This dude says vorlauf strips lipids and should not be done.

[kombat]

It is a fact that not rehydrating can produce great beer. It only takes a single data point to prove it but I have many.

Whether or not rehydrating produces better beer is not the question. At the end of the day, it's all about pitching rates. If you're sprinkling the yeast directly into the wort, but you're accounting for the decreased viability rate by pitching twice as much, then the beer will still turn out fine. But if you've calculated your yeast pitching rate assuming 100% viability, but employing a pitching method that's been proven to diminish viability by up to 50% (i.e., sprinkling dry), then you're underpitching.

And surely we can all agree that underpitching definitely results in sub-par beer, right? Or are the contrarians even going to dispute that? Are we now saying that it doesn't matter how much yeast you pitch, or how you pitch it, as long as you pitch some yeast, the beer will turn out the same? Is anyone really willing to go on record with such a ludicrous position?

 

[kombat]

It's a shame that thread also turned into useless hydrate/no hydrate debate.

One of the two controversial assertions in the original blog entry was that rehydrating yeast is harmful. What did you think we'd be talking about in this thread? Glass carboys vs. plastic buckets?

 

[Yuri_Rage]

Let's keep it on topic. This is not the thread in which to carry on the dry yeast re-hydration debate.

If you'd like to further explore dry yeast behavior and cell wall structure/survivability in the presence/absence of sugar/protein, please do so in another thread.

A discussion of lipids and yeast health is certainly welcome in the context of the OP's article and question.

 

[hunter_le five]

That's not very much - how much do the rest of you guys recirculate/vorlauf? I used to volauf a couple pitchers' worth (about a gallon in total), but ever since I switched to a grant/pump recirculation setup, I've been drawing extremely clear sweet wort from my mash tun. I recirculate for 10-15 minutes while my sparge water heats up, which works out to several gallons being recirculated. I've found that after 5-10 minutes of continuous recirculation, the wort clears up considerably. I don't know if that makes any difference in the final beer, but it's nice to know I've got very clear wort going into the boil kettle.

I don't recirculate much, maybe 1/2 - 2 gallons these days, just until I am satisfied that no large solid particulate is coming through.
I used to do it continuously for 15 minutes, until others told me I was wasting my time.

 

[edroberts]

If vorlauf apparently strips useful lipids from the beer, then there needs to be some additional questions asked:

1. How much does a decrease in lipids contribute to yeast viability, fermentation, and the finished beer?
2. How many lipids are lost in the small amount of grain bed filtering that occurs with vorlauf? Would you benefit from stirring the mash when draining to extract as much of these apparently lost lipids as possible then?
3. Would filtering out trub post-boil further decrease the lipids carried over to fermentation?
4. Does bringing over TOO many lipids decrease beer quality?

We could debate on all of the above. But in the end, someone needs to find out how much of an impact, if any, does removal of a small amount of lipids contribute to the quality of your beer.

 

[mabrungard]

Regarding the vorlauf question, brewers that use RIMS or HERMS are vorlaufing the entire mash. I'm not aware that this relegates them to producing poor beer. I've tasted great beers made with those methods.

 

[LandoLincoln]

I forgot the vorlauf one time last year. Best beer that I made that year. Nothing that resembled tannins or astringency. I wouldn't hesitate to not vorlauf again sometime in my batch sparge process. Typical had been vorlauf until clear, usually by pump, usually a couple gallons.

I would describe it as a thick malty mouthfeel.

I vorlauf for 60 minutes (AKA "recirculate"). My beer should have tons of tannin extraction / astringency. It does not.

 

[LLBrewer]

Of course it can. Ester production, attenuation, lag time, acetaldehyde production and reuptake, sulphur levels, etc. - have you even read "Yeast?" You're making a lot of broad proclamations with seemingly zero awareness that these questions have all been thoroughly investigated scientifically and conclusively answered in objective and quantitative ways. I don't mean to offend you, but you're coming off sounding very naive.

I doubt you're missing the point on purpose. The point is that "better" is entirely subjective. I'm not disputing that there might be a measurable difference in some characteristic. What I'm saying is that I simply don't care. Same with the lipids. If my beer were coming out poorly I would start to investigate such things (although rehydrating / vorloufing would be FAR from the first place I'd start looking). My sincere guess is that if you could control all variables except for the yeast cell count you wouldn't notice a marked difference in the final product between 120 billion and 220 billion in a normal gravity beer (1.050 - 1.060).

