improving flavor and prolonging shelf life.
It's up to you to decide how good is good enough, or whether you prefer oxidized beer.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE low oxygen beer and other beer mostly tastes stale to me, the large majority US commerical beer. The effort it is taking to dial in my process is more than justified from the resulting beer in my opinion.

Also, is there any 'ballpark' rule of thumb measure for yeast:dextrose per gallon in pre-treating brewing water. Not looking for an in-depth analysis, just "Yeast Oxygen Scavenging for Dummies" primer. I've not yet experimented with this particular LoDO trick and would like to do a quick and easy test batch against a 'control' batch.

Bring water to 90-100°F
Add 2g/gal bread yeast and dextrose.
Cap and allow to sit for at least 60 minutes, 90 might be better.
Add active oxygen scavengers right before dough in.

 

[jdauria]

Am I correct in assuming 5 gallon finished batches? The reason I ask is 0.65 gr NaMeta is what I settled on for my ~9 gal. total water (yield 5.3 gal finished beer). Trial/error led me to this amount rather than empirical measurement, and has worked out well.

Also, is there any 'ballpark' rule of thumb measure for yeast:dextrose per gallon in pre-treating brewing water. Not looking for an in-depth analysis, just "Yeast Oxygen Scavenging for Dummies" primer. I've not yet experimented with this particular LoDO trick and would like to do a quick and easy test batch against a 'control' batch.

Thanks,

Brooo Brother

I settled on the 20 ppm of SMB (or .65 grams) after dialing in my LoDo process. I am usually using 8.5-9.0 gallons.

Ballpark process is 2 grams per gallon each of bakers yeast/dextrose, stir slowly as not to splash, cover the water with a mash cap and then wait at least an hour before mashing in.

 

[h22lude]

I do Low Oxygen with BIAB. I mill the grain right into the grain bag and very very slowly lower the bag into the water and then slowly stir it. Zero problems with dough balls. I do not pre-heat and chill water first, I pre-treat the water with DME and baker's yeast and wait 1.5 hours before heating the water.

To toot my own horn, I have made many award winning beers with this process and had two LoDo beers, a Helles and a Czech Dark make the NHC finals this year and both advanced to the final table for their categories.

I remember reading a thread about this on the low oxygen site. The person that started it said they were getting some gunk in the water doing this yeast method. Do you notice this affecting the water or clarity of the beer at all? I'd like to try this method out. For some reason I just hate using chillers so if I can remove that from the preboil stage, I'd be all for it.

I've only entered one competition in the 10 years of brewing. It was last year's NHC in Portland. I entered a low oxygen pilsner. I won first place in the first round at my entry location. I didn't medal but it advanced to the final table in the pilsner category. One judge said he tried to get the other judges to give a higher score because he thought it was easily the best pilsner. Those bottles I sent in for the final round were bottles I had leftover from the time I brewed it for the first round. I wasn't able to rebrew it in time. I don't remember how long it was from brewing to final round but it was probably 6 months. Getting to the final table with a bottled 6 month old beer says something about low oxygen brewing.

 

[RPh_Guy]

The person that started it said they were getting some gunk in the water doing this yeast method. Do you notice this affecting the water or clarity of the beer at all?

The "gunk" is the yeast in suspension. It does not affect clarity. Your barley has all kinds of bacteria and yeast on it regardless.

 

[h22lude]

Do German/Belgian/British breweries do it?

It kind of begs the question, right? If the breweries who make your favorite beer don't do it, why would I do it?

Most German breweries brew low oxygen. Not sure about other countries. Most US breweries don't.

The reason I brew low oxygen is because I really don't love most of the beers my local breweries are putting out. They taste like the beers I used to brew before low oxygen. By no means are they bad beers. I just don't like the taste. if you like the taste of those beers, maybe low oxygen isn't for you. I really enjoy German beers. The grain pop is just not achieved by local US breweries because they don't brew low oxygen. Try a beer from W, Ayinger, Paulaner or Bitburger. Then try a US one in the same style. I'd be willing to bet you notice a big difference.

 

[RPh_Guy]

I settled on the 20 ppm of SMB (or .65 grams) after dialing in my LoDo process. I am usually using 8.5-9.0 gallons.

What's your process to remove the grain bag? It seems like that step has a lot of potential for aeration as well.