Time to amend the Bavarian Helles Paper?
Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2017 3:50 pm
Hello everyone,
Hope you take this comment as constructive. I am providing some background to explain what prompted it.
A very good brewer with many lager medals (from our brewing club in Austin) has followed the key processes of the paper and observed that 100mg SMB/L of brewing water is making his beer worse, not better. He has tried the process 5 times.
My own experience was that 100mg SMB/ L was too much. I decreased the dose after 5 brews, and I am now at about 15mg/ L.
I purposely did not mention anything when he brought up the paper so that I did not introduce a bias. My best guess based on the anecdotal evidence of my own brewing is that the threshold for sulfury taste varies with yeasts and processes, so I do not get involved unless someone asks a specific question.
I understand, maybe wrongly, that nobody used 100mg / L anymore. If this is the case, the paper is no longer a good starting point, as the body of evidence that all of us are accumulating is not based nor even close to what the paper recommends.
Comments? Thoughts?
No problem if you disagree.
Cheers,
Ricardo
Hope you take this comment as constructive. I am providing some background to explain what prompted it.
A very good brewer with many lager medals (from our brewing club in Austin) has followed the key processes of the paper and observed that 100mg SMB/L of brewing water is making his beer worse, not better. He has tried the process 5 times.
My own experience was that 100mg SMB/ L was too much. I decreased the dose after 5 brews, and I am now at about 15mg/ L.
I purposely did not mention anything when he brought up the paper so that I did not introduce a bias. My best guess based on the anecdotal evidence of my own brewing is that the threshold for sulfury taste varies with yeasts and processes, so I do not get involved unless someone asks a specific question.
I understand, maybe wrongly, that nobody used 100mg / L anymore. If this is the case, the paper is no longer a good starting point, as the body of evidence that all of us are accumulating is not based nor even close to what the paper recommends.
Comments? Thoughts?
No problem if you disagree.
Cheers,
Ricardo