Homebrew Beer Blog

Just a quick update on my dissolved O2 adventures. I updated the earlier post to note that four days after oxygenating the jug of water is still holding over 15 ppm of O2. That’s basically 2x atmosphere. That’s a bit surprising. This is a big dump on the whole diffusion protection theory – at least in a glass carboy.

Last week I also ran my experiment. I made two 0.75 gal batches of test wort. 1.048 w/ 0.3g yeast nutrient. I pitched a fresh-ish vial of WLP833, and using mrmalty, I figure with its age it’s about 1.5 million cells/ml/P in each. One got a little more because splitting a vial isn’t all that easy. Anyway, one got 10 ppm of O2, the other got blasted. I put both at about 56 degrees until signs of fermentation, then dropped it to 48.

Fermentation is wrapping up on that experiment. The 10 ppm one got the extra yeast, so hopefully that isn’t going to mess things up. It started to show fermentation about 5-6 hours earlier than the other. Right now the supersaturated jug is a little sulfury, so it seems to be a day behind or so. I poured a test and it’s way too early to get a smell test, particularly with the sulfur one. It could simply be powers of suggestion, but I think I might with carbonation drops for a full effect.

I mention this now because Thursday I’m planning to brew up that Two Hearted clone. I plan to take the second runnings and make up two more 3/4 gal test batches. I’ve got a starter of WLP820 ready for it. This will test actual wort, and not extract, and also it will run through the starter process. I plan to do one with 10 ppm and supersaturate again and see what happens.

Really though, I need to do a full split batch again. With the IPA, I’ll do that with 8 ppm and see what happens. I never really had issues that ale yeast, but it will be interesting to see if there’s some kind of difference, hopefully an improvement.