Brülosophy Discussion On Headspace

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I really enjoyed listening to the Brülosophy podcast on headspace. I thought it was very interesting that they found significance when testing making a small batch beer in a large fermentor. I have a theory as to why they might have gotten a significant result.

I remember reading in Papazian’s book, “The Complete Joy of Homebrewing” that a little blow off is good for the beer, but he didn’t get into the details as to why and said don’t worry about it if you don’t have a blow off. I wonder if that may have been a factor in the exBeeriment?

The other thing is the experiment kegged the beer without purging the keg. It seems to me that in kegging, it is super important to deal with the O2 in there because when you pressurize to force carb, every little bit of oxygen that is in the headspace is going into the beer.

 

[Dland]

I store my sanitized kegs with around 10 PSI CO2, so they clean and ready for closed transfer from fermentor. If not doing a closed transfer, there is still CO2 in keg when lid off. And after kegging on open transfers, it is a common practice to pressurizing and venting keg with CO2 a few times to get out an stray O2.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I found the quote in Charlie Papazian’s The Complete Joy of Homebrewing— “This method of fermentation has the extra advantage of “blowing off” excessively bitter hop resins, excess yeast, and other things that may contribute to slightly more assertive flavors and aromas.”

I would like for Brülosophy to re-do the experiment with a purged keg for the large head space beer and to use a fermentor that is sure to have a good blow off. I think that the significance may have come from the blow off.

 

[Dland]

Never did have any blow off myself, except once when I overshot my target volume by a lot. Of course a conical fermentor helps, as I can do a few timely trub dumps. Mr Papazian could not have anticipated the current hop craze, where accumulating those resins are the focus of much effort.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

Just listened to the podcast. It was on bias. Isn’t it interesting that because Charlie says that blow off makes beer taste better, and since I generally have a blow of in my process, I think he’s right and conversely, your process rarely if ever has a blow off and so you assume that he is wrong. Don’t take this as snarky either. My bias towards my system could be just as faulty. And just the belief that Charlie himself has about blow off could warp his opinion of the effects on the beer. Just very interesting. It begs the question as Dr. Suess states,”Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find, for a mind maker upper to make up his mind.”

 

[TechFanMD]

I wonder what Charlie would write about this today. So many of those books were written at a different time with different ingredients and different understandings. The writers even learned more through the years and changed their own processes.

Think of the well entrenched process of transferring to a ‘secondary.’

 

[Dland]

Just listened to the podcast. It was on bias. Isn’t it interesting that because Charlie says that blow off makes beer taste better, and since I generally have a blow of in my process, I think he’s right and conversely, your process rarely if ever has a blow off and so you assume that he is wrong.

I don't necessarily think anyone is right or wrong, but am not going to change a working process due a old ''bible''. To intentionally have blow off, I'd have to brew a gallon or two extra wort to use up the headspace allowed in my 12.5 gallon conicals which are well sized for brewing two 5 gallon kegs per batch. Back when I fermented in carboys, there was often blow off because I was usually going for close to ten gallons in two 5 gallon carboy fermentors.

That said, as techfan stated, things have come a long way. I used to brew in the early 90's, the level of knowledge, equipment, sanitizing procedures, and ingredients are all different. I wonder how many of us remember driving an hour to get to a tiny brew supply store with plastic bucket 'brew kits', bottle caps, extract and a few aged bins of grain, or buying supplies out of a paper catalog, filling out the order form and in with a check.

Now I'm getting nostalgic, oh well, at least we have pumps now and don't have to lift and pour hot liquids.