German Brewing

This link to the Millstar brochure was posted over on the AHA forum.

The mill's ability to minimize the malt's contact with oxgyen is touted heavily.

However, this one paragraph at the bottom of page 4 concerning adding lactic acid to the water used to condition the grain prior to milling really caught my eye.

"As a special feature, the MILLSTARTM can be equipped with a system for continuous lactic acid dosing. Dosed into the steeping water, the lactic acid provides an earliest possible lipoxygenase inhibition. Thus at the stage of water absorption negative enzymatic oxidation of the grain is inhibited. The grain is optimally prepared for milling."

http://www.gea.com/global/en/binaries/M ... -12176.pdf

Right, you want to get the pH down as fast as possible to avoid LOX. Bamforth put out a nice paper looking at enzymatic and non-enzymatic LOX production. A lot of levers in the system to think about now

So basically it sounds like they doing the equivalent of what we would do if we conditioned malt with lactic acid solution instead of (or in addition to) SMB?

I remember reading in Kunze that another way to effectively denature the lipoxygenase enzymes in the husk was conditioning the grain before crushing with hot water or steam. I'm not home now, but I can post page numbers later if anyone wants to read into it further

I have a small steamer... that would be interesting for sure. I could give it a try. Maybe pre-measure a couple of ounces and let it run nearly dry to not over condition?

Hard to say without some trial and error. Spraying with acid will also effect your PH. I've been using smb in my conditioning water but not sure on how effective it is.

I wonder if you could just add dilute lactic acid and SMB to your spray bottle when you malt condition. Would be hard to evaluate; you'd basically be doing it as insurance.

Possibly spraying the malt with sauergut for the conditioning liquid would be effective. Also it is oxygen free already.

Agreed, Bilsch. How would one determine the lactic acid concentration to properly dilute it? I don't have enough experience with sauregut to advise. Is a pH reading adequate?