The OFFICIAL Low Oxygen Brewing Thread, AKA lodo, lowdo, LOB

[Big Monk]

sure. Dial in your cold side completely. closed transfers, spunding and proper fermentation management. Pitching rates, temps and most of what homebrewers consider good practice are out the window with this. Eliminate copper, develop a way to preboil and chill to pitching temps rapidly. mind your ph. Stop crushing your grain to flour. Small adjustable SS wine fermenters with adjustable fermentation caps make an easy mash tun with a proper fitting mash cap. Get your water chemistry right. To call commercially avaialbe co2 of dubious purity is an understatement. The truth is, most of it is impure as hell and will oxidize your beer. Theres plenty more I'm just thinking on the fly here.

This is all stuff that we are well aware of.

I'm looking for less of a retread of the German Brewing Forum's paper content and our website content and more of your personal experience.

How did you get into it? Was it the original "Helles" paper that inspired you?

 

[newuser12345]

So your main beef is with people using copper without a chelating agent such as Brewtan B/gallotannin? Is that correct?

They represent a small subsection of the people trying it and are more than willing to rectify it as soon as they are able.

my main "beef" are compromises being made to placate homebrewers that negate and destroy the thing you're actually after. For some this is a hobby, for others its an obsessive passion. This method simply isn't for hobbyists.

 

[z-bob]

And stop compromising and calling is low oxygen. It simply isn't. When oxidize your beer, it is no longer low oxygen. this isn't a difficult concept to understand.

So, trying to improve my dough-in technique to reduce air entrainment, and the use of oxygen scavengers is a waste of time if that's all I do. Got it. I'm out. I'll check the lodo thread again in a couple of years when I have the rest of my brewing science down. Meanwhile, I don't want to be a branded a heretic by the True Believers just because I'm trying to learn something by incremental changes.

 

[Big Monk]

my main "beef" are compromises being made to placate homebrewers that negate and destroy the thing you're actually after. For some this is a hobby, for others its an obsessive passion. This method simply isn't for hobbyists.

Other than copper with no chelating agent, what compromises are you talking about?

 

[newuser12345]

This is all stuff that we are well aware of.

I'm looking for less of a retread of the German Brewing Forum's paper content and our website content and more of your personal experience.

How did you get into it? Was it the original "Helles" paper that inspired you?

what inspired me were tasting certain beers and being completely unable to replicate or produce anything that came close to their flavor. At first it was an annoyance, then a challenge, then something I thought about a lot and made the requisite steps towards the knowledge and technique necessary to make them.

 

[Big Monk]

So, trying to improve my dough-in technique to reduce air entrainment, and the use of oxygen scavengers is a waste of time if that's all I do. Got it. I'm out. I'll check the lodo thread again in a couple of years when I have the rest of my brewing science down. Meanwhile, I don't want to be a branded a heretic by the True Believers just because I'm trying to learn something by incremental changes.

This person is NOT associated with us.

We want you to stick around!

It's important to filter out the noise here. newuser12345 doesn't speak for us at lowoxygenbrewing.com. Let's keep the conversation moving forward in order to help those who want to try out the methods.

 

[newuser12345]

So, trying to improve my dough-in technique to reduce air entrainment, and the use of oxygen scavengers is a waste of time if that's all I do. Got it. I'm out. I'll check the lodo thread again in a couple of years when I have the rest of my brewing science down. Meanwhile, I don't want to be a branded a heretic by the True Believers just because I'm trying to learn something by incremental changes.

this technique is doesn't allow for incremental changes.

 

[Big Monk]

this technique is doesn't allow for incremental changes.

It's important to note that whether someone uses copper or not, or force carbonates, or does anything else that may compromise the lingering malt flavors you get from Low Oxygen brewing, it does not change the fact that if they follow procedure up to and including coming out of the mash tun they will taste the vast difference between traditional wort and Low Oxygen wort. There is no disputing that.

