HSO, LODO & Four Batches 

Thank you very much. I am glad you are enjoying the videos. I make them because I have seen so much improvement in my beers that I want to share what I have learned. It is really not that difficult and involves more UN-learning than learning in a way. Please have a look at my other videos as I try to cover all aspects of the process.

Thanks and your are welcome. My largest takeaway from this experiment was seeing the different hot breaks compared to the process involved. The fourth batch was something I was following as I pretty much did everything the same as the 1st Low Oxygen process outside of not running the mash wort over to the 2nd pot. This resulted in the dirty hot break which shows us the importance of have clean mash wort. Good luck with your journey it is complicated and simple at the same time once you get the right information.

You are welcome. These beers are long gone, so I can not test them anymore. I did share them with a few different folks and some could notice the difference and some actually preferred the HIDO. So this stuff is subjective. For me, the difference was very obvious. In general, the LowOx beers stay fresh longer because they have much farther to travel to get to the same place.

Great. That is why I started this channel. LODO brewing is not difficult, but it takes a while to learn everything. Glad it worked out for you. Did you taste the mash wort? You will find the flavor is a lot better than HIDO wort. Also, You should not be able to smell the aroma of the mash very much if at all. If you can smell the mash, then that is the flavor leaking out! :)

@@integrityhomebrewing7202 it was very odd not smelling the mash, its all about dialing everything in now, yes i tasted the wort and was bright tasting, color was beautiful too, im a lodo convert 🤙🏻

Thanks!

You are welcome. Good luck on your journey and make sure you watch my cold side video I just posted! I would not recommend no-chill with low oxygen practices. Keeping flavors created from low oxygen is tricky. They are fragile and disappear quickly. While you do add oxygen at pitching, that is acceptable because the yeast immediately get to work and start consuming it. When you no-chill you are exposing the wort you spent the entire brewday protecting from oxygen to oxygen for hours. Basically unravelling all of your work. If you could no-chill in a CO2 purged container it would be a viable option. Is that possible without being more hassle than it is worth?

@@integrityhomebrewing7202 makes sense, thank you!

@@alexh8714 You might want to check the oxygen permeability of the no-chill cube material as well. If it is like silicon which lets a lot of oxygen through, that is another concern. If you could no-chill in a 1/4 barrel keg you could purge it and things would stay quite O2 free.

No doubt. I made the video as a process study more than a judgement. So please do not make it into that. I only dedicated a small portion to share my tasting notes. But, the difference is very obvious. I did not measure any oxygen levels as it is really tough. We talk about this quite a bit on the Modern Brewhouse forum. The only end signal if you are getting "it" right is the flavor of the finished beer. The hot break is one of the only true indicators of the process working. DO measurement alone does not tell you very much throughout the process as the malt will interact and bring the number down. In that instance, you are mainly trading flavor away but the DO numbers read as low. Malt will seek a low DO number naturally, but we do not want it to take place to retain the malt flavor if that makes sense?

@@integrityhomebrewing7202 well, you certainly can’t claim that any off flavors were due to oxygen based on your assessment. I believe your video did make that claim. Seems like you created an experiment to verify an issue and it wasn’t done in a scientific manner. I think that point should be clearly stated in the video. Other experiments have not shown any perceptible changed due to hot side aeration and it’s probably nearly impossible to prove it either way. I personally don’t think HSA is an issue in home brewing, but I admit my view is just subjective.

@@beerman1957 I would be happy for you or anybody else to taste the beers and see how they are perceived. Given the changes were minimal between batches outside of trying to limit O2 exposure, I would stand by the view that O2 caused the off flavors in the HIDO batch. This is from 16 years of brewing HIDO beers and two years brewing LODO beers. But, I am not here to convert or argue, so thanks for watching and sharing your views.

@@integrityhomebrewing7202 I’m only interested In valid data. Not to argue.

@@beerman1957 The idea that HSA somehow magically does not effect home brewers is old RDWHAHB dogma that needs to die already. There is plenty of data to support that in the professional brewing literature.

Hello, glad you liked the video. O2 reduction on the hot side has really improved my beers. I am a little unsure of your question. The metabisulfite is always added to help with the mash interactions and to act as insurance the the rest of the time. The "yeast" or "YOS" is added to the strike water to take away any oxygen that is present. So clear the strike water of oxygen then you are starting neutral so the metabisulfites can be used to their full extent. Let me know if you have any more questions.

Thanks Michael. Glad you liked the video. What you are experiencing is leftover sulfites in the fermenter. The Low Oxygen community discovered that leftover sulfites that were not expended during the hot side can interact with the yeast and create excess sulfur. The fix is to oxygenate more than usual right before pitching your yeast. So what I and many do is run pure O2 for 3-4 minutes at .25 or .5 LPM. Then let the wort rest a while and come back with 2 minutes at .25 LPM. This might be over-oxygenating but it expends all of the sulfites for sure. The other side of the coin is to "tighten up" your system so you can use less sulfites to begin with which requires less O2 at the end. For a 5 gallon batch I use around 1 to 1.2 grams of SMB total. It is a rabbit hole but easy and interesting. I do not have a Dissolved Oxygen meter so my oxygenation numbers are based upon talking with those who do have DO meters. Otherwise we are guessing!

