Hot Side Aereation references

[tracer bullet]

This is like a greatest hits album of strawman arguments.

Feels like it at times.

HSA is a myth
HSA may be real but only macros benefit
HSA is real and homebrewers might also benefit but if so just aren't drinking fast enough

LODO beers taste different. Better or worse is up to you.

From the first post. Seems a bit hard to argue with. But here we are.

 

[davidabcd]

RO(U)S Magnification 400X.

 

[Taket_al_Tauro]

Not at all. I should have quoted the person I was referring to.

Ah right, thanks all is good

The LODO guys are right about stepping out of this thread, it has become a carnival.
Maybe it's even appropriate, we are almost there...
(Don't know if you guys across the pond in the US celebrate carnival, I believe in some places yes, probably not everywhere?).
Anyway, high time to step out for me as well

 

[Miraculix]

Now, at the end of this marvelous journey, everybody might reflect on how all the other guys felt whose threads were hijacked by the lodoists.

 

[McMullan]

Feels like it at times.

HSA is a myth
HSA may be real but only macros benefit
HSA is real and homebrewers might also benefit but if so just aren't drinking fast enough



From the first post. Seems a bit hard to argue with. But here we are.

‘HSA’ = hot side aeration

Does a little hot air in the mash matter? A little aeration isn’t necessarily what causes oxidation in the mash. Of course oxidation reactions are occurring in the mash, but under which circumstances does it matter to home brewers? When they believe it does? Is it ‘LOw Dissolved Oxygen‘ brewing or ‘LOw Dissolved Oxidant’ brewing? Just asking for a friend.

 

[davidabcd]

(Don't know if you guys across the pond in the US celebrate carnival, I believe in some places yes, probably not everywhere?).

After checking it out on Google, I'm not sure it's a thing here but it wouldn't be the first thing we celebrate that I don't know about.
We celebrate some things, more or less, just to have a drink (St Patrick's Day and Cinco de Mayo).

 

[Miraculix]

After checking it out on Google, I'm not sure it's a thing here but it wouldn't be the first thing we celebrate that I don't know about.
We celebrate some things, more or less, just to have a drink (St Patrick's Day and Cinco de Mayo).

Just to have a drink.....


...... That sir, is THE utmost relevant reason to celebrate a thing!

 

[Taket_al_Tauro]

everybody might reflect on how all the other guys felt whose threads were hijacked by the lodoists.

.... and so it all began.
Sorry, I promised to step out but couldn't resist
Now I believe to have somehow matured into a more open-minded view of the movement, but, oh well ;-)

 

[BeerAndTele]

Fender player: "man, I love the way my Strat sounds through my Deluxe."
Gibson player: "yeah, well, the sound of my Les Paul thru my Marshall stack sounds great too."
Fender player: "I never said it didn't. It's fine for you."
Gibson player: "your Strat tone isn't all that, you know."
Fender player: "oh, okay, so I guess Clapton, Beck and Vaughn don't know anything about good tone??"
Gibson player: "I never said that. Besides, Jimmy Page's Les Paul tone was the best ever on the 'Stairway to Heaven' solo."
Fender player: "Actually, Page played a Tele on that solo."
Gibson player: "But you can't prove that."
Fender player: "You guys are so defensive."
Both men walk away irritated.

 

[cmac62]

Yes, in certain home brew situations, I agree, the use of antioxidants, like vitamin C, might well have a genuine application, e.g. dry hopping heavily hopped beers. Absolutely. But it's not a binary choice, generally, for home brewers.

I started using AA and the other stuff because transferring to a purged keg seemed like a pain and I wanted to reduce the Ox of my beers during trf. It has seemed to work to my taste buds, so it is definitely not an all or nothing situation.

 

[McMullan]

I started using AA and the other stuff because transferring to a purged keg seemed like a pain and I wanted to reduce the Ox of my beers during trf. It has seemed to work to my taste buds, so it is definitely not an all or nothing situation.

Great, I'll be using AA soon to try a few things out, although not really associated with any concerns about aeration in my process.

