Experimenting with LoDo: Rolling Updates

I was anti-HSA concerns for a long time. It wasn't until recently that I was looking for minor improvements to beers that I believe to be of very high quality that I started considering it again.

 

It's been 6 days since I brewed these 3 beers. The Pils is the one that I'm most interested in since it seems to me that it is the one most likely to display a difference (if any exists). It is now getting close to terminal gravity at 1.016 (Forced fermentation test showed that it should finish at 1.009) so I expect it to be at terminal gravity by Friday. This is a little bit of a slow fermentation because I'm fermenting at a pretty low temperature (45 degrees right now, dropping to 43 today). I had pitched at 43 and let it get to 48 degrees by the next day and dropped it back to 45. I should have let it stay at 48 for 2 days to really get going before dropping the temp back down.

Smelling and tasting the sample today, I couldn't tell a whole lot about whether or not the final beer will display differences from what I'm used to, but I can say that it is smelling great and tasted "like a beer that someone else would brew." I've found myself using that descriptor a lot lately actually with all the different lager techniques we've been trying. The beer, even still being sweet, is very "clean" and I'm not getting any sulfur aroma at all actually which was a surprise.

The two hazy IPA's are done fermenting and have been dry hopped for 2 days now. At this point, I'm getting much more of the "bright" hop flavors that I normally expect to disappear with these hops during conditioning. I am hopeful that we will be able to keep those aromas in the beer as right now, both of them have a great mango/papaya flavor going on. I'll be doing diacetyl tests over the next two days and I hope to be packaging those beers on Sunday.

 

The old school way of fermenting lagers typically called for a low temperature pitch, (42F) with a rise to 48F, and then a slow steady drop back down until diacetyl reduction was complete and then cold crash the rest of the way. My hope was to suppress esters as much as possible using that method. In addition, my fermenters are rated for 15 psi, so I wanted to be able to spund to 15 psi and achieve a full 2.7 volumes of co2. The cool temperature makes the higher carbonation volume possible

 

I think it's cool that the Brulosophy stuff is out there, but personally, I don't trust their experiments and I think even the author has said before that what they offer is data points, not conclusions. As Jack mentioned, it's not about removing oxygen, it's about limiting the oxidative effects before the boil ever starts.

I think I'm going to have to rethink my high pressure fermentations. My first pressurized fermentation was 5 psi and I didn't notice much of a difference in the speed of the fermentation. My next pressurized fermentation was 10 psi and that one I thought was slow because I was using a new yeast strain that we had no data on and I was fermenting too cool. Another one was 15 psi and was pretty normal with Augustiner yeast at 54F. However, this fermentation is going slow at 15 psi and 45F. It took off quickly and I pitched plenty of yeast (2.5mil/mL/P) with good aeration and the yeast was finished propagating just a day before I pitched it, so it was good, fresh yeast. It looks now like I'll hit terminal gravity either tomorrow or Monday for a 10-11 day primary fermentation. I don't think that's a bad timeline in normal circumstances, but I would have expected 6-8 days total at this pitching rate. These last couple days, it's just been crawling so I haven't dropped the temperature any lower than 45F as a result.

That said, the Pils is at 1.012 right now. I would normally expect this to be the time of displaying the most sulfur before it starts to dissipate, but the sulfur level right now is low and would be perfectly acceptable in a finished beer. I ran my gravity test through a filtration flask to remove some of the yeast for a more accurate taste test. I'm real excited about this Pils. It's going to be dry hopped tomorrow with Barbe Rouge. Right now, it has a very soft mouthfeel, the Pils malt displays absolutely no grainy astringency. The whirlpool hops taste very bright and floral. The bitterness level might be a little bit low, but I normally expect the bitterness to pop better when the beer is clear and carbonated. I don't perceive any esters and I think that it will display the "crisp" aspect that I've been aggressively pursuing in my lagers.

 

I think the most common "traditional" way of using lager tanks calls for moving the beer when there is still a small amount of fermentation left. Personally, I like to get passed a diacetyl test and get the beer cold crashed before transferring and I just spund in the primary fermenter. Then I push over with co2 rather than a pump into a purged lager tank. One of the things to realize when using lager tanks is that when they were invented and the procedures for them were perfected, CCV fermenters didn't exist. Unitanks can be a perfectly acceptable 1 tank method for producing equally high quality lagers as using lager tanks. Arguably, it's a better method because you don't have any oxygen intro in the transfer to the lager tank. Lager tanks really just speed up the process and free up the fermenter to get the next beer going. If I was a lager only brewery that needed to maximize production, I would want 3 lager tanks for every 1 fermenter. At my new brewery, we will be using unitanks without lagering tanks, but we are also getting more fermenters than we really need so that we can hit our production goals with ease. We are doing that in part because of the visual appeal for customers that will see 8 fermenters in a straight line creating a "dramatic" backdrop for our event space.

 

This is my first time using it personally, but I've been keeping my eye on it for years and sampling beers with it. At CBC in 2018 there was a booth that had it in a light pale ale. I would use the descriptors strawberry, currant, and raspberry. I don't get the citrus descriptors in the beers I've had with it. I think it could be good in modern IPA's, but it does still have a strisselspalt like earthiness. Similar to how hull melon, mandarina bavaria, and hallertau blanc all have fruity flavors, but they still display their noble background.

This beer is being marketed as an Italian Pilsner with the disclaimer that if we're brewing an "Italian" Pils it won't just be a German style Pilsner marketed as something new. It's also being released side by side with our new Sub-Saharan West African Pils... Hopefully people appreciate the joke ;p

I dry hop on the day that I expect the beer to hit terminal gravity when I dry hop Pilsners. I just drop the pellets through the dry hop port at fermentation temperature (in this instance 45F), spund, and dump hops after two days, hopefully being the same day that we are passed a diacetyl test and ready to cold crash.