[kgs]

Should home-brewers be concerned with scientific literature from the pro brewing industry regarding brewing chemistry?   In general, I think the answer is no. Most home-brewers have more basic things to focus on to improve their beer.

I'll admit to bringing up some more involved concepts in threads where it doesn't belong, especially where beginning brewers are involved. Intermediate to advanced brewers should take in all sources on brewing science though. It all applies at every scale. You may need to tweak it to be applicable but the concepts are scale invariant.

 
If the brewer goes through the beer quickly or doesn't care about competitions or wants to make the best beer with the least amount of expense and effort and have fun at the same time then the answer is still "No." 

I push back on this because applying advanced concepts won't take any of the fun out of brewing. Yes, it may add some equipment costs (upgrades, automation, etc.) and it may take an incremental increase in effort to accommodate, but it shouldn't be inherently less fun.

But that assumes we're all in agreement on the definition of "fun." Qualitative research in hobbies shows that people vary widely in their motivations and in what determines for them what "fun" is. I found "Homebrew All-Stars" interesting because it classified homebrewers by type of motivation, which could be an auspicious direction for future research into sustaining homebrewing as an active hobby in between beer crazes (and perhaps keeping homebrewers in the hobby during the life periods when they tend to drop out, and attracting new demographics). Clearly there is room in this hobby for the "advanced concepts" crowd, and I'm guessing this crowd benefits the rest of us by findings that eventually improve homebrewing overall. But homebrewers who prefer to direct their time, effort, and money in other directions aren't wrong. I wrote elsewhere once upon a time that "the user is not broken," and in this case, the homebrewer isn't either.

[Joe Sr.]

I think sometimes we lose sight of the fact that the homebrewing world runs the gamut from casual brewers to those who are completely obsessed (though there's also a whole range of obsessions).

Just because you or I care about something doesn't mean others do.

Lots of people are making good beer with lots of different methods.  Lots of people are making better beer.  Not all of us strive for perfection.  Cool for you if you do.

[bboy9000]

some of the current lodo methods are a pseudoscience of the professional low oxygen brewhouses.

It's not pseudoscience.   I think you are confusing the science with the methodology.  Pseudoscience would be,  "Beer gets stale because Ninkasi isn't pleased with you."

[JJeffers09]

some of the current lodo methods are a pseudoscience of the professional low oxygen brewhouses.

It's not pseudoscience.   I think you are confusing the science with the methodology.  Pseudoscience would be,  "Beer gets stale because Ninkasi isn't pleased with you."

Well pseudoscience was an exaggeration, that I will give you.  It is difficult to judge the reliable practices from a computer screen to everyone's claims.  I will have to get a blind taste test of my own.  I have been talking some local brewers into going in on an experimental brew so we can judge for ourselves truly unbiased.

[narcout]

2.) The WRONG - the HSA experiments at Brulosophy. Here they are testing beers that are both oxidized. The stipulation that one is more "highly" oxidized is irrelevant because they are both subjected to oxidation beyond a certain threshold. A true test here would be say, a Low Oxygen pale ale, and a "normal" pale ale. Here the differences in color, hop flavor, etc. would be drastically different.

I don't think those two experiments were supposed to be about low oxygen brewing.  Outside of the purview of low oxygen brewing, just talking regular homebrewing, there are probably a lot of people who wonder about the effects of splashing hot wort or incompletely purging serving kegs, and I think the experiments have value in that context.

I do understand what you are saying though.

[bboy9000]

I will have to get a blind taste test of my own.  I have been talking some local brewers into going in on an experimental brew so we can judge for ourselves truly unbiased.

I'd have to go in with a few local brewers just to afford the DO meter needed for the experiment.  I trust the results of the trials Bryan has been doing on the GBF. I would like to be able to do a triangle test though.

[denny]

2.) The WRONG - the HSA experiments at Brulosophy. Here they are testing beers that are both oxidized. The stipulation that one is more "highly" oxidized is irrelevant because they are both subjected to oxidation beyond a certain threshold. A true test here would be say, a Low Oxygen pale ale, and a "normal" pale ale. Here the differences in color, hop flavor, etc. would be drastically different.

I don't think those two experiments were supposed to be about low oxygen brewing.  Outside of the purview of low oxygen brewing, just talking regular homebrewing, there are probably a lot of people who wonder about the effects of splashing hot wort or incompletely purging serving kegs, and I think the experiments have value in that context.

I do understand what you are saying though.

Agreed.  It seems like often, people disagree with the experiments Brulosophy or Drew and I do becasue it's not the experiment they wanted to see, or would have done themselves.  The right way take them is to either look at the results for what they are, or drive through.

[JJeffers09]

Or start an xbmt themselves on what they would like to see tested.

Sent from my SM-S820L using Tapatalk

[Big Monk]

2.) The WRONG - the HSA experiments at Brulosophy. Here they are testing beers that are both oxidized. The stipulation that one is more "highly" oxidized is irrelevant because they are both subjected to oxidation beyond a certain threshold. A true test here would be say, a Low Oxygen pale ale, and a "normal" pale ale. Here the differences in color, hop flavor, etc. would be drastically different.