 

[biertourist]

The author appears to be referencing directly or indirectly a statement / study by Charles Bamforth about home brewer-style CONSTANTLY RECIRCULATED mashes ala RIMS / HERMS.

There was a Charlie Bamforth interview where he stated that constant recirculation systems result in "watery" fully dried out beers that are often deficient in lipids. (Obviously you can just decrease your mash time to make up for this- I can tell you from experience that conversion happens about 15 minutes faster when I recirculation mash vs. don't -I've performed the iodine test in side-by-side mashes with 100% base malt mashes.)

"Vorlaufen" is very, very different and the author doesn't seem to understand the difference. Vorlaufen is just the traditional German practice of recirculating at the beginning of the mash runoff/ sparge for a couple few minutes until the wort starts to run clear and then starting the run-off. The traditional vorlauf practice looks nothing like a constantly recirculated mash in terms of duration.

-Remember the Germans typically mash in a stirred and steam powered Mash Mixer, then they transfer from their to dedicated lauter tuns with a 3:1 width to height geometry -the lauter tun has rotating sparge arms and rotating knives in the event that the run-off slows. But transfering the full content of the mash mixer to the lauter tun you have a starchy cloudy mess at first -you basically HAVE TO "vorlauf" to help setup the grain bed and run the wort off clear after that process.




Also interesting is that the same guy (Charlie Bamforth) is also one of the primary voices saying that brewers have been overfocused on hot side aeration but Jeremy from NB chooses to take one of Charlie's comments out of context and amplify it, and completely ignore the other one. -Although I admit that constant recirculation mashes also introduce far more aeration than any commercial brewery practice.

Home brewer equipment and techniques are vastly different than commercial brewers so we need to adopt their practices only with a full understanding of why they do it and understanding what is different about home brew scale systems.


Now let me go try to chase down the Charlie Bamforth recirculated mash lipid reference....


Adam

 

[Beer is good]

Maybe I can try an experiment. I will make two identical batches, one with extreme "vorlaufing" the entire wort a few times, and another time with zero vorlauf. When I say identical I mean as identical as I can. I might try this, if I do I will post a new thread with my experiment first.

 

[LandoLincoln]

The author appears to be referencing directly or indirectly a statement / study by Charles Bamforth about home brewer-style CONSTANTLY RECIRCULATED mashes ala RIMS / HERMS.

There was a Charlie Bamforth interview where he stated that constant recirculation systems result in "watery" fully dried out beers that are often deficient in lipids. (Obviously you can just decrease your mash time to make up for this- I can tell you from experience that conversion happens about 15 minutes faster when I recirculation mash vs. don't -I've performed the iodine test in side-by-side mashes with 100% base malt mashes.)

That is not my experience in the least. If anything, I'm trying to tweak my HERMS rig to give me a bit less body than what I've been getting.

 

[biertourist]

That is not my experience in the least. If anything, I'm trying to tweak my HERMS rig to give me a bit less body than what I've been getting.

Hmm... Now I wish I'd kept better notes to see if it could have been something else.

You're a very experienced brewer so I definitely won't discount your experience. But I did the "iodine test" in back-to-back batches with near identical if not completely identical grists and definitely saw at LEAST a 10 minute acceleration in conversion time when recirculating vs. not recirculating... Now I wonder if something else didn't' also change between batches, though. (Slightly lower mash temp, different MO malt that had a higher DP?...)

Guess I need to revisit this test again and keep more notes.

Adam

 

[edroberts]

This is where the joy of the similar threads area of each forum page is useful. Found a thread from 2009 discussing this same thing.
Noonan's New Lager Brewing: Page 150:

The degree of clarity that should be obtained in the runoff is a matter of debate. A lot of draff carried into the kettle is a recipe for astringent beer, but a small amount may improve trub coagulation. The majority of brewers recycle until the runoff is no longer heavily clouded; this is generally accomplished in less that ten minutes. Excessive recycling may lead to -lower- (edit) lipid levels in the wort and ought to be avoided.

