All In One Brewing Systems and Hot Side Aeration

[Silver_Is_Money]

It appears to me that the methodology of All In One brewing systems makes them inherently hot side aeration machines. Is anyone concerned by this?

 

[El Duderino]

I think Hot side aeration on a homebrew scale was shown to not be an issue.

https://brulosophy.com/2014/11/18/is-hot-side-aeration-fact-or-fiction-exbeeriment-results/

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Thanks @El Duderino! That makes me feel a lot better about considering one of these systems.

 

[Birrofilo]

The Brulosophy test is interesting.

If it is true what Palmer says, that " Aeration of hot wort will cause the oxygen to chemically bind to various wort compounds. Over time, these compounds will break down, freeing atomic oxygen back into the beer where it can oxidize the alcohols and hop compounds [...]" then in order to test the side effects of hot side oxygenation the best would have been to brew a beer which is most susceptible to oxidation, i.e. a beer where hop aroma (aroma additions in the kettle at the last minutes of the boil) are an important part of the overall taste of the beer.

This beer has several hop additions besides bittering: 20', 10', 5' and "flameout". I consider those the ideal aromas to test the damages of oxidation. (A "dry-hopping" on both batches would also have been meaningful).

IF the panel of tasters is sophisticated enough to give quality-answers, then one might really conclude that HSA is not something to worry too much in our brewing procedure.

(Which means: one must always try to do things with a certain care, but not stress too much over this problem).

 

[hopjuice_71]

It appears to me that the methodology of All In One brewing systems makes them inherently hot side aeration machines. Is anyone concerned by this?

It depends on how you use them. I have a grainfather that I have modified. I got rid of the overflow pipe and made a stainless steel mash cap so that the recirculation is returned below the liquid level of mash. So, if I do a no-sparge batch and pay attention to some other details I can significantly reduce HSA. Even with sparging, I can really reduce any splashing by slowly raising the malt pipe so that the bottom always just below the level of the liquid. I don't always do these things, but I can depending on the type of beer I am making (yes, I do believe it makes a difference with certain beers).

 

[hopjuice_71]

The Brulosophy test is interesting.

If it is true what Palmer says, that " Aeration of hot wort will cause the oxygen to chemically bind to various wort compounds. Over time, these compounds will break down, freeing atomic oxygen back into the beer where it can oxidize the alcohols and hop compounds [...]" then in order to test the side effects of hot side oxygenation the best would have been to brew a beer which is most susceptible to oxidation, i.e. a beer where hop aroma (aroma additions in the kettle at the last minutes of the boil) are an important part of the overall taste of the beer.

This beer has several hop additions besides bittering: 20', 10', 5' and "flameout". I consider those the ideal aromas to test the damages of oxidation. (A "dry-hopping" on both batches would also have been meaningful).

IF the panel of tasters is sophisticated enough to give quality-answers, then one might really conclude that HSA is not something to worry too much in our brewing procedure.

(Which means: one must always try to do things with a certain care, but not stress too much over this problem).

Palmer is not quite accurate here. Oxidation/reduction reactions are about transfer of electrons. It just so happens that molecular oxygen is pretty good at taking up electrons, thereby oxidizing other molecules. These oxidized molecules linger in the beer and can, over time, act as electron acceptors to slowly oxidize other compounds present in beer, resulting in staling. Various metals are purported to be example culprits in this process. So, it has nothing to with re-release of oxygen. It is also why yeast, which consume oxygen, can't solve the problem of wort oxidation.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

There is a second Hot Side Aeration exbeeriment at Brulosophy:

https://brulosophy.com/2016/12/26/h...uating-the-impact-of-age-exbeeriment-results/

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

The Pilsner Urquell breweries process has also been noted as an invitation to inducing hot side aeration. It doesn't seem to impact their popularity much.

 

[hopjuice_71]

Full disclosure: I am not part of the low oxygen brewing movement. However, there is now an enormous body of scientific evidence supporting the effects of wort oxidation on everything from flavour to long term stability. The main question is how relevant this is to an individual homebrewer, who is making choices for themselves.