I don't think those two experiments were supposed to be about low oxygen brewing.  Outside of the purview of low oxygen brewing, just talking regular homebrewing, there are probably a lot of people who wonder about the effects of splashing hot wort or incompletely purging serving kegs, and I think the experiments have value in that context.

I do understand what you are saying though.

Agreed.  It seems like often, people disagree with the experiments Brulosophy or Drew and I do becasue it's not the experiment they wanted to see, or would have done themselves.  The right way take them is to either look at the results for what they are, or drive through.

I can agree with you to a certain extent here. Most of these type of experiments are evaluating conditions which present very similar outcomes, so the analysis done is appropriate for those variables.

Like I said before, if you are evaluating methods which present very similar results but come at an increase in time to the brewer, then a favorable evaluation (method not worth it) is helpful.

But the HSA experiments seem to steer the reader into the "HSA is a myth" corral which seems misleading at the very least, and negligent at the very worst. In this case, evaluating a beer made with lower levels of DO vs a "normal" (the parentheses noting that I don't mean anything negative by normal, just denoting typical non Low Oxygen methods) would be a more suitable way of trying to determine the importance of HSA.

Now if you take the Brulosphy HSA experiments to mean what is often attributed to them, i.e. Just testing normal homebrew levels of HSA then I can grant that there is nothing wrong with them. If you, however, try to take them to give credence to the "HSA is a myth" idea, then they are inherently flawed. That's all I'm saying.

[denny]

Now if you take the Brulosphy HSA experiments to mean what is often attributed to them, i.e. Just testing normal homebrew levels of HSA then I can grant that there is nothing wrong with them. If you, however, try to take them to give credence to the "HSA is a myth" idea, then they are inherently flawed. That's all I'm saying.

From what I can see, if you take them as the latter you aren't looking at what they say they're testing.  You need to look at them as they are intended, or as I said, drive through.

[Big Monk]

Now if you take the Brulosphy HSA experiments to mean what is often attributed to them, i.e. Just testing normal homebrew levels of HSA then I can grant that there is nothing wrong with them. If you, however, try to take them to give credence to the "HSA is a myth" idea, then they are inherently flawed. That's all I'm saying.

From what I can see, if you take them as the latter you aren't looking at what they say they're testing.  You need to look at them as they are intended, or as I said, drive through.

Even when their discussion on the results lead the reader to believe that HSA is a myth?

I don't recall you or Drew ever leading your listeners to believe something outside the bounds of the experiments you conduct.

Saying a beer with extra aeration is no different than a beer with normal aeration is one thing. Saying that two aerated beers didn't differ tremendously so HSA is a myth is another thing.

[brewinhard]

My main concern with that experiment was the sheer fact that they did not even let any of the batches age out at all and then come back to taste test them. No doubt would I think they would have observed a drastic drop off in flavor/aroma, especially with the one "whipped" up during the boil and mash.

Still like reading the Brulosophy stuff though. Its fun.

[denny]

Even when their discussion on the results lead the reader to believe that HSA is a myth?

The reader is free to draw their own conclusions.  From the article (and there is more)..."The results of this xBmt corroborates previous findings demonstrating the inability for tasters to distinguish a high HSA beer from a low HSA beer, even after a couple months of aging. While the growing mound of evidence really does seem to support the idea that HSA may not be as big of an issue as many of us thought, particularly on the homebrew scale, there are other possible explanations some have posited as to why we’re not experiencing the expected negative effects."

Doesn't seem to say that HSA is a myth, so if a reader draws that conclusion it's on the reader.

[denny]

My main concern with that experiment was the sheer fact that they did not even let any of the batches age out at all and then come back to taste test them. No doubt would I think they would have observed a drastic drop off in flavor/aroma, especially with the one "whipped" up during the boil and mash.

Still like reading the Brulosophy stuff though. Its fun.

How long should they have aged them?

 "Out of curiosity, I entered the high HSA beer into a great competition hosted by the Fermentologists homebrew club, it was 6 weeks old at the time. I didn’t really have a specific style in mind when I brewed the beer but figured it most resembled a a Baltic Porter, so I entered it as that. Lo and behold, it took gold in the category and came up just a tad short in the BOS round."

[Big Monk]

Even when their discussion on the results lead the reader to believe that HSA is a myth?

The reader is free to draw their own conclusions.  From the article (and there is more)..."The results of this xBmt corroborates previous findings demonstrating the inability for tasters to distinguish a high HSA beer from a low HSA beer, even after a couple months of aging. While the growing mound of evidence really does seem to support the idea that HSA may not be as big of an issue as many of us thought, particularly on the homebrew scale, there are other possible explanations some have posited as to why we’re not experiencing the expected negative effects."

Doesn't seem to say that HSA is a myth, so if a reader draws that conclusion it's on the reader.

"However, the growing amount of evidence supports the notion that HSA, while perhaps not necessarily mythical, does not have a noticeable negative impact on homebrewed beer and hence can be appropriately relegated to the annals of homebrew history."