 

[cmac62]

Great, I'll be using AA soon to try a few things out, although not really associated with any concerns about aeration in my process.

Yeah, I added the simple part of the hot side O2 regimen because it was simple, AA, Kmeta and BTB, and Yeast Ox Scavenging (YOS), and the recirc hose below the level of the wort in the MT to reduce splashing. I don't know what has the most effect, but together with AA at trf has mad a difference.

 

[Miraculix]

Yeah, I added the simple part of the hot side O2 regimen because it was simple, AA, Kmeta and BTB, and Yeast Ox Scavenging (YOS), and the recirc hose below the level of the wort in the MT to reduce splashing. I don't know what has the most effect, but together with AA at trf has mad a difference.

I can tell that yeast scavenging, at least for me, did not make a detectable difference wheras AA alone made all the difference.

 

[Bilsch]

I can tell that yeast scavenging, at least for me, did not make a detectable difference wheras AA alone made all the difference.

From in house testing we have found that it takes AA roughly 4 hours to reduce the DO levels in strike water compared to what YOS does in 30 minutes. You can draw your own conclusions from the data.

 

[cyberbackpacker]

From in house testing we have found that it takes AA roughly 4 hours to reduce the DO levels in strike water compared to what YOS does in 30 minutes. You can draw your own conclusions from the data.

And to add further context, tests were all performed with calibrated industrial sensors/ equipment.

 

[Bilsch]

I can tell that yeast scavenging, at least for me, did not make a detectable difference.

And this makes sense since yeast drop dead around 130F. So unlike chemical oxygen scavengers yeast aren't able to protect you in the mash from the considerable amount of O2 brought in adsorbed on the surface of milled grain. Therefore we like to combine these two things for the best advantage. Boil deox or YOS to bring the strike water to zero DO then add a chemical antioxidant for the mash to compete with the antioxidants in the grain which just happen to be your fresh malt flavors.

So why go through the trouble of de-aerating your brewing water, why not just add more AA or Meta? For us it is the residual sulfites which make it though the boil and chilling only to compete with the yeast after aerating the wort creating unhealthy slow ferments and sulfury beers.

Why not use only AA? 1) Having to contend with a pH drop and the flavor of AA especially for those already using sauergut. 2) Fear of unhealthy yeast and of course the worry about super oxidizers. Just to be clear there is scant information on that possibility but since we already know how to expend the sulfites into harmless sulfate it seemed the logical choice.

Why not use dry yeast since aeration isn't necessary no worries about slow sulfury ferments?
1) We are predominantly lager brewers and liquid yeast is the only way to go for us.
2) Even dry yeast can be effected by excess sulfites to produce sulfur. Same reasons about AA, flavor contribution and the unknown.
3) RHG.. while not a hard and fast rule it still helps guide decisions on what should remain in the packaged beer besides the 4 ingredients. Also remember lager yeast produces sulfite during the ferment and as much as 10ppm is allowed in finished beer in Germany.

Our experience would suggest that those choosing to use AA as the chemical oxygen scavenger would benefit greatly from de-aerating the strike water thus allowing you to reduce the ascorbic dose.

 

[McMullan]

I can tell that yeast scavenging, at least for me, did not make a detectable difference wheras AA alone made all the difference.

Suggests DO wasn't the problem. AA is a universal ROS scavenger in biological systems. Adding extra AA - boosting the endogenous level from the barley - helps reduce the barley's endogenous ROS load, which goes into solution at mash-in. Makes sense, logically. Ignore DO on the hot side? View it like a little hot air? Worry about what's in the barley? Did you detect the problem with any particular type(s) of barley?
.

