German Brewing

I know some of you have read the more technical, professional brewing literature available. I was wondering, have you found many references to mashing with low oxygen water?

I haven't done a ton of searching, but I did find one brief sentence in Brewing: Science and Practice by D E Briggs and P A Brookes from 2004. "Increasingly, brewers employing newer types of plant will mash with oxygen-reduced or oxygen-free water and under conditions such that oxygen pick-up is minimal."

There seems to be a lot in that book about excluding oxygen during mashing, but that is the only reference I saw to actually mashing with low oxygen water. I don't have access to the whole book though so maybe there are more.

I also found reference to deoxygenated mash water being used in an experiment in a 2002 paper titled Release of Deuterated (E)-2-Nonenal during Beer Aging from Labeled Precursors Synthesized before Boiling. The results were mixed, and the study was more focused on staling during storage, but it does show that the concept is out there.

Kunze - Technology Brewing and Malting, section 3.2.4 (Mashing) covers lodo mashing.

A lot of what he states is outlined in the Helles paper:

Symptoms of O2 in mash:
1) Darker Wort
2) Less refined flavor
3) Less flavor stability

Says to avoid copper, be careful when mashing in (do it from below), etc

He goes on to specifically state to use degassed water.

It's all over both the Kunze and Narziss texts.

Kunze Ch. 3, 4, and 5 are full of great info.

There are some nice technical papers too. I'll post them later.

As promised, some supplemental technical articles on O2 in beer:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8F3C ... jNRM1IxMWc

in Kunze's 1000 page book, you'll have a hard time going 10 pages without him talking about oxidation during the brewing process. That said, when it comes specifically to mashing check out sections 3.1 and 3.2.

At the homebrew scale you can expect about 1 ppm DO per hour to dissolve into your wort just from atmospheric diffusion. Because in a large commercial system the surface area to volume ratio of the wort will be on the order of 20 times lower than a homebrew system, diffusion of atmospheric oxygen when the wort is standing still will be 20 times slower, so it isn't a problem. Therefore, at commercial scale, the ways that oxygen can get into the wort are as follows:

1) Dissolved oxygen already in the brewing liquor
2) Atmospheric oxygeb incorporated along with the grist at dough in
3) Any kind of splashing, laminar flow, or movement which increases the surface area of the wort

1) is solved by degassing the water to 0.01 ppm (Kunze talks about the various kinds of equipment used to degas water in the section on water treatment)

2) is solved by milling in a closed environment (eg the delivery tube itself) under inert gas, and then immediately mixing degassed water in-line with the grist/inert gas mixture. You can read about this in gory detail in section 3.1

3) is solved by pumping from below, never splashing or creating laminar flow, never sucking air through the pumps, etc. This is discussed in 3.2

At later points in the books, he goes on to mention other solutions like blowing nitrogen into the vessels, but the 3 points I outlined above are the most basic key points.

Thanks for the replies.

Specifically, I was wondering how prevalent the concept of using degassed mashing water is. Is it something mostly confined to the German texts or is it more widespread, something that any formally trained brewer would be aware of?

I've talked to multiple German brewers with degrees in brewing who said that degassed water is the standard over there and that it's taught in school. Remember that Kunze is published by the brewing school at VLB Berlin and it is one of their main textbooks.

In the USA, I have no idea what they're teaching.

Per interviews with John K. we know The Alchemist is very conscious of oxygen in the mash. I've heard the same regarding Sierra Nevada.

The NHC talk confirmed SN is using DO water. The infrastructure in American breweries are not set up for using DO water, and most homebrewers turned pro brewer aren't even aware of it. It's no surprise most of the attention is being given to cold side oxygen control. Everyone can easily set up for that and may be the best bang for the buck when you already have $$$ in business loans

SN may be using degassed water but it doesn't have the low oxygen flavor. That tells me that they're doing something somewhere that picks up a lot of oxygen.