Compromises after that will affect the longevity of these flavors. No one disputes that, but the most important point is that they have tasted it and often work very hard to preserve that through to packaging. If you are losing it after the boil, then use Brewtan B or sub SS for copper. If you are losing at packaging, then improve your cold side process. Even those who followed procedure to a T and made immediate process changes still had a learning curve. You have to start somewhere.

I can't see anything wrong with that, especially considering that I follow the procedures to a T. If you don't make room for people who want to improve then no one is ever going to try it.

 

[h22lude]

What system changes have you made? We recommend 20-30 ppm to start depending on what your equipment upgrades have been.

BTB doesn't affect water composition or pH like Meta does. The recommended values listed on Wyeast's site for the mash is 0.25 g/gal.

I e-BIAB full mash volume. Boil mash water then chill (with cooper).
Recirculating mash through a Locline which is underneath the level of the mash. Mash cap and kettle lid. Boil wort with a boil off of 15% but I'm going to test lower power and less lid gap to get it closer to 10%. Whirlpool using a whirlpool arm about half way down so now splashing. Chill to pitch temp. Transfer to my fermentor, pitch a large starter and aerate with pure O2 at .5LPM for 2 minutes. I haven't decided if I will let this ferment out and then add priming sugar or keg with 4 points left. Right now it is hard for me to test gravity without getting O2 into the fermentor. I have a bucket w/o a spigot, carboy and bottling bucket to use. I usually use the bucket w/o spigot but no way to get a reading without opening it. Carboy is good for closed transfers but still hard to get a reading. This is way I'm thinking I'll let it ferment out before transferring. I'll match some priming sugar and inject it through the carboy cap with a syringe. I purge my kegs with StarSan. I'm going to try a new way of getting everything out that someone posted in another thread. Fill it with StarSan, tip it upside down and fill the rest through the gas post. The O2 will come out the beer dip tube. Once StarSan comes out, the keg is completely O2 free. I'll use my spunging valve on the keg until it is ready to serve.

 

[Bilsch]

my main "beef" are compromises being made to placate homebrewers that negate and destroy the thing you're actually after. For some this is a hobby, for others its an obsessive passion. This method simply isn't for hobbyists.

There are a lot of levels of obsessive. I am passionate about low oxygen brewing but I don't think you need to be hardcore to make it work. A little study, some attention to detail and almost anyone should be able to pull it off. It might not be exactly like the professionals do it but there is always more then one way to skin a cat.
I respectfully disagree with your last assertion. The methods we are talking about here are exactly for hobbyists.

 

[MSK_Chess]

the bastardization of all the research and work done by people prior to the homebrew scaling and dumbing down of Low oxygen brewing drives me nuts. The truth is, the threshold of DO is very low. This is one area where the pros have it better than us. Mash tun geometry, automation, more high tech oxygen stripping tech and precision engineering gve the pros an upper hand.

I cringe for Kunze when I hear concessions being made that render the entire process pointless.

Sure but even at homebrew level I have noticed significant improvement on my beers pre "pseudo LODO" attempts, remarkably better results infact as I suspect have others. How are we to account for it? Delusion? Wishful thinking? or empirical evidence in our glass?

 

[fuzzy2133]

Well it is at total bummer I can not even attempt a LODO brew session with my copper IC and current equipment.
Yea like that is really going to stop home brewers from attempting a new process.

 

[Big Monk]

Well it is at total bummer I can not even attempt a LODO brew session with my copper IC and current equipment.
Yea like that is really going to stop home brewers from attempting a new process.

