German Brewing

One of the main beefs I see daily is that the method is too convoluted for it to ever work properly. However I want to make a thread where people can come in and say, hey I tried x,y,z and it worked for me. Doesn't have to be much just a little post if Low oxygen brewing improved your beer.

I will start with the obvious, YES.

Low o2 procedures have absolutely improved my beers. To me low o2 is the difference between a good homebrew and a great commercial class beer!

Absolutely, especially for light German lagers. I have used LODO for other styles such as APA and Porter and have noticed a difference but I'm on the fence as to whether it's enough to brew them LODO. The reason I say that is that all I want to drink is Helles and Pilsner brewed LODO (and I'm excited to play around with sauergut...you're pushing me over the hump to give it a shot).

Using the cold fermentation method (for me that's in a keg in the freezer controlled by BrewPi) is a great way to go, too. It skeeves me out to think about fermenting in a carboy in the open any more. Precise temp control, oxygen control, closed transfers, and, frankly, I'm saving space and don't have to lug fermenters around the house, it's actually less work with significant quality improvement.

Brandon

Well, don't know if it counts, but a won a local trappist beer competition with a Lodo tripel, that used WLP838 in the end at 6C to push out air that was sucked in during cooling. Bottled and primed with speise.


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Not making lagers, but am spitting out the best beers I've ever done implementing some steps of LODO (Yeast/dextrose, SMB, Brewtan-B, SS Chiller, Proper CO2 keg purging and transfer). I've also added some cinnamon to the mash.

I never worried about oxygen before, so I am thinking everyone of my beers were oxidized to hell and back from the beginning. Before a few months ago, I had never made a great beer. Just doing the aforementioned items has increased the quality 10 fold. I'm sure I am not on the same page as most here, but I feel like I am on a level playing field now with my brewing after chasing off flavors for years.

Its been a night and day difference for me. I still have some work to do to get 100% compliant with the paper but I'm pretty happy so far.

Lodo has been a huge leap forward in the quality of my brewing. Many heartfelt thanks to the group for the information and inspiration to try it. If I hadn't found this site when I did.. more then likely would just have thrown in the towel on my long search for 'it' and quit brewing.

One observation though on the learning process..
I have had much more success applying lodo brewing to lagers then with ales. After starting down this learning path, I thought since one can turn over ale batches faster, this would offer more chances to practice with the technique. In retrospect though I should just have stuck to making helles since it's where you best hone your lodo process and can taste and evaluate your successes and failures properly.

Apologies for digging up a bit of an older thread. However I just managed to score gold in the pale lager category recently. Was for a modified version of the lodo helles recipe entered into the exportbier category with a score of 44.5. Was 0.5 of a point of champion beer of the comp. Of my 3 entries (2x lodo) I came second overall. This was my first competition entry too.

I have to thank everyone here who has contributed to the lodo method and have shared so much valuable information when it comes to brewing quality beer.

Well done!!
And timing couldn't be better.