 

[McMullan]

Fender player: "man, I love the way my Strat sounds through my Deluxe."
Gibson player: "yeah, well, the sound of my Les Paul thru my Marshall stack sounds great too."
Fender player: "I never said it didn't. It's fine for you."
Gibson player: "your Strat tone isn't all that, you know."
Fender player: "oh, okay, so I guess Clapton, Beck and Vaughn don't know anything about good tone??"
Gibson player: "I never said that. Besides, Jimmy Page's Les Paul tone was the best ever on the 'Stairway to Heaven' solo."
Fender player: "Actually, Page played a Tele on that solo."
Gibson player: "But you can't prove that."
Fender player: "You guys are so defensive."
Both men walk away irritated.

No, it's not that complicated.

 

[WalletHocker]

FWIW...

I've experimented with malting small batches of barley with KMB and AA in the steep water. On each change of the steep water several tsp of AA and a campden tablet or two were dissolved. Out of the five batches I've done this with I've also using several cups of hydrogen peroxide twice - which is contradictory but doesn't seem to be a negative, in fact it seemed to enhance the mashing process (starch conversion was quicker).

The resulting malt was *very* aromatic and when used in a LODO process to make beer the resulting beer did appear to exhibit enhanced malt character.

This is all my opinion and could simply be the result of confirmation bias.

In Malts and Malting, Briggs, et. al. states that SMB and Hydrogen Peroxide were experimented with.

Too much SMB seems to result in a peanut butter aroma and maybe even some of the same flavor contribution.

The hydrogen peroxide (and SMB) act to clean the malt and the resulting malt is very light and bright in color.

The H2O2 aids the malting process by promoting acrospire growth. Oxygen is necessary for sprouting (thus the steep/air cycles) however it is also a primary oxidant in the malt.

I'm not sure most of these complex biological processes are fully understood. Maybe it's not necessary to understand or perhaps the larger malting/brewing firms already know and understand these things with their processes and custom barley varieties.

 

[day_trippr]

Interesting.
One of the things I noticed when attempting a LoDO mash was a pronounced attenuation of aroma during the mash. As I read about it here on HBT, that was a leading indicator of success, such that the opposite condition - the brewhouse full of mashing grain aroma - was an indicator of O2 wreaking havoc...

Cheers!

 

[WalletHocker]

Interesting.
One of the things I noticed when attempting a LoDO mash was a pronounced attenuation of aroma during the mash. As I read about it here on HBT, that was a leading indicator of success, such that the opposite condition - the brewhouse full of mashing grain aroma - was an indicator of O2 wreaking havoc...

Cheers!

Absolutely, the aroma was noticeably muted during the LODO mash but the fresh kilned malt certainly had an aroma that stood out. The malt was "aired" for one week after kilning and then used to make beer. Perhaps it was just the freshness of the malt.

 

[Miraculix]

From in house testing we have found that it takes AA roughly 4 hours to reduce the DO levels in strike water compared to what YOS does in 30 minutes. You can draw your own conclusions from the data.

Thanks! Taking temperature into account?

 

[McMullan]

Fear of unhealthy yeast and of course the worry about super oxidizers.

Fear is not a substitute for scientific data. It’s blatantly shoehorning beliefs.

 

[Miraculix]

And this makes sense since yeast drop dead around 130F. So unlike chemical oxygen scavengers yeast aren't able to protect you in the mash from the considerable amount of O2 brought in adsorbed on the surface of milled grain. Therefore we like to combine these two things for the best advantage. Boil deox or YOS to bring the strike water to zero DO then add a chemical antioxidant for the mash to compete with the antioxidants in the grain which just happen to be your fresh malt flavors.

So why go through the trouble of de-aerating your brewing water, why not just add more AA or Meta? For us it is the residual sulfites which make it though the boil and chilling only to compete with the yeast after aerating the wort creating unhealthy slow ferments and sulfury beers.

Why not use only AA? 1) Having to contend with a pH drop and the flavor of AA especially for those already using sauergut. 2) Fear of unhealthy yeast and of course the worry about super oxidizers. Just to be clear there is scant information on that possibility but since we already know how to expend the sulfites into harmless sulfate it seemed the logical choice.