 

[newuser12345]

Sure but even at homebrew level I have noticed significant improvement on my beers pre "pseudo LODO" attempts, remarkably better results infact as I suspect have others. How are we to account for it? Delusion? Wishful thinking? or empirical evidence in our glass?

some of the things that these two guys are advocating are good regardless of your methods being low oxygen or not. Spunding is good, better ph management is good, fermentation control is good know matter the style of beer (with a couple obvious exceptions). The thing is, all the science and groundwork has already been laid out for this type of brewing. Its all there, albeit sometimes in German haha but this is an all encompassing technique. Pre boiling your water then saturating it with copper and then coupling it with the massive surface area most homebrew mash tuns employ will prevents you from brewing according to the science of this method. Not wanting it to be so because copper is cheap and plentiful and igloo coolers are easy to find doesn't change science. Its true whether you want it to be or not.

 

[Big Monk]

some of the things that these two guys are advocating are good regardless of your methods being low oxygen or not. Spunding is good, better ph management is good, fermentation control is good know matter the style of beer (with a couple obvious exceptions). The thing is, all the science and groundwork has already been laid out for this type of brewing. Its all there, albeit sometimes in German haha but this is an all encompassing technique. Pre boiling your water then saturating it with copper and then coupling it with the massive surface area most homebrew mash tuns employ will prevents you from brewing according to the science of this method. Not wanting it to be so because copper is cheap and plentiful and igloo coolers are easy to find doesn't change science. Its true whether you want it to be or not.

Saturating it with copper? We’ve researched the concept of the Fenton reaction extensively and we advocate using Brewtan B or another similar gallotannin based substance if using metals other than SS. With that said, we still want people to try it. You mentioned before that people not 100% complying was like “throwing the baby out with the bath water...”. I think excluding them on those grounds is a better representation of that idiom.

You’re going to have to do better than vaguely regurgitating something you got second hand if you want to have a serious discussion about this with us. We’ve referenced everything we discuss and out “bastardizing” of Low Oxygen has tons of study, experimentation and documentation behind it.

Surface area is mitigated with a mash cap. Not hard to do or expensive.

The humor of being chastised by someone that is advocating I’m not being Low Oxygen enough is not lost on me. Escpecially since most who know me will remember I was on the other side of the argument on April 2016.

All those who are trying the methods out: keep doing what you are doing. “Rome wasn’t built in a day” and when you get your process down you’ll be happy you came along for the ride.

Now back to actually talking about methods and process!

 

[newuser12345]

Well it is at total bummer I can not even attempt a LODO brew session with my copper IC and current equipment.
Yea like that is really going to stop home brewers from attempting a new process.

I think I like the term lower oxygen, this is just not compatible with the methods and science. The delicate polyphenols will be gone.

 

[newuser12345]

Saturating it with copper? We’ve researched the concept of the Fenton reaction extensively and we advocate using Brewtan B or another similar gallotannin based substance if using metals other than SS. You’re going to have to do better than vaguely regurgitating something you got second hand if you want to have a serious discussion about this with us. We’ve reference everything we discuss and out “bastardizing” of Low Oxygen has tons of study, experimentation and documentation behind it.

Surface area is mitigated with a mash cap. Not hard to do or expensive.

The humor of being chastised by someone that is advocating I’m not being Low Oxygen enough is not lost on me. Escpecially since most who know me will remember I was on the other side of the argument on April 2016.

you've advocated for food grade tannins to mitigate the fenton reactions while simultaneously telling people it's ok to take a tiered approach and not. Its double speak and not scientifically correct.

I agree, food grade tannins are cheap, a mash cap is cheap, and SS equipment is out there if you seek it, but please stop telling people that its ok not to use them if they cant or don't want to. You're wasting their time, your time and ignoring the science and teachings of Kunze.

 

[mabrungard]

This worry over copper seems overblown to me. Unless your copper components are bright and shiny, the oxide layer and any organic layer on the copper surface should help keep ionic copper out of your wort. My brewing system has a number of copper tubes and I've used copper test strips to check copper levels in wort and found none. With that said, I recall that the reporting limit is about 10 ppm, so the result isn't all that valuable.