In my case, I am not sensitive to the flavours that are apparently preserved by avoiding hot side oxidation. Also, my go to beers - like IPAs and hoppy PAs - don't really benefit from preservation of these flavours and never last long enough to manifest the long term damage of hot side oxidation. So, I never worry about it much with those beers, although I do avoid "splashy" brewing. I am totally obsessed with avoidance of cold-side oxidation, which has a MAJOR impact. My pilsners, however, have benefited from attention to hot side practices. Because of the extended fermentation, longer storage times, slower consumption, and less hops to cover up issues, the staling over time did start to show up. My pilsners now stay fresher and brighter for a longer time, which I attribute to adapting my all-in-one to minimize hot side oxidation. Of course, this is just my personal experience.

Re PU, this is a go-to commercial pilsner for me. Even though I really like it, I'm pretty sure it is not an optimal product, at least by the time it gets to the west coast of Canada.

 

[tracer bullet]

I'm a brulosophy fan but for some of the tests I wish they'd store the beers a month and then try the test again. Differences might be more apparent. I really find it interesting that even when the tests show there IS a difference, sometimes the thing being studied isn't actually better (that is, the "does XYZ matter" tests where XYZ turns out to be the more liked beer).

Think of the electric brewers as simply replacing propane under your pot with an electric element under your pot. Even if they include pumps, grain baskets, and so on you really don't have to use them. If your current equipment fits, you can pretty much reproduce whatever method you use today. Well.... maybe not a 3-vessel HERMS setup or something, but for most folks with a cooler mash tun and a boil kettle.

 

[Birrofilo]

Even with sparging, I can really reduce any splashing by slowly raising the malt pipe so that the bottom always just below the level of the liquid.

This is an interesting suggestion. I installed a pulley above my all-in-one kettle. The pulley helps with various lifting jobs in my homebrewing activity, and also with lifting the grain basket before sparging, which is better done with less effort than with more effort.

Considering that the basket is hung to the pulley, I could actually lift be grain basket with the pulley and lock the pulley when the bottom of the basket is more or less at the beer level (which is something that must be estimated because I don't have the external transparent pipe).
I could then lock the pulley for the entire sparging operation.

In my AIO kettle, and supposedly also in the Grainfather, the grain basket is normally lifted until it rests on some supports which are at the top of the kettle.

This pulley thing, if working, might even induce me to install the transparent external recirculating pump pipe, which I so far excluded doing because it is made of plastic. The external transpart pipe would allow me to see where the beer level is inside the kettle and put the grain basket as you describe.

 

[hopjuice_71]

This is an interesting suggestion. I installed a pulley above my all-in-one kettle. The pulley helps with various lifting jobs in my homebrewing activity, and also with lifting the grain basket before sparging, which is better done with less effort than with more effort.

Considering that the basket is hung to the pulley, I could actually lift be grain basket with the pulley and lock the pulley when the bottom of the basket is more or less at the beer level (which is something that must be estimated because I don't have the external transparent pipe).
I could then lock the pulley for the entire sparging operation.

In my AIO kettle, and supposedly also in the Grainfather, the grain basket is normally lifted until it rests on some supports which are at the top of the kettle.

This pulley thing, if working, might even induce me to install the transparent external recirculating pump pipe, which I so far excluded doing because it is made of plastic. The external transpart pipe would allow me to see where the beer level is inside the kettle and put the grain basket as you describe.

Yep, this is exactly what I do - I use a pulley to slowly raise the malt pipe as I sparge. Straightforward (if you can install a pulley) and no splashing. To be honest, the pulley was originally installed to overcome the awkwardness of hauling up that malt pipe.. ..the gradual raising was just bonus adaptation.

 

[Brooothru]

Full disclosure: I am not part of the low oxygen brewing movement. However, there is now an enormous body of scientific evidence supporting the effects of wort oxidation on everything from flavour to long term stability. The main question is how relevant this is to an individual homebrewer, who is making choices for themselves.

