Experimental Brewing 133 - Dave's Definitely Here, Man

I think we all agree with this:

…and this:

…because from this article:

…we read this: “Preventing HSA: HSA is easy to avoid in home brewing because it will arise only from very sloppy brewing practice. It has been my experience over the years that advocates of such procedures rarely stay with the hobby. Thus, on the homebrew level, HSA is a problem that seems to take care of itself.”

Dave’s not here, man.  Dave left the thread, man.

Since the folks who distilled and surmised the process of professional to homebrew level procedures, have not yet, nor have no desire to write a book, I don’t think you will not find one.
They did have an article in BYO, Methods of the Low Oxygen Brewhouse - Brew Your Own

But since the polarization of a general professionally accepted methods, yet homebrew witch hunt, I’m not sure they want/care about sharing anything up to date and current with the community anymore.

Homebrew witch hunt…now that’s funny!

But you forgot this part  :wink:

It’s not doubt CSA is more important. Because you will NEVER see the benefits of one without the other. You will only ever see the effects of HSA, if there is no CSA.
Malt and Hop antioxidants (flavor positive), can only be there if the beer is not oxidized, since thats how antioxidants work.

No, I read it, I think eliminating HSA from his beers were by employing the quote I cited, namely “not being sloppy”.

EZ PZ

Maybe to some, but as a bystander folks can see some “weird” things.

If someone chooses to go all the way back to the HBD archives (Or was around homebrewing then ;)), they can see people namely, George Fix, and Steve Alexander, and others promote HSA and things. They can also see you as a notable denier. Fast forward to more current day things now on the AHA, once HSA is brought up we see some of the same avid deniers. The difference here is that you now have admin ability to truly silence (silent ban) people who speak up about this. I have seen screen shots of said ban(s) issued from here and other homebrew forums…
I listened to to this episode and one of the first things that is said is that by these deniers (well now denier is not a right word, because its hard to deny science, so now the the attitude is it’s too hard, or not worth it), is that they have not tried said methods. Again, which is everyone’s choice to do so, or so it’s said. However if LODO is a brewing choice, and not something that is just vehemently opposed, why the bans?

Maybe witch hunt was the wrong wording, maybe active suppression may be better. Obviously this isn’t as blatant and obvious as HBT changing every link to the TMB website to some random redirect, it’s much more subtle.

Have you read his book? It’s not simply that EZ.

No.  Admittedly I have not read it. The Fix article you cited makes it pretty clear to me. ….but I thought there wasn’t a book:

@BrewnWKopperKat:  seems there is a book for you.

No, this is a science and theory book, this is not a how to book.  Hence the title “Principal’s of Brewing Science”.

This reference page is what they(he) used for the paper, and articles written, etc.

I know this resource page is actually cited/used in peer reviewed journals and papers, as it is the most comprehensive list of beer oxidative processes out there. I also know there is like triple that behind the paywall.  Which is something to be said.

Yes I pay for access to papers and books from TMB, But I also pay for access to AHA, BYO, HBT, among others. Been around long enough to know I don’t know.

My mistake. I wasn’t familiar with his work.

For the record (if it matters[emoji23]); I for one am not a ‘HSA denier’. I simply follow Dr Bamforth’s lead that some of the practices recommended by zealous low O2 advocates is “overkill”, Joe Formanek’s lead that “chelators can arrest most of the oxidative reactions in the mash”, and Fix’s lead that “HSA is easy to avoid in home brewing because it will arise only from very sloppy brewing practice” as good enough for me.

Great, brew how you want too!
Although, your Bamforth, and Fix comments are null because they are taken out of context, and thus spun for confirmation bias.
Bamforth as mentioned now works for a Low oxygen brewery and his book freshness, speaks quite the different tune.
Fix as mentioned already.

*Joe’s sentence is not complete either, it’s missing the words fenton, and haber-weiss reactions. It can not stop oxygen reactions. I’m sure he would clarify if asked.

The problem here is I see you jumping to straw man and gotcha’s, citing snips, and not the full literature context is a real plague in open dialogue. It creates polarization unneededly. I can see from this and every one of your interactions where “LODO” is mentioned, you are very biased away from it. Which is totally fine, I get it. You can choose to accept or not, its everyone’s choice. But the petty-ness of it all is why there is this stigma. Pandora’s oxygen box has already been opened, and it’s not going anywhere. The quicker everyone can just accept the science, and treat it as another method that may or may not apply to ones brewing tool box. The better and lower stress a niche hobby of a niche hobby will be.

