Lager Fermentation and Brülosophy Exbeeriments

[lupulus]

This morning went for a run and decided to listen to the Brülosophy Lager Fermentation podcast.
Hope they do not interpret these comments as trolling them, but I cannot understand why principles of experimental research continue to be ignored, and how valid conclusions can be when previous research experience is ignored. Here are my major thoughts.
1. What is a classic lager fermentation profile?
- We can argue about what is a classic fermentation profile; but if we are generous we can concede that any of lager fermentation profiles proposed by lager fermentation experts can be used as a control for a fermentation temperature experiment. If your experiment ignores this experience completely, and arbitrarily decides that fermenting at 10C up to 50% of extract, then increasing fermentation temperature to 20C to completion, you cannot call this a Control classic lager fermentation. Germans are constantly trying to find ways to speed up lager fermentation and the best they have come up with to speed up the process, is fermentation under pressure. I am certain that if this 10C/20C fermentation profile were to produce a great lager, the process would be ubiquitous.
2. Is lagering needed?
Again, using the utmost generosity, one can find literature stating that 2 weeks of lagering is a minimum for lagering (can be reduced to one week if you have a good QC lab); additionally, I do not know of a German brewery that does not naturally carbonate (spunding).
Even for the "classic" lager, Brülosophy uses a hydrometer as the benchmark to know when the beer is done, then cold crashes, fines with gelatin, and force carbonates.
Then they compare ale fermentation and finishing profiles to this "classic" profile, find that there are no difference and conclude that one can ferment a lager at ale temperatures, cold crash and consume within a week, an nobody will know it is not a good lager ...and nobody at the professional level was able to figure this out...
Hard to believe.

[Techbrau]

I don't have any fully fleshed out ideas on this, but I do have an observation.

American craft brewed lagers are often overhopped an ungodly amount. Think Victory Prima Pils. The home-brew recipes follow suit.

When I've made lagers that were hopped closer to Brulosophy's recipes (http://brulosophy.com/2017/07/10/fermen ... ian-lager/ - 180 grams total hops!) and fermented them at 11-12 c, the fermentation seemed pretty clean to me, but I couldn't taste much besides the hops. When I did a helles fermented at 11-12c with 2206 that was hopped more in line with commercial German examples (I used 12g Perle at 60 and 6g Tradition at 30), I was able to detect a fusel alcohol note. It wasn't severe - it was about in line with what I detect in Coors Banquet beer. But the good Bavarian stuff doesn't have this fusel note at all, and when fermenting at 8-9c I haven't gotten that note.

Just some food for thought...

[Brandon]

[Techbrau]

Yeah, the funny thing was that I wasn't even expecting to get the fusel note from fermenting at 11-12c based upon my past experiences with hoppier brews, and if I'm being honest I was influenced to give it a try partially by the brulosophy experiments. I was fully expecting a flawless fermentation, and it was a big shock to me when the fusel note ended up in my glass. Kind of pissed me off to be honest, because a full 6 hour brew day + the ingredient costs are now ruined because I set my regulator three degrees higher than I should have.

I think that just about the only things that will have a noticeable negative impact on a super hoppy beer are a bad infection or severe post-ferment oxygen exposure. And over the past decade we've seen the definition of "hoppy" get pushed further and further to the extreme.

I mean, I think that beers I make with 15-20 grams of late hops are too hoppy...

[Smellyglove]

There's a long thread about the methods used by Brulosophy over at HBT, and how to dissect/read the results form the experiments.

I started to read them a few years back, but it dawned on me after reading some results and how the experiments were done, that own experiences outweigh brulosphy by a million miles. I've done several tests at home and figured out my way to do it. Then Brulosphy comes out with an experiment which is about the same thing, and guess what, from the text there is no difference, it's always fine with gelatine etc etc, there's so many factors which skew the process.. I stopped reading that blog long time ago as the experiments in my eyes are pretty much worthless.

[lupulus]

[lupulus]

[Weizenberg]

[Techbrau]

[Techbrau]