German Brewing

First post here - this forum piqued my interest in beer oxidation. I found this study very interesting. I have always heard that mash hopping was an old german brewing technique - people trying to make hoppy beers always talk about how useless it is as a technique for adding hop character. After reading this paper and what is being discussed on this forum, I wonder if mash hopping started due to the reducing power of the polyphenols in hops?

https://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/in ... ieties.pdf

It seems that a lot of the compounds responsible for the flavors we want from malt and hops are excellent oxygen scavengers themselves.

Indeed, with the implication being that once those aromatic/antioxidant compounds get used up scavenging oxygen, their flavors are destroyed. And by destroyed I don't mean that they just disappear, I mean that they turn into bad flavors which carry over into the finished beer.

Low oxygen brewing is a game of preventing the natural antioxidants in the malt and hops from ever actually being exposed to oxygen. You want them for their flavor, not for their antioxidant capabilities.