Introduction to Low Oxygen Brewing

Almost immediately after conditioning, but might start waiting a few minutes before crushing.

Yea, I would let that water do its work.

What is accomplished by ‘conditioning’ the malt?  How does it protect the grains?

Wouldn’t the grains itself be oxidized prior to becoming malt?

Narziss summarizes the effect low pressure high temperature boiling has an effect on oxidation and maillard reactions to flavor stability in aged beer.  “He then goes on to say there was virtually no difference between the beers of brewery F and D from table 17. pg 8.  There was no deterioration of flavour stability.”  While HMF is the primary concern rather than trans-2-nonenal precursors.

While Bamforth discusses the developed flavour instability with oxygenation and storage temperatures in bottled beer.  While degassing vessels and malt with inert gass like nitro, is helpful if you can wet mill.  However without it, I think it is all lost.  There is no doubt that there is a chemical change during bottle storage.

If you were to purge with an inert gas, wouldn’t nitro be more sufficient than CO2 for low dissolved oxygen ingress?

More husk intact equals less exposed acrospire which means less LOX

There is nothing the husk will do to stop exposure to acrospires, your stripping the husk from the acrospires during milling.  Then there is the subject of PPO and how Pilsner has it and the off flavors produced by PPO.

The benefits SMB has is that it denatures PPO, and that might be the difference most people are detecting in their brews.

OK… so a lot to go though

Answer to grain conditioning:
http://www.lowoxygenbrewing.com/uncategorized/grain-conditioning/

Answer to boiling:
http://www.lowoxygenbrewing.com/uncategorized/low-oxygen-boiling/

Answer to Nitrogen… Yes, I would say it would be more efficient. Please do read though the paper, and the resources, you will find a lot of great answers.

I think you would love Kunze, He has a whole chapter (2) dedicated to barley and malting.

You are correct, the husk intactness is for the reasons I listed in my last post under grain conditioning. As I have said before Kunze mentions breweries sifting and discarding the acrospries completely.

Malting no doubt has an effect on IT factor, however pilsners IT is just fresh malt. Vienna is raw dough, Carahell is fresh honey, Carared is toffee, caramunich is caramel., etc etc etc. I promise you SMB is not the red herring here.

What evidence shows a coarser crush has a higher yeild, conversion efficiency, and a lower conversion time?

That would be those folks who are in the list of Brewing Textbooks, under the Brewing references page.

How tight is your mill gap Bryan?

.041 on the first set
.029 on the second
I mill at 144rpm, as that matters as well.

I have a two roller at .29 on conditioned malt. Going to loosen it a hair as I am getting too high (low 90’s) on low gravity beers. Looking for that sweet spot where I can get satisfactory results at the low and high end. Going 1.032 on my next mild

I’m at .032", which is a nice setting, I think. I probably mill too fast as well. What repercussions would milling too fast have? All the grain mills just fine, no unmilled kernels.

I misspoke here. I was after a different bit here concerning what Bryan later spoke about (separating out acrospires) and my truncated post lacked the depth to make that clear.

Mine is .041 and second is at .032. I’m milling at 200rpm. My speed reduced drill can’t handle less.

I am not sure what information you are referring to.  The text I find, and even within your own list of references - Brewing Science and Practices
Table 5.1-5.3 discusses the higher extracts from finer mills
Then  6.3, last sentence in the section - “Other disadvantages of mash tuns are their inflexibility with regard to mashing temperatures, their requirement for a coarsely ground grist (with a consequent reduction in extract recovery), the need for well modified malts and the difficulty in using wet, cooked adjuncts.”

Then Troester, Bamforth, Kai, Stevens etc all state the opposite of your claim.  A coarse mill will decrease efficiency.

Kunze is pretty clear about the advantages of a course crush using well modified malt and “intensive” mash schedules (step mashing). Kunze Chapter 3 is a bonanza of information.

Kunze and Narziss, speak of it.

Don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees.

I appreciate the effort by Brulosophy, but it seems that too much oxygen is introduced in the dry hop and transfer steps here, and without DO measurements you have a comparison between unverified variables. exBEERiment | Cold-Side Oxidation: Normal vs. High Oxidation In An American Pale Ale | Brülosophy

No offense to Brulosphy but the experiment is moot as the wort is already compromised from dough in on. I wouldn’t expect much of a difference. It doesn’t say much except that additional oxidation after that isn’t that big of a deal.