Also of note is reference to a 2006 German study on lauter turbidity and it's influence in fermentation and finished beer quality. English translation begins on page 93.

I'm going to give this a read to see what can be pulled out on it in reference to this thread.

 

[LandoLincoln]

Another paper on lipids and various methods of reducing them. It's from 1985, so I don't know how relevant this information is.

What I get from it is that if you constantly recirculate your mash, you should whirlpool the hops and hot break and that should keep the lipid levels down. Lipids affect the long-term flavor of beer.

 

[edroberts]

Okay. So the Noonan book that was quoted was incorrectly, which sounds a bit more in-line with what I have heard regarding lipids. More turbid wort brings over more lipids.
It also is in-line with New Belgium's experiments several years back in adding olive oil to wort as a replacement for adding oxygen.

The studies used extreme examples where the grain bed was constantly disturbed during lautering, resulting in a very turbid wort high in lipids (same as what you might experience if squeezing a BIAB bag). It compared this to very clear wort, or recirculated wort (which was a fairly new technique from their perspective at the time).

In short, this is what I could summarize from the studies (there were several studies in that PDF).

1. Turbid wort tends to aid in fermentation with shorter lag times and slightly higher attenuation.
2. While previous studies hinted that turbid wort may reduce head retention due to extra lipids, the study did not experience this.
3. There was no perceivable difference in quality between turbid and clear wort nor differences in beer stability or shelf life.
4. Turbid wort can tend to lead to a small decrease in ester production such as ethyl acetate. This can likely be attributed to point 1.

In another study in the PDF, it extends higher levels of fatty acids to formation of trub in the boil kettle and then seeing if moving this trub to the fermenter acts the same way. They saw benefits to fermentation with some trub, but stopped short of how much would be beneficial.

All that said, no matter if you recirculate, volorauf, drain and go, or squeeze, you still make good beer. We're really talking about MINOR differences here. There are many other brewing practices that make a substantially larger difference in your final product.

Furthermore, if you add yeast nutrient, you're adding lipids and other things back into your wort that you might strip out with recirculating. This would negate any of these differences anyway.

 

[Beer is good]

From what I gather, sounds like much ado about nothing, worrying about filtering lipids. I will just make sure not to recycle my wort for 24 hours.

Thanks for all the in depth comments about this every buddy.

 

[grathan]

It seems a lot of sources make mention of lipids and their affect on long term flavor stabilization and also creation trans-2-noneal.

My non-vorlaufed brew went through a substantial flavor transformation, that I initially, and still sorta, suspect was the first time use of Chinook. The change happened at room temperature a 1.5 months after kegging.

The flavor change was incredibly favorable and did not have the usual "old beer" tastes that I have been dealing with in hoppy beers the past (read trans-2-noneal). The flavor was very stable afterwards which is odd for a 2-3 month old beer of mid gravity with hops (1.063). The lacing on this beer was unlike any I have ever seen, it might have held a dime up on the side of an empty glass.

I should note that I don't use o2/aerate. I use an addition of Valine (amino acid) 2tsp and also Wyeast yeast nutrient in both the starter and fermenter. Also let trub settle 20-40 minutes before transfer from kettle. Mash was also very high temp at 158*, but dropped over 1.5 hours in a cooler.


I would suggest to any that want to try non-vorlauf beer to use Fawcett Maris Otter or perhaps other English variety malt due to it's higher lipid content.

 

[progmac]

this is not a reliable source. this is just some guy saying random thoughts that he considers to be rational. nothing in that post justifies lengthy debate or discussion.

 

[grathan]

this is not a reliable source. this is just some guy saying random thoughts that he considers to be rational. nothing in that post justifies lengthy debate or discussion.

He seems somewhat credible.
[ame]https://vimeo.com/12055691[/ame]
http://canalparkbrewery.com/2013/05/new-brew-pro-jeremy-king/


http://www.lakefrontbrewery.com/beer/seasonals/wisconsinite

 

[progmac]

Credible, excellent brewer with good taste and seemingly an awesome personality -- yes.

Credible scientist, no.

 

[Brettomomyces]

That is not my experience in the least. If anything, I'm trying to tweak my HERMS rig to give me a bit less body than what I've been getting.

Also not mine, and I'm in the same boat with purposefully trying to adjust some of my beers to end up drier.