In my case, I am not sensitive to the flavours that are apparently preserved by avoiding hot side oxidation. Also, my go to beers - like IPAs and hoppy PAs - don't really benefit from preservation of these flavours and never last long enough to manifest the long term damage of hot side oxidation. So, I never worry about it much with those beers, although I do avoid "splashy" brewing. I am totally obsessed with avoidance of cold-side oxidation, which has a MAJOR impact. My pilsners, however, have benefited from attention to hot side practices. Because of the extended fermentation, longer storage times, slower consumption, and less hops to cover up issues, the staling over time did start to show up. My pilsners now stay fresher and brighter for a longer time, which I attribute to adapting my all-in-one to minimize hot side oxidation. Of course, this is just my personal experience.

Re PU, this is a go-to commercial pilsner for me. Even though I really like it, I'm pretty sure it is not an optimal product, at least by the time it gets to the west coast of Canada.

Couldn't agree more. Full disclosure: I AM an advocate of low-oxygen brewing and try to observe LoDO processes in both hot side and cold side. Hot side I use a mash cap, full volume no sparge, and pre-treat strike water with yeast oxygen scavenging techniques, and adding "Trifecta" (BrewTan B, ascorbic acid, and NaMeta) to the mash. Boil is kept to a more gentle tumble rather than violent roil, chill is done with a stainless steel immersion coil.

I share your concerns about cold side aeration and incorporate underletting into a closed fermenter and closed transfers into O2 scavenged kegs.

Since "going LoDO" my lagers are decidedly better, and certainly last longer. I can't say my ales are equally improved since they normally don't last multiple months like lagers do, plus any non-objective impressions would likely be open to confirmation bias. They certainly aren't worse however.

After more than a year of LoDO brewing I can say that the process isn't any more difficult. It just has a couple different procedural steps. Overall the quality is improved and long term stability has gone up markedly.

And to answer the OP, the use of an all-in-one brewing system isn't inconsistent with low-oxygen, non-HSA brewing. I use a Braumeister and have found it is very compatible with LoDO hot side and cold side practices.

Brooo Brother

 

[RufusBrewer]

ETA I wrote this reply several hours ago, but did not hit the post button. I came back and hit the post button. I know see that others share my thought.

I was thinking about this. If you are a "I do not want to take any chances kind of guy", are there measures you could take?

One thing came to me, raising the basket slowly so the part of the mash that is above the wort level will drain into the the wet part of the mash. If you did it slow enough and timed it correctly, there would be very little (none perhaps) wort to leave the mash once it cleared the wort.

It is not clear to me what this might do to mash efficiency.

 

[Brooothru]

Splashing and dripping is the reason I went to no sparge. When I remove the malt pipe from my Braumeister it's similar to BIAB when the bag is pulled from the mash tun. When I "pull the pipe" it sits on rails suspended above the wort. Since my mash is now full volume, the bottom of the malt pipe is still in contact with the wort, so it mostly drains without splashing, just like you describe.

To do this I do have to over-build my grain bill by a pound or so to end up with my desired SG and pre-boil wort volume. The upside is that I can also "sparge" the increased grain bed and get a gallon or so of partygyle to test batch a new hop, or use as a base for a viability starter or step-up an existing yeast starter.

Brooo Brother

 

[effeffe]

I think Hot side aeration on a homebrew scale was shown to not be an issue.

https://brulosophy.com/2014/11/18/is-hot-side-aeration-fact-or-fiction-exbeeriment-results/

There is a second Hot Side Aeration exbeeriment at Brulosophy:

https://brulosophy.com/2016/12/26/h...uating-the-impact-of-age-exbeeriment-results/

These two "experiments" make little sense to me, as no real action was taken to avoid hot-side oxidation: no water deoxygenation, no floating cap, no anti-oxidants, no purging... both the beers were oxidized. All an experiment designed like that could show, even if perfectly executed and evaluated, would be the effect of intentionally oxidizing the wort as much as possible as opposed to just not paying attention to it (which is very different from avoiding oxidation).

 

[Craiginthecorn]

Braumeister has a LoDo accessory which also slightly increases its grain capacity.