Thanks a lot for your answer! That is very specific, I can work with that for sure! In general I am thinking about to flush my mash-tun with pure nitrogen and then underfilling to add an extra”lets call it” layer of defence. However I became a bit scared for Smb, so I’ll carry out more experiments with the additional information gave me, but I am also going to look into vitamin C or otherwise called, Ascorbic acid. I have heard it to be also a thing in Lodo brewing and people have been using it in the same gr/l for mash-in water. Sorry for the long message, so long story short: do you have any experience or tips for using ascorbic acid? Cheers :)

Flushing can be useful but this has been studied and it is only really effective if you can vacuum purge multiple times. Meaning just filling the tun with nitrogen will not create a pure inert environment. So I do not want you to waste a lot of nitrogen gas without knowing the research. I will help, but how much it will help is unknown. The most important items to implement for low oxygen brewing are removing the oxygen from your strike water (boiling or YOS method), using sulfites to limit the negative reactions with the malt compounds and slowy underletting your mash. Ascorbic acid has some benefit but it can also become a super oxidizer. It is less intrusive than SMB (the yeast do not care if it is around) but most in the community do not use it anymore.@@michielvandenberg868

Hello, it is a Team Far stainless steel cake pan from Amazon. I fabricated the pass through.

@@integrityhomebrewing7202 thanks so much!

Hi Brian, Thanks for your comments and glad you enjoyed the video. My goal is to document this stuff with a visual slant so it may be more accessible. As to your pale ale, you ran into a common trap of learning low oxygen brewing - oxygenation! What, I thought we were trying to limit oxygen??? Well, it is very important to expend the leftover sulfites before you pitch your yeast or the rotten egg aromas appear. Pure O2 is the only way and the times will seem extreme coming from a normal homebrew approach. I settled on 50ppm as it is kind of a middle ground. I run about 6 minutes of pure O2 at .5LPM before I pitch. I will make a "How I brew Low Oxygen" video sometime in the future to outline the process as I do it.

Hello Adam, thanks. I get normal to low efficiencies in the mid to high 60's. That is not something I strive for with the Foundry. Low Oxygen brewing is not known for super high efficiency and I think the HIDO batch came in a little higher gravity than the other batches. I chill the wort with a NY Hombrew 50th 1/2" immersion chiller, let the chilled wort sit for 30-45 minutes, then turn the spigot to 10:00 and drain. This produces very clear wort even with using pellet hops commando style in the boil. All of these beers were treated the same way on the cold side, spunded, lagered for 2 weeks then moved to my serving fridge. I did not tap the earlier batches until the later batches were complete to retain freshness.

Thanks Dale. I would say spunding is very important for all types of beer, including HIDO brewing practices. Why? It preserves the beer as it is intended from the end of fermentation and because the oxygen levels are so low, the beer lasts a lot longer retaining fresh flavor.

Hello and thanks for your compliment. I like your thinking. The community has looked at the oxygen scavenging properties of yeast and how they might be used in the mash but it was determined that the yeast reaction is too slow to win the battle on dough in. Sulfites act much quicker to eat up the O2.

Thanks! In the video I used 50PPM which is about 1.5 grams. (8 to 8.5 gallons of strike water) This can float around per beer style or system improvements. Now I use 1.2 grams after I improved some things.

So how does one properly calculate the additions for 10 gallon batch for light lager, such as Helles or festbier?

@@copey979 I have a spreadsheet that calculates based upon strike water and PPM desired. Sorry, I can not send it to you but you can join "The Modern Brewhouse" to have access. How much total strike & sparge in liters water do you use?

@@integrityhomebrewing7202 Thanks! I'm on there under tacopeland

Hi Matty, the most important part of the brewing process is taking the oxygen out of your strike water (YOS or Boiling) and using some sulfites to preserve the flavor polyphenols in your mash. First and foremost though is cold side technique. Spunding and closed transfers should be your first step before the hot side stuff. If you brew German Pils, then I highly recommend low oxygen brewing to get that fresh malt flavor only experienced in Germany & Belgium.

@@integrityhomebrewing7202 right on thanks 🤙🏻

@@integrityhomebrewing7202 what kind of sulfites do you add? Like campden tablets? And how do you account for that in your target water profile? Cheers

@@mattyitto2346 Sodium Metabisulfite. I usually add about 1.8 grams per 5 gallon batch right before doughing in. I use the Duda brand from Amazon.

@@integrityhomebrewing7202 i really appreciate it man subbed 🤘🏻

No problem. You still need to add Calcium Chloride or Gypsum if you already use these with low oxygen brewing. All the SMB does is take the oxygen reaction out of the picture. Or at least lessen it. I use between 1g and 2g for a 5 gallon batch. That is about 25 PPM to 50 PPM. This varies for everybody depending on their system and how little or much they want to use. If you are just starting, I would go with the 2g amount. But do not forget to oxygenate more before pitching as you need to expend any "extra" SMB that survived the brew day. Any remaining will take all of the O2 away from the yeast! So it is safer to oxygenate like 4 minutes and be sure before you pitch.

@@integrityhomebrewing7202 1 to 2 g per 5 gallon batch, i do smaller batches, i use around 5 gallons total water, also i wonder if i even need sms for my system cause it’s completely sealable and purgable and completely closed loop, but extra protection couldn’t hurt i figure, thanks again

@@mattyitto2346 5 gallon batch is 5 gallons in the keg. For me, that usually starting with 8-8.5 gallons of water. Adjust accordingly to your batch size. You need the SMB because we are trying to stop the reaction with the water and the grain. Or really intercept it with the SMB. Sealable and purgable means you have to replace every but of air with an inert gas like nitrogen as well as all of your grain etc... Very difficult to do at the homebrew level unless you have a very advanced system. If you have this kind of system, I wonder why all of the questions?

@@integrityhomebrewing7202 no not advanced system lol just modified kegs i use, your info is greatly appreciated