 

[newuser12345]

This worry over copper seems overblown to me. Unless your copper components are bright and shiny, the oxide layer and any organic layer on the copper surface should help keep ionic copper out of your wort. My brewing system has a number of copper tubes and I've used copper test strips to check copper levels in wort and found none. With that said, I recall that the reporting limit is about 10 ppm, so the result isn't all that valuable.

With the threshold as low as it is, I wouldn't trust something as notoriously inaccurate as paper test strips. Same goes for sulfite test strips. You need to fork out the money for a sulfite tester.

 

[Big Monk]

you've advocated for food grade tannins to mitigate the fenton reactions while simultaneously telling people it's ok to take a tiered approach and not. Its double speak and not scientifically correct.

I agree, food grade tannins are cheap, a mash cap is cheap, and SS equipment is out there if you seek it, but please stop telling people that its ok not to use them if they cant or don't want to. You're wasting their time, your time and ignoring the science and teachings of Kunze.

For the record, we advocate that people DON’T use copper without a chelating agent. You are conflating our not chastising people for doing so with us promoting it. We don’t want to turn people off the methods for missing a single piece.

There is more to the Fenton reaction than instantaneous oxidation. We have plenty of academic and technical material on our site if you are interest. Check the brewing references page.

 

[MSK_Chess]

some of the things that these two guys are advocating are good regardless of your methods being low oxygen or not. Spunding is good, better ph management is good, fermentation control is good know matter the style of beer (with a couple obvious exceptions). The thing is, all the science and groundwork has already been laid out for this type of brewing. Its all there, albeit sometimes in German haha but this is an all encompassing technique. Pre boiling your water then saturating it with copper and then coupling it with the massive surface area most homebrew mash tuns employ will prevents you from brewing according to the science of this method. Not wanting it to be so because copper is cheap and plentiful and igloo coolers are easy to find doesn't change science. Its true whether you want it to be or not.

I will be brewing a dryish British Best Bitter tomorrow with copious amounts of Styrian Bobek hops and East Kent Goldings which will benefit greatly from the techniques the LODO guys advocate. Mmmm so crisp and fresh. Nom nom nom

 

[newuser12345]

For the record, we advocate that people DON’T use copper without a chelating agent. You are conflating our not chastising people for doing so with us promoting it. We don’t want to turn people off the methods for missing a single piece.

I don’t think you have a good grasp on the Fenton reaction.

If you would like to discuss coppers contribution to brewing and fermentation we can if it would help you. I'm all for simplifying things to make them more digestible. Simply saying, lose the copper is easier than regurgitating the science behind it.

I do not like chastising people, but claiming to be an advocate (this is the OFFICIAL LODO thread right..) while not telling people to stop with brewing practices that are deleterious to the low oxygen process isn't helping anyone.

 

[Big Monk]

If you would like to discuss coppers contribution to brewing and fermentation we can if it would help you. I'm all for simplifying things to make them more digestible. Simply saying, lose the copper is easier than regurgitating the science behind it.

I do not like chastising people, but claiming to be an advocate (this is the OFFICIAL LODO thread right..) while not telling people to stop with brewing practices that are deleterious to the low oxygen process isn't helping anyone.

My point was that I don’t need you to explain it to me but if you need a better understanding we have tons of references to help you out.

 

[newuser12345]

One thing I hope to implore all brewers looking to try low oxygen brewing is that low oxygen brewing is a different method of brewing, not a superior one. It is a way to get certain flavors into the finished product. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Unfortunately other brewers that enjoy this flavor and style are prone to hyperbole and say things like "the best malt flavor only comes from low oxygen brewing" or things to that affect. I personally love the flavor, but there are also several amazing brewers and beer drinkers that don't. But you are never going to know unless you actually follow the methods as outlined by actual authorities on brewing and not bastardized methods that fly in the face of scientific fact.

 

[newuser12345]

My point was that I don’t need you to explain it to me but if you need a better understanding we have tons of references to help you out.