 

[Pappers_]

I pay attention to oxygen post-fermentation but have never worried about hot side aeration. I can see that no-sparge would be the way to go to reduce adding oxygen to the wort pre-boil. But don't most commercial breweries fly sparge, which would introduce a ton of oxygen? As I said, I'm not an expert in this, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[FswBG]

These two "experiments" make little sense to me, as no real action was taken to avoid hot-side oxidation: no water deoxygenation, no floating cap, no anti-oxidants, no purging... both the beers were oxidized. All an experiment designed like that could show, even if perfectly executed and evaluated, would be the effect of intentionally oxidizing the wort as much as possible as opposed to just not paying attention to it (which is very different from avoiding oxidation).

That was my complaint with the assessments as well. Only a few of the process adjustments were made and people would rather take the word of article 'conclusion' than experiment themselves. It seems like quite the hot topic. I have just accepted there are different types of brewers. Some strive to continuously improve our understanding, processes, and enjoy the craft. Others tend to have fun with the hobby, the social aspects, or just want to have beer on hand. There's no 'right' way, it's just differences in goals and enjoyment. My frustration is the back-seat contrarian that's unwilling to even entertain the science or try it themselves.

I haven't been brewing LoDO long, but I notice a dramatic improvement in my lagers. Enough so to start planning a whole new setup. Which takes me off my soapbox and back to the OP question. Coming from an eBIAB as well, I thought about the pully method to slowly raise a bit at a time, but time is a big factor in LoDO. Long drain times will add more DO back into the wort through atmospheric diffusion (or any splashing/aeration). You could always up the NaMeta and figure out a lauter cap to help counteract it, but to be fair I haven't tried it yet. I have been using a 2v configuration to be able to underlet my mash and remove the basket draining problem completely.

 

[Brooothru]

These two "experiments" make little sense to me, as no real action was taken to avoid hot-side oxidation: no water deoxygenation, no floating cap, no anti-oxidants, no purging... both the beers were oxidized. All an experiment designed like that could show, even if perfectly executed and evaluated, would be the effect of intentionally oxidizing the wort as much as possible as opposed to just not paying attention to it (which is very different from avoiding oxidation).

Very good point. Eventually the amount of dissolved oxygen reaches saturation. The fact that the "xbeeriment" was attempting to further oxygenate wort that was already saturated makes no sense. Another flaw in the methodology (IMHO) was the glossing over of the role of oxygen pickup during the boil. The continuous exposure of the wort to oxygen absorption during a 60~90 minute vigorous boil is not analogous to "whipping strongly till your arm gets tired after a few minutes."

I'd vote "Myth Busted" on 'proving' that HSA doesn't exist in homebrew based on the faulty methodology used in this example. At the very least, it was "Not Proven". All that was 'proven' was that one batch of oxidized beer is indistinguishable from another batch of oxidized beer.

Brooo Brother

 

[Birrofilo]

Truth be told, I don't think the goal of the Brulosophy experiment was to validate or invalidate the LoDO method. It was just to analyze the "hot-side aeration" vs "careful to avoid HSA" in conventional (non LoDO) homebrewing.

It might be taken as a confirmation of the LoDO doctrine, in that it shows that only caring about one ring of the chain doesn't reduce oxidation.

For a "conventional" homebrewer, the question is whether caring about HSA would make a difference. The results from this test appear to suggest that they wouldn't.

The lesson that one might take home is that either one converts to the LoDO doctrine or it's not meaningful to stress over HSA. In this sense the HSA can be seen as a "myth" to be burst if taken in isolation.

(I don't have a horse in this race, I am here to learn)

 

[Brooothru]

Braumeister has a LoDo accessory which also slightly increases its grain capacity.

There are at least two. I bought the original Speidel kit and later got the BacBrewing model that is more robust and does a much better job of keeping grain in the grain bed and out of the recirculated wort. I can stuff an extra 3# of grain into the malt pipe, and routinely can get OG > 1.065, though I mostly brew lower ABV beers.

Brooo Brother

 

[effeffe]

I pay attention to oxygen post-fermentation but have never worried about hot side aeration. I can see that no-sparge would be the way to go to reduce adding oxygen to the wort pre-boil. But don't most commercial breweries fly sparge, which would introduce a ton of oxygen? As I said, I'm not an expert in this, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

A lot of craft breweries do not do much to avoid hot-side oxidation indeed. However, I think it's worth mentioning the square-cube law is on their side: the bigger the vessel, the less oxidation you get, everything else being equal. This is in contrast with the unfortunate mantra "HSA doesn't matter at homebrew scale".

