Single Vessel LODO Planning

[Weizenberg]

Whoaaaa

Let's take a breather here. Considering all the benefits you had from my efforts: introduction to Kunze, decent Bavarian recipe formulation, cold fermentation and Sauergut (amongst other things), I find it a bit large you saying that.

A bit of critical thinking and evaluation whether what you suggest is actually sound, wouldn't hurt either.

[caedus]

I don't think anyone was trying to dethrone your efforts, weizen.

I've had professional (and highly trained) Brewers tell me that hot side aeration means nothing and should be disregarded. I think we can all agree that taking their word as truth isn't the right course of action. I think what the guys are trying to say is that we should take a lot of new and old knowledge as they are- different snapshots of the brewing cultures the knowledge comes from. We should always test and analyze ourselves, then draw conclusions from our data.

[lupulus]

My two cents...
- The data on HSO is extremely solid, but we must always understand what the experimental model was/is. ie, light, flavorful lagers. We should not extrapolate the conclusions to every single beer. Kunze takes time to describe mashing styles beers other than helles/ pils. Munich malt does not have much LOX so one does not need to be that picky about pH and mash-in temp for a dunkel; and a protein rest is recommended for Munich malt.
- The data on cold side oxidation is even stronger, so if you do not do everything you can on the cold side, no point working on HSO.
- HSO effects may be too small in american lagers and their light offshoots.
- Not all beers are affected by micro-oxidation; a Trippel with a similar malt bill as a Maibock can get better with a few months of conditioning, but the Maibock will peak within 4-8 weeks of lagering and then decline. This is to keep the logic simple, but many other beer styles benefit from micro-oxidation.
So, let's keep an open mind

[Bilsch]

[UnsungSavior16]

Almost all of the parts are here!

Two quick pics, though they don't represent the system, but the planning has been a lot more settled than it was before. Still need to order the PID and the Thermometer probe, but after that I'll be all set to continue assembling.

Kettle


A 16 gallon bayou kettle with false bottom and dip tube. Camlock fittings on the valve.

Mash Cap


A 15.5" pizza pan, stainless steel, fits perfectly on the inside of the kettle. Will be able to take picture of that as it comes and have the complete build being written up. Camlocks on that as well, with a loc-line for the inside of the kettle (You can see the camlock disconnects on high temperature tubing for the pump and the barb on the inside in that pic).

Coming along!

[Techbrau]

Awesome setup. It seems like many of us are converging on a similar low oxygen system configuration: no sparge in a stainless kettle with recirculation from the bottom back into the top via a floating stainless mash cap. I wonder if at some point in the future it would be useful for the forum to put together a few example builds with parts lists, assembly diagrams, etc for newcomers looking to build a low oxygen system.

[UnsungSavior16]

It probably would be useful, example system of direct fire, electric, ebiab, and then possibly a look at commercial systems that might be useable? like the Mash and Boil, High Gravity, or Unibrau. All things that can be modified a bit to meet most of the requirements. Might be a good resource, combing through the threads here can get tedious, might be nice to aggregate some of that information.

[Natebriscoe]

[UnsungSavior16]

Floats incredibly well, no issues whatsoever with it. It's pretty easy to sink if you apply pressure, I imagine it would be a lot easier if the ends didn't come up slightly.

[Techbrau]

What's nice about your kettle is that it's quite a bit taller than it is wide, meaning that you have less exposed wort surface area to worry about in the first place. I used a smaller one of those pizza pans as my mash cap for a few brews but found that I preferred one of the 2" straight walled cake pans because it was less liable to sink.

Your pizza pan will probably work fine but if you do run into sinking problems, I found this cake pan:

https://www.globalsugarart.com/cake-pan ... swodSLcOWQ

It isn't quite optimal at 15", but maybe there's a 15.5" one available somewhere? If you have a friend with access to a metal spinning lathe, it would actually be pretty cheap, fast, and easy to fabricate a custom sized floating cap for your kettle out of a sheet of stainless steel from McMaster.