Here’s a great presentation from Narziss (world most famous brewing educator) in the 2016 European Brewing Congress
Enjoy!
One of the things I never understood about de-aerated sparge water is doesn’t the water just pick up that aeration again duding the sparge? I understand hot liquids don’t take up o2 as readily but still. Maybe this has been answered somewhere and i missed it.
As far as modern brewhouses go, unless a brewery is recycling/capturing their Co2 (from fermentation)I can’t believe anyone could afford to mill under co2 without an incredibly advanced and expensive mill. Wet milling I get, but the the liberal use of Co2 on some of these applications I can’t fathom. Yeah, co2 is cheap. Sorta. Kinda. But not really.
The GEA Huppmann wet mills have the fittings to supply the gas. CO2 or N2 could be used.
Larger breweries can do CO2 capture, as the equipment can be large and costly. There are some new smaller less costly systems coming out, the Keynote at Providence talked about getting one ( or was that a virtual HomebrewCon?).
N2 generator makes sense but they are slow from my experience.
i still don’t quite get the sparge thing unless you are sparging under a blanket of co2 or N2.
Nitrogen generators are not expensive. Comparatively, of course.
I had one for a couple years. It was just slow to build up pressure.
At homebrew scale, anyone tried pumping CO2 in from the bottom of the mash tun while milling and before underletting with water? Seems to me like all the oxygen in the grist may not end up as measurable DO, but it’s going to oxidize something during dough in.
Waiting for the first brew in the vacuum of space.
This is what I thought the sulfites in the brewing water were for, to protect that oxygen ingress during dough-in. If super expensive equipment is needed for this process, I don’t see many homebrewers implementing low o2 brewing much if de-aerating the water and using sulfites isn’t enough.
Sulfites are enough.
Kanauchi and Bamforth also demonstrated ascorbic acid would prevent thiol and polyphenol oxidation in the mash.
BTB chelates metals if your water has a high content.
CO2 at mash pH will have some conversion to bicarbonate. I wouldn’t bubble it without some pilot data to see what I get.
Besides boiling, a bit of yeast and sugar can also de-aereate water in a few hours.
That’s what I thought/hoped. I already use a trifecta mix of 40/40/20 kmeta/ascorbic acid/BtB, about a gram per 5 gallons of water. And also de-aerate the mash water with the yeast/sugar combo. But my system is pretty low tech and not willing to make it too complicated/expensive.
A number of years ago I did a side by side helles, one brewed low o2, the other not. The beers were very similar, but I could tell a slight malt edge to the low o2 version. Perhaps it would’ve been more apparent if the beer had needed ageing more. But Most of my beers are consumed rather quickly, so ageing typically isn’t a problem.
I thought I saw that Brian (or someone else?) had a system built by Stout tanks that had ports for purging everything, but I could just as easily hook up CO2 (or nitrogen) to the barb at the bottom of my cooler.
I doubt that CO2 would convert much carbonate to bicarbonate at atmospheric pressure just by purging before dough in, but I’d definitely check the mash pH to see what the result was.
It’s not carbonate to bicarbonate.
It’s carbonic acid to bicarbonate.
Search for carbonic acid - carbonate equilibrium for details.
Cheers,
PROCESS
Low thermal load is an important part of the process. It’s a low intensity boil but intense enough to aggregate proteins, or it will taste worty.
COST
Contrary to what many believe, it’s not expensive.
I have a one-vessel 220 kettle RIMS with BIAB, recirculating to under a stainless steel pan with a locline.
I ferment in Speidels.
Carbonic acid would lower pH, how is that going to move the equilibrium towards more bicarbonate (pH 8.3)? The only thing I can see oversaturation of carbonic acid doing is dissolving scale ( carbonate)
yes, ive done that. Not sure if it did anything good.
Carbonic acid will indeed lower pH. The equilibrium will indeed move towards more acid. The way it lowers pH is partially dissociating, 10-15%, into bicarbonate ion and hydrogen ion.
Back to my original point, I have no idea how much the CO2 bubbling would lower pH and how much bicarbonate will be added, so I would not consider this solution.
Sulfites are simpler.
Talked to a commercial LoDo brewer today. He said he does a lot of in line Co2 to de-aerate and he uses Antioxin SBT and hits .2 ppm DO with standard top mounted grist case and hydrator. So i recon that answers my question.
Thanks for sharing!
In-line de-aeration…how convenient. Thanks for sharing.
It really surprises me that Kai never mentioned, or picked up on, low o2 brewing from reading Narziss and Kunze back in the day. I know he used to reference those texts often.