Sealed and purged vessels can be a low-oxygen alternative.

Truth be told, I don't think the goal of the Brulosophy experiment was to validate or invalidate the LoDO method. It was just to analyze the "hot-side aeration" vs "careful to avoid HSA" in conventional (non LoDO) homebrewing.

It might be taken as a confirmation of the LoDO doctrine, in that it shows that only caring about one ring of the chain doesn't reduce oxidation.

For a "conventional" homebrewer, the question is whether caring about HSA would make a difference. The results from this test appear to suggest that they wouldn't.

The lesson that one might take home is that either one converts to the LoDO doctrine or it's not meaningful to stress over HSA. In this sense the HSA can be seen as a "myth" to be burst if taken in isolation.

(I don't have a horse in this race, I am here to learn)

Which is exactly what makes little sense: evaluating the effect of HSA without taking measure to avoiding it. But I get what you mean.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

evaluating the effect of HSA without taking measure to avoiding it.

Have you considered rewriting the experiment and getting a number of people to try it out?

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

I believe cold water is capable of holding more dissolved oxygen than warm water, and the same goes for wort. With a low pressure recirculating mash, hot side aeration can be kept to a minimum, although not eliminated completely. With that said when the wort is boiled it is no longer able to retain a good portion of the dissolved oxygen absorbed in the mash. How much harm can that do and to what extent will it adversely impact a batch of beer?

I do closed Co2 transfers from the fermentor to StarSan purged kegs and see a big improvement in beer stability and taste BTW.

 

[hopjuice_71]

I believe cold water is capable of holding more dissolved oxygen than warm water, and the same goes for wort. With a low pressure recirculating mash, hot side aeration can be kept to a minimum, although not eliminated completely. With that said when the wort is boiled it is no longer able to retain a good portion of the dissolved oxygen absorbed in the mash. How much harm can that do and to what extent will it adversely impact a batch of beer?

I do closed Co2 transfers from the fermentor to StarSan purged kegs and see a big improvement in beer stability and taste BTW.

You are right about the solubility of oxygen vs temperature. However, the problem isn't just about the presence or absence of oxygen. Oxidation/reduction reactions are simply about the transfer of electrons between molecules. Oxygen is just the initial electron acceptor, thereby resulting in a variety of oxidized (i.e. lacking electrons) molecular species in the mash - and these species don't necessarily involve oxygen atoms at all. These molecules can ultimately act as electron acceptors in various other reactions, thereby oxidizing other compounds, and at various other times during the production of beer, all the way from the boil to cold storage. Oxygen in the mash is the starting point and you can't drive the out the effects of oxidation once it is done.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I believe cold water is capable of holding more dissolved oxygen than warm water, and the same goes for wort. With a low pressure recirculating mash, hot side aeration can be kept to a minimum, although not eliminated completely. With that said when the wort is boiled it is no longer able to retain a good portion of the dissolved oxygen absorbed in the mash. How much harm can that do and to what extent will it adversely impact a batch of beer?

As to adverse impact: Boiling does dramatically lower the DO (dissolved oxygen), but it also chemically reacts calcium with bicarbonate and thereby drops out both Alkalinity and Calcium as a highly insoluble Calcium Carbonate precipitate. If your desire is to retain alkalinity and calcium, you can't pre-boil your water whereby to reduce DO.

 

[effeffe]

Have you considered rewriting the experiment and getting a number of people to try it out?

If you mean I should suggest an improved experiment to Brulosophy, they already received comments pointing out flaws in their experiment and did not repeat it by taking appropriate measures.

If you mean I should do that myself, I honestly don't see why I, or anyone, should do that, since scientific/technical/professional literature has greatly studied wort oxidation on the hot side.

I believe cold water is capable of holding more dissolved oxygen than warm water, and the same goes for wort. With a low pressure recirculating mash, hot side aeration can be kept to a minimum, although not eliminated completely. With that said when the wort is boiled it is no longer able to retain a good portion of the dissolved oxygen absorbed in the mash. How much harm can that do and to what extent will it adversely impact a batch of beer?