I believe we are reading from the same resources, which confuses me even more as to how you can tell so many brewers starting out that their deleterious practices are ok or that changing just one at a time will achieve what the authors of said resources set out to accomplish.

 

[Big Monk]

I believe we are reading from the same resources, which confuses me even more as to how you can tell so many brewers starting out that their deleterious practices are ok or that changing just one at a time will achieve what the authors of said resources set out to accomplish.

You’re confused. We state very clearly that a step-wise approach produces step-wise results. Nowhere do we state that skipping steps or implementing piece-meal produces the best results. We also don’t deter people from trying it. That’s because we are trying to be inclusive.

People are okay with that, as well as our presentation of it, because they understand what it takes to do the process to a T and know that we aren’t leading them astray but rather helping them get their foot in the door.

You are the only one that seems to mind.

 

[newuser12345]

You’re confused. We state very clearly that a step-wise approach produces step-wise results. Nowhere do we state that skipping steps or implementing piece-meal produces the best results. We also don’t deter people from trying it. That’s because we are trying to inclusive.

People are okay with that, as well as our presentation of it, because we are not trying to exclude people.

No. oxidize the delicate polyphenols, and its gone. Your "inclusivity" as you call it is coming at the cost of actually executing and benefitting from the science behind low oxygen brewing.

 

[passedpawn]

Subbing to this.

I did email the admins the other day and ask for a LODO sub forum. Yooper emailed me back and said she would bring it up to the other admins and try to get it implemented.

I was against it. I hope you guys know I'm on your side WRT this topic, but we won't fracture the forum structure further until we think it's really warranted. If the topic takes off, then maybe a subforum is warranted.
Right now, it's just another fringe brewing topic.

Until that time, keep on building the LODO knowledge base. I think it's very valuable. If there are any issues here, just report as usual.

 

[h22lude]

No. oxidize the delicate polyphenols, and its gone. Your "inclusivity" as you call it is coming at the cost of actually executing and benefitting from the science behind low oxygen brewing.

You are missing what he is saying. You have blinders on. Scotty is saying the same thing you are. To brew low oxygen, you need to follow the steps very closely. Any deviation will result in oxygen ingress which at that point won't be low oxygen.

HOWEVER, what you are missing is Scotty is telling people that they should try all the low oxygen processes they can with what they have now to get used to the different procedures. You are reading this as him telling people they can skip steps and still brew low oxygen. That is absolutely incorrect. Some people can't afford to buy new things right away so they need to improvise. If someone has a copper chiller and can't get their hands on BTB, why can't they use it and still brew with the rest of the low oxygen procedures? They know the copper is precluding them from brewing actual low oxygen beer but at least they can get good practice with the other steps. It also doesn't mean that the copper will make bad beer. In most cases, brewing with low oxygen procedures except for using copper will probably increase the quality of that persons beer.

Let's end this argument and talk about actually brewing beer. These are the types of back and forth arguments that can deter people from asking questions.

For people looking to get into low oxygen brewing...there are specific procedures you most follow to achieve low oxygen beer. Any step skipped will result in oxygen getting into your beer. At that point you are no longer brewing low oxygen beer. This however doesn't mean you will be brewing bad beer.

 

[h22lude]

I was against it. I hope you guys know I'm on your side WRT this topic, but we won't fracture the forum structure further until we think it's really warranted. If the topic takes off, then maybe a subforum is warranted.
Right now, it's just another fringe brewing topic.

Until that time, keep on building the LODO knowledge base. I think it's very valuable. If there are any issues here, just report as usual.

I do think having a subforum will bring more people into it. I think people see one thread and skip over it. Having questions asked in one thread gets confusing and hard to find answers. Having a subforum will also weed out the negativity of people saying LODO is hogwash. But I understand there needs to be more discussions on the topic to warrant a subforum. Hopefully that will happen with more information getting out to people on HBT.