THIS
Nature doesn’t always follow logic. We’ve seen this many times in home brewing. What we think should be happening isn’t.
Maybe ask Deschutes Brewery. From what I understand they add yeast to the bottles of their hop fwd beers to consume O2. It could be a referment in the bottle like the Belgians do.
…but this seems to confirm interviews I’ve heard with Dr Bamforth. He says if a beer is oxidized to run some yeast thru it. He doesn’t say it has to be actively fermenting — just present. …but this may need clarification.
Maybe Experimental Brewing podcast can get to the bottom of this for us — to clarify this statement and get an explanation of how it works.
This should be relatively easy to quantitatively test for someone with a filter and a DO meter.
- Expose a fully fermented & filtered batch of beer to oxygen
- Package half with no yeast, and half with added yeast
- Check DO levels at varying lengths of time
To minimize the confounding variable of whether or not refermentation occurred, ferment the original batch with a highly attenuative yeast (such as 3711 or Belle Saison), and repackage with a minimally attenuative yeast (such as Windsor).
Proper cleaning and sanitation play a big part in how long a batch will last.
I worked pretty hard at YH with a DO meter trying to minimize o2 and trying to maximize shelf life. Our beer wasn’t “dead” it was centrifuged – some yeast still remained. Some beers were even packaged with a yeast haze.
Unquestionably in tests the lower DO beer had longer shelf life.
I don’t disagree that live yeast has the ability to scrub some oxygen and help prolong shelf life, but as someone else pointed out: If live yeast was all it took why does a firkin go bad in 2 or 3 days from oxygen introduction? Wouldn’t it say fresh indefinitely? It’s cask conditioned with live yeast after all.
I can access a DO meter still but I just don’t think there is any point in doing the test.
I had 2 kegs of a porter in the fridge untapped but carbed. I took one and tasted it and it was absolutely fine. After tasting I added some cacao nibs, toasted coconut, toasted dried hot chilis and a vanilla bean. Let it sit for 2 maybe 3 weeks and transferred under co2 to a serving keg. I think it was delicious if not overly chocolatey. The porter was from Feb. of 18’ I think that being a dark beer and 8% abv along with a hefty 35 IBU’s is what helped the beer age with few issues. My plan is to do it again with the remaining keg just prior to this December. In my case, time didn’t seem to affect the beer at all or at least the threshold was too low for me to distinguish.
It amazes me how long dark beer will last. Supposedly dark malts have some antioxidant properties that helps keep them stable. I have had homebrewed barley wines (not dark, but just as an example) last upwards of ten years. They had peaked, to be sure, but were still drinkable and interesting.
Years ago, either Papazian or Fix advocated adding a very small amount of dark malt to pils as an antioxidant
Keeping as much malt antioxidant as you can going into the package is the best solution. This is why, long ago, a member who is no longer here started talking about preserving them on the hot side as well as cold.
Yep. He had great information but a confrontational way of delivering that continuously broke forum rules. I wish he would have chosen a friendlier path.
He was ahead of his time and considering humans natural resistance to change, it makes sense that things were contentious. Anyway it’s nice to see much of that material becoming more accepted on this forum.
To be clear, it had nothing to do with “resistance to change” and everything to do with his attitude that “You are stupid if you don’t brew the same way I do” and then the argumentative crap that it spawned. If you don’t see that, I don’t know what else to tell you.
I’m all for those people who want to LoDo brew … that doesn’t mean people are “stupid” if they choose not to.
Furthermore, nothing that has been discussed in this thread is new or discovered via LoDo brewing techniques. The dark malt antioxidant properties go back to Papazian’s first book for crying out loud.
All of this…
yup, absolutely. i do not imagine any time i will be home canning my beer or buying any equipment making my total equipment bill over 1000 dollars or so unless i come into a lot of money. im sure some of you disagree, but thats my choice.
and in a lot of beer styles, these things dont apply or arent noticeable.
i think he makes great beer, but it probably costs 20 dollars a can. so… yeah.
I was also here when all that went down but my experience of it was, obviously, radically different. Instead of taking offense by what he said, I decided there might be something there to learn. Also for the record, I said forum and not specifically this thread about seeing more acceptance, maybe not. I thought homebrew dogma was hard to let go of but it seems hurt feelings more so.
There are some really smart people in my club, and they don’t see a reason to change the waybthey do brewing. Most of them don’t make beers with base malt much under 3L, some might be MO all the time. They aren’t interested in Helles or Pilsner.
Look, Bilsch - I understand where you are coming from. It’s a shame that you don’t take it from a moderator’s perspective. Where are we supposed to draw the line when forum rules are broken? Such as below…
3. Be respectful of the questions and comments of others. It is OK to disagree with someone, but do so with respect. Keep the AHA forum friendly and encouraging of everyone’s participation.
How many chances do we give a person who constantly breaks forum rules over and over again with blatant disrespect? Not that it should matter, but many of us (as in Mods and Admins) have been “friends” with whom you are talking about for years on other forums which is the only reason that attitude was put up with for so long. But eventually enough is enough.
I’ll say it again, it wasn’t ever the information. It was always the delivery. There is nothing else that needs to be discussed about that topic. If you feel the need to discuss further please feel free to PM one of us.
Fair enough. Getting back to the topic of improving beer shelf life… The method the macro’s use, is to preserve malt antioxidants all the way through the brewing process and into the packaging and reduce/eliminate inclusion of staling compounds.
IMO the best way for us to do that is: 1) low oxygen on the hot side 2) Get your fining/settling game in order and only transfer clear beer to the fermentor 3) Fast healthy ferments 4) Pristine cold side practices including naturally carbonating in the package.
Great advice…assuming we all have the same goals and make the same beer styles.
Bilsch’s suggestions don’t just apply to one beer style or just pale beer styles. True, dark style beer does seem less affected by oxidation but all beer benefits from doing these things.