Why not use dry yeast since aeration isn't necessary no worries about slow sulfury ferments?
1) We are predominantly lager brewers and liquid yeast is the only way to go for us.
2) Even dry yeast can be effected by excess sulfites to produce sulfur. Same reasons about AA, flavor contribution and the unknown.
3) RHG.. while not a hard and fast rule it still helps guide decisions on what should remain in the packaged beer besides the 4 ingredients. Also remember lager yeast produces sulfite during the ferment and as much as 10ppm is allowed in finished beer in Germany.

Our experience would suggest that those choosing to use AA as the chemical oxygen scavenger would benefit greatly from de-aerating the strike water thus allowing you to reduce the ascorbic dose.

Just based on my limited experience, with 3.5 g AA per 20l in the fermenter, I did not find any flavour impact of the AA in the final product (except for the absence of oxidation based flavours, of course). My guess is that most of it gets used up and the resulting molecules are either not tasting very strong and/or not present in a relevant amount, that might change with higehr dosing though (but should a higher dose be necessary?). I also did not do a side by side comparison, so maybe the taste impact is so small that it goes unnoticed when not directly compared to the same brew without the AA in the process. If this should be true, it would not matter to me personally.

I do not know about impact on mash ph, from experience, all went as well as without the AA. The little I read about pH impact of low amounts of AA on mash pH seems to support this, but I have not done pH readings myself. I personally think that at the rate it is used, the impact on mash PH should be neglectable.

Meassuring dissolved oxygen is a great way of understanding how effective a scavenger is, of course. But was the comparison between the Yeast scavenging and the AA done under mash conditions? I doubt that as yeast would be dead. So what might be true for the strike water at room temperature, might work completely different at mash temperature. My guess is that the scavenging time of the AA in the mash is A LOT shorter than at room temperature. It would be interesting to see the development of a continuous O2 meassurement in a mash that was dosed with AA pre-mash compared to the o2 level development in a mash without AA.

This would mean, theoretically, that if the dosage is high enough, all the oxygen that is entering the mash in multiple ways should be scavenged quickly enough at mash temp. This would mean that all the other steps for the mash are a bit of, well, unnecessary complications.

Of course for all of this, we must assume that the "super oxidiser" thing is not real under mash conditions. Which I personally think really is not a thing we should worry about, based on personal experience and based on talks I had with an older food chemist who worked with AA all his life as his major food preservative. He never experienced anything like that. And we are talking about like 30 years of experience here.

Edit: One additional thing that came to my mind, heat stability. Sulfites have their downsides, that is why I do not want to use them, you basically listed them. Ascorbic acid does not share most of these downsides, that is why I went for AA. But one more thing which would be interesting to know is heat stability of both.

I have the feeling that sulfites might be not as heat stable as AA and therefore might not provide as much long term protection after the mash as a sufficient dose of AA might do. But this would need to be proven.

 

[davidabcd]

switched to a PM as more appropriate.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Much like home brewers figured out how to bottle NEIPAs and shared their experiences, home brewers will figure out how to add low oxygen techniques to their brew day. And they will likely share their techniques in forums, videos, and books.

The scientific articles can be interesting. The techniques are (or will be) useful.

 

[McMullan]

Much like home brewers figured out how to bottle NEIPAs and shared their experiences, home brewers will figure out how to add low oxygen techniques to their brew day. And they will likely share their techniques in forums, videos, and books.

The scientific articles can be interesting. The techniques are (or will be) useful.

Definitely, but striving to LODO is based on a belief system propped up by a selective, naive, logic that's being engineered to support its preconceived, pseudo-scientific ideas. It's clearly a vanity project of some kind. Not really the same as tossing in some antioxidant here or there.

 

[doug293cz]

Ok folks, if you want this thread to keep going, let's stick to discussing the thread's topic, and stop talking about the participants. Posts discussing members, rather than the topic, have been deleted.

doug293cz
HBT Moderator

 

[McMullan]

I think we're done.

 

[Bilsch]

Thanks! Taking temperature into account?

Yes of course, temperature is the most basic of the parameters being recorded.

 

[doug293cz]

Ignore warnings --> get threads get locked.