I do closed Co2 transfers from the fermentor to StarSan purged kegs and see a big improvement in beer stability and taste BTW.

While hot water holds less dissolved oxygen, temperature greatly increases oxidation rate, which is also the reason why oxidation during in the mash/lauter is a problem: it happens much faster than on the cold-side.


Maybe I went a bit off-topic, sorry about that.

 

[bwible]

I have an Anvil Foundry 6.5 with the pump and recirculation kit. So basically there would be 2 points of concern: the wort being recirculated during the mash onto the stainless steel plate on top of the mash basket to drip back into the grain bed, and also when you pull the mash basket and allow the grain to drip/drain. I guess sparging would also drip and splash.

I’ve made 7 or 8 beers with my Foundry and most of them have been good. Any that weren’t I know why and it was my fault.

I’m even filtering my wort, draining it out of the Foundry into another kettle to get rid of all the grain bits. My Foundry probably leaves 1/4 pound of grain in the wort after the basket is pulled and I feel like I really have to filter/strain that out before boiling. I don’t understand how, but that much in grain bits gets outside of the basket somehow.

The last several brews, I’ve pretty much been only using the Foundry to do the mash, taking advantage of the temp control. Then I’ve been straining into my brew kettle for the boil.

This has been working for me.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

scientific/technical/professional literature has greatly studied wort oxidation on the hot side.

Do you have a suggested reading list?

 

[effeffe]

Do you have a suggested reading list?

Kunze is probably the book where I found the most comprehensive treatment of the effects of oxidation, though it is scattered through the book because different chapters deal with different steps of the brewing process, but you may have some luck using the index. Also you can find a lot of pointers here and here.

EDIT: oh god, the forum is selectively censoring links to themodernbrewhouse.com website, this is getting ridiculous... also your profile is private so can't PM you. Oh well, I'm sure you can find the right pages by yourself.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

Ok but on a scale of 1 to 100 to what extent will this adversely impact a batch of beer? With 1 being unnoticeable to the average beer drinker and 100 meaning the beer is rendered undrinkable? I'm not trying to be snarky but actually trying to justify the additional costs in time and equipment in relation to the added benefit.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

If you (for example) enjoy Pilsner Urquell, either (and preferably) on tap at the source, or in exported cans or their newer amber bottles, then you are not being negatively impacted at all by their hot side aeration.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Kunze is probably the book where I found the most comprehensive treatment of the effects of oxidation, though it is scattered through the book because different chapters deal with different steps of the brewing process, but you may have some luck using the index. Also you can find a lot of pointers here and here.

Thank you for the references! The "edited" link won't be hard to figure out.

 

[effeffe]

Ok but on a scale of 1 to 100 to what extent will this adversely impact a batch of beer? With 1 being unnoticeable to the average beer drinker and 100 meaning the beer is rendered undrinkable? I'm not trying to be snarky but actually trying to justify the additional costs in time and equipment in relation to the added benefit.

Honestly, how anyone could really answer that question about any brewing procedure?

 

[hopjuice_71]

Ok but on a scale of 1 to 100 to what extent will this adversely impact a batch of beer? With 1 being unnoticeable to the average beer drinker and 100 meaning the beer is rendered undrinkable? I'm not trying to be snarky but actually trying to justify the additional costs in time and equipment in relation to the added benefit.

Honestly, I think the answers are quite personal ones. If you and others really enjoy your beer and it gets consumed before you notice any "issues," then don't worry about it. If you really enjoy your beer but you feel there are some knobs you can twiddle for possible improvements to various aspects (e.g. long term stability), then LoDO/LOB provides a new set of knobs you can twiddle.

