A great article…HIGHLY recommended reading.
I never even heard of the olive oil thing before that article. Did the yeast actually consume the oil? I’m imagining a gross blob of oil floating in the fermenter…
I believe one of the greatest causes of ongoing debate about these issues in plain, simple, Confirmation Bias.
New info that supports my belief is accepted, and added to the argument arsenal. New information that contradicts my belief is dismissed.
I see this a lot on both sides of the “secondary” debate.
Great article. Two of my favorite myths in there. HSA, I have been skeptical about that for years on a homebrew scale. If you mention it though you are bound to get at least one person to say they got an off flavor that was definitely from HSA.
Dry vs liquid yeast. Yes, years ago the little packet that was taped to the lid on a can of LME in a kit was best just to toss in the boil and buy liquid yeast. Dry yeast today is great. I find it much easier to use. No starter if you don’t want and just use and extra packet if doing a high gravity beer. Now someone more reputable than myself needs to do a side by side comparison of rehydrated dry yeast and sprinkled right in. My simple experiment produced no noticeable difference. Same OG, same ferm temp, same time to ferment and same FG. Same clarity and taste. This is with my untrained palate of course.
No, there was sop little that you didn’t even see it. But as the article noted, it also wasn’t in contact with the wort long enough to really do anything, assuming there was anything to be done!
I enjoyed the article. I think the next target should be this whole low oxygen brewing thing. That one’s got some pretty fervent true believers out there.
For me, the issue is that they’ve never proven it works. They’re just “sure” of it. Of course, we all know that oxygen is the enemy of great beer, but the question is do their methods make any difference? Until they can show they do, I’m not interested.
