Sunday, I took the leap--started employing LODO techniques. I brewed an Amber which I could use to test efficiency of my new mill compared to my old Barley Crusher (dead on, luckily, thank you @Morrey).
I now have a mill that crushes at low speed (180-RPM using a 3-roller Monster Mill). I crushed just before doughing in. I boiled the strike water before dough in (cooled with my Jaded Hydra in about 70 seconds). I used a mash cap (5-gallon bucket lid).
It's a start. The wort tasted richer to me, don't know if that's confirmation bias, wishful thinking, or an actual improvement. Sure tasted good, though. It's in the fermenter with WLP001, going to town.
QUESTION: will doing only some of the LODO techniques yield discernable results, and the more of those techniques I use, the better will be the beer? Or do we need to go whole hog, the whole 9 yards, to benefit from LODO techniques?
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I've been working on the cold side to get O2 out of the equation, feeding CO2 back into fermenter at cold crash, transferring from fermenter to keg O2-free, transferring the beer into a keg that has been purged. I believe that has helped my beer quite a bit. Hoping that working on the hot side will help as well.
I now have a mill that crushes at low speed (180-RPM using a 3-roller Monster Mill). I crushed just before doughing in. I boiled the strike water before dough in (cooled with my Jaded Hydra in about 70 seconds). I used a mash cap (5-gallon bucket lid).
It's a start. The wort tasted richer to me, don't know if that's confirmation bias, wishful thinking, or an actual improvement. Sure tasted good, though. It's in the fermenter with WLP001, going to town.
QUESTION: will doing only some of the LODO techniques yield discernable results, and the more of those techniques I use, the better will be the beer? Or do we need to go whole hog, the whole 9 yards, to benefit from LODO techniques?
**********
I've been working on the cold side to get O2 out of the equation, feeding CO2 back into fermenter at cold crash, transferring from fermenter to keg O2-free, transferring the beer into a keg that has been purged. I believe that has helped my beer quite a bit. Hoping that working on the hot side will help as well.