In my opinion, you don't have to go all in, and you may choose how far you want to go for certain beers. For example, I have adopted some very simple host-side practices for all of my brewing, such as a mash cap and underletting (well, the grainfather equivalent), because it was so simple, cheap, and easy to implement (didn't impact my brew day in the slightest). For most beers my simple LOB implementations end here, yet I do believe there is some small tangible benefits to beer stability. For pilsners I go as all in as I can with my system. When really fresh, these pilsners don't taste a whole lot different to me than without LOB practices, though I fully admit to having a pretty poor palate. After a lot of experimentation tasting commercial LoDO brews and making my own I realized that I don't experience the purported taste benefits. The big change is that the (mostly-) LOB pilsners have much better storage properties - they stay fresh for much longer. The hard part is that one can only determine if the knob twiddling is worth it after they actually try it for themselves. As I have outlined, however, making some small positive changes in this direction is pretty easy.

On another note, when I make my annual English bitter to serve as a "cask" ale, I intentionally brew somewhat splashy as it more closely emulates the product I drank while living in England and the beer gets consumed in one night at a party anyways.

So, I see it as some knob twiddling one can do, if they want.

 

[FswBG]

Ok but on a scale of 1 to 100 to what extent will this adversely impact a batch of beer? With 1 being unnoticeable to the average beer drinker and 100 meaning the beer is rendered undrinkable? I'm not trying to be snarky but actually trying to justify the additional costs in time and equipment in relation to the added benefit.

I think that's the catch, right? It raises questions on what you're wanting to achieve in brewing. (Not referring to you personally, but in general)

Are you brewing with the average beer drinker in mind or do you explore and push yourself to try new styles/practices?
I think it's fine either way, there's nothing wrong with making hazy or pastry beers.

Do you turn a blind eye to the science in favor of comfortability and time savings?
Some people have kids, love football, or have other interests. There's nothing wrong with that.

Call it chasing that perfect pint on a memorable trip you had or the pursuit of giving 100% making the best beer you can. Again, there is no wrong answer per se, but ignorantly marginalizing the effects that others are finding value in is counterintuitive to the brewing community. I see a lot of it 'in the wild' outside of this LOB forum and it deterred me for a long time unfortunately.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I'm in the camp that believes the greatest bang for the buck likely comes from controlling cold side aeration.

 

[hopjuice_71]

I'm in the camp that believes the greatest bang for the buck likely comes from controlling cold side aeration.

Greatest bang for buck - I definitely agree.

 

[Brooothru]

I pay attention to oxygen post-fermentation but have never worried about hot side aeration. I can see that no-sparge would be the way to go to reduce adding oxygen to the wort pre-boil. But don't most commercial breweries fly sparge, which would introduce a ton of oxygen? As I said, I'm not an expert in this, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

I believe cold water is capable of holding more dissolved oxygen than warm water, and the same goes for wort. With a low pressure recirculating mash, hot side aeration can be kept to a minimum, although not eliminated completely. With that said when the wort is boiled it is no longer able to retain a good portion of the dissolved oxygen absorbed in the mash. How much harm can that do and to what extent will it adversely impact a batch of beer?

I do closed Co2 transfers from the fermentor to StarSan purged kegs and see a big improvement in beer stability and taste BTW.

Reasonable assumption, and as to gross amounts of D.O. absorbed during an extended boil vs. low temperature regimes of the hot side I really don't know. But that's not the relevant question.

The goal of low oxygen brewing is to reduce the amount of ANY D.O. in the wort as close to zero as possible. To put the volumetric amount of D.O. into perspective, one LOB proponent described the amount of a "beer capful" of D.O. as sufficient to measurably degrade both the flavor and long term stability of a 5 gallon batch of beer.

The relavent amount of D.O. is measured in parts per BILLION. As small as that sounds, it is actually quite easy to achieve very low PPB numbers in the low double digit PPB range in strike water using the yeast oxygen scavenging techniques advocated and empirically measured by the LOB brewers. The only equipment required is a measuring spoon, some bread yeast, and :15 minutes of patience.

Of course the D.O. levels will rise as the bread yeast gets denatured with rising temperatures in the mash, but a simple dosing of 2 grams "Tifecta" will help sequester oxygen (and chelate gallotannins) from dough-in to post-boil chilling, when fresh beer yeast gets pitched which scavenges any reabsorbed O2 as fermentation begins.

Those two steps alone are easily achievable ways to reducing oxygenation on the hot side, and simple first steps in improving your beer by reducing oxidative stresses.

Brooo Brother