Do Commercial Craft Brewers follow all LoDo Techniques?

[Hwk-I-St8]

I know they're very thorough regarding cold side, but do they follow the hot side steps recommended by LoDo gurus?

 

[MrPowers]

Most do not, no.

 

[cyberbackpacker]

Most small breweries have zero type of QA/QC lab, let alone lodo vessels like the big boys in Germany use... there may be some implementing some practices, but...

 

[Sadu]

I've spoken to a few commercial brewers about hot-side and it's not even on their radar as a thing. Cold side is very much a thing, of course.

My take on it is that everything is harder to do in commercial batch sizes. Even something like a step mash which is super-easy in an electric homebrew system can be a challenge on commercial gear. The system needs to be designed with these things in mind from the start whereas with homebrew you can swap out bits relatively easily/cheaply. Because setting up a brewery is expensive and stainless lasts a long time, it might only be the brand new breweries where we see LoDo happening.

I could be wrong here, this is just my take on it.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Some do, but not many. From what I understand, due to simple surface areas from larger scale the DO levels are naturally lower anyway. Having a water deaerator and a more gentle mash mixer (and presumably wet milling) may be enough. But as said those are things (the mash mixing especially) that would need to be built in from the start.

Things like adding sulfites probably aren't done, because at some point you need to start adding it to labelling.

 

[Die_Beerery]

Things like adding sulfites probably aren't done, because at some point you need to start adding it to labelling.

Actually you don't. Because all sulfites are consumed during oxygenation of wort. So therefor there are zero added sulfites in the product post yeast pitch.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Actually you don't. Because all sulfites are consumed during oxygenation of wort. So therefor there are zero added sulfites in the product.

Ahh, good to know.