I’m consistently impressed by the LODO proponents’ aversion to oxygen extending to sucking the air out of every conversation they participate in. I’m not committed to anything with that kind of fervor.

Is it the proponent or the opposer? Depends on the cyberspace I guess.

As someone who came into this a bit late, it seems to me that the problem is less with what is being said than how it is being said.

Sorry,  Joe’s quote was from an email he sent me. He is referring to Fenton reaction. I didn’t quote the whole message for brevity. I don’t think I have misrepresented his position.

Bamforth (cited above) and Fix were taken verbatim from an interview and the article (you cited) respectively. I don’t think I have misrepresented their positions either.

I said “I am not a denier”.  I’m not sure how more clear that can be. …and I’m not sure how that makes me biased away from Low O2, but OK. I guess “we agree” is not good enough for some reason.[emoji23]

In fact, I am not denying the science at all. I believe it. I simply don’t agree with you on how to address it which is what upsets you guys.

The problem is you don’t agree with the gentleman mentioned above when quoted verbatim because the information doesn’t fit your framework. That’s OK with me.  I happen to agree with them.

Incidentally, I also agree with Gordon Strong in Brewing Better Beer pg 31. He says, “It’s a good idea to avoid excessive aeration when stirring to avoid oxidizing the mash.”

You see, none of these folks (including me) are denying hot side oxidation.  That’s why I take steps to mitigate it.

I know that adopting the LODO approach has improved my brewing skills; I tightened up my process quite a bit for several years.  But after a few years of strictly adhering to the LODO practices, I have loosened up a bit and can live with my lagers under my present approach - employing strict CSA measures of keg purging with CO2 while fermenting (and spunding when I catch the gravity at the right point at a convenient point to me, otherwise transferring by CO2 and force carbing).  The HSA measures I undertook previously are now modified to include what I am willing to do as a homebrewer.  Is it perfect and compliant with a LODO German brewhouse - no, but it works well enough for me and probably would be criticized as insufficient by most strict LODO adherents.

I respect the lengths that many will go to make good beer - so LODO is just another set of processes to consider implementing to make good beer.  Thankfully I rarely keep lagers around long enough to worry about shelf stability.

Cheers to brewing how you want and respecting others brewing how they want.  As I see it we are all chasing a unicorn - and many brewers are using  different processes to try to get closer to catching it, but it is elusive.

How do you not know that Basketball Jones was by Cheech and Chong?  :slight_smile:

I found the fact that Dr Bamforth is now the Senior QC Advisor at Sierra Nevada interesting given his past comments. So, I sent Dr Smith a note asking if he could follow up with Dr Bamforth. He graciously did.

In reply Dr Bamforth sent an article he wrote for Brewer and Distiller International dtd June 2021 based on the paper given to the 36th Biennial Convention of the IBD Asia-Pacific Section, March 2021. Much of the information remains the same as past information as that from BeerSmith podcasts and other interviews.

Within the article there is a statement that fairly accurately describes the entire article: “…keeping the beer cold is a far better bet for keeping the product fresh than is all the tinkering the brewer can do with malts and brewhouse oxidation.”

He does suggest iron, copper, and manganese be less than 0.05 ppm of each but I found this interesting:  “Bear in mind that some people have recently suggested (contrary to what has long been supposed) that copper is not as big a negative as is iron.”

However, there was one noticeable change (“softening”?) from past interviews: under the heading Avoiding oxygen pick up during the process it says “I suggest that common-sense protocols for avoiding obvious air ingress are worthwhile, albeit less relevant than minimising oxygen level in the final package.” [emphasis is mine]. He goes on to name several of these common-sense approaches:

He ends the article in a very familiar way “Keep out the oxygen from the final package and keep the beer cold. And minimise the time from production to consumption. Worry about these things before anything else.”

I have been accused of cherry picking information to suit my argument. I refute that claim but feel free to look up and read the complete article for yourself.

Excellent information.  Thank you very much for your effort.