Below is a table of every completed Brülosophy xBmt that can be sorted by title, type, date published, and significance level. It is also searchable.
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242 thoughts on “exBEERiments”
Can you test some of the Mangrove Jack yeasts? Maybe compare them to Fermentis or other dry yeast? Love your experiment s.
I’ll look into it!
Yeah that would be great, i’m often using dry yeast and Mangrove Jack has some interesting strains.
Thanks for this great site. Would you considered doing an article (or series) where you combine multiple exbeeriments that didn’t prove to have statistical significance into a single batch vs a brew done the “proper” way? I think it would be interesting to see how doing lots of things “wrong” compares. Maybe it’s less scientific than isolating a single variable. However, it’s possible that while testers were unable to distinguish bagged vs loose hops, or lid-off vs lid-on boil, when a bunch of common taboos are combined, the results might be significant. Apologies if this exbeeriment already exists, and I’ve overlooked it!
Combined variable xBmts are coming soon!
After seeing the minor impact of CaraPils and CaraFoam, I was wondering if your tasters can detect the difference between Cara-20 vs Cara-40 (as steeping grains)?
Brülosophy crew! I recently read some articles about using hop spiders in the brew kettle. Some people say that hop spiders effect how well the hop is utilized during the boil and are against them. I figured this might be a good idea for a simple xBmt hop spider bs. Directly pitched into the boil. If this has already been done I’m sorry! I couldn’t find it! Thank you!
It’s on the list!
Hey, I have just discovered this website. And I can’t stop reading it!!! Everything is made in such intelligent way. . I have two suggestions i would like you to consider.
First have you ever made an exbeeriments with 3
( could be small) batches to test something deeply? For example if you want to test the boil length, you could make 3 batches, 30 60 and 90 minutes boil, than it could emphasize the results.
Second, have you considered make an exbeeriment with yeast pitch at 78 or 80 degrees? I wonder what the results will be.
And again I thank you for this amazing resource.
Huge fan of this site. Would love to see some more testing around BIAB type setups/processes; – to squeeze or not grain bag, hop additions into spider or direct wort.
Cheers
Love what you guys are doing here. I haven’t seen this answered so thought I’d ask here. For each contributor is it a generally similar group of participants for each exbmt? If so have you occasionally done triangle tests with these groups that don’t in fact contain a different beer? I just wonder if there are ever tasters who are certain that they are tasting a different beer but they are not, to sort of get at some of the psychology of taste and experience (sort of like when you blind the participants to style and there are sometimes wildly different answers).
Cheers!
While there are some participants who participate more than others, it’s not the majority at all, as data collection for each of us occurs at different times in various settings.
Here are some articles I think you’ll find interesting:
https://brulosophy.com/2016/01/21/investigating-the-bad-palates-argument-a-graphical-look-at-xbmt-performance-based-on-experience-level/
https://brulosophy.com/2014/11/03/the-impact-of-expectation-on-perception-exbeeriment-results/
https://brulosophy.com/2017/07/20/nothing-matters-reviewing-the-first-150-exbeeriments/
I was intrigued by the yeast health on high trub exbeeriments along with the malt yeast starter vs cane sugar starters exbeeriments.
I have recently been using my BIAB spent grain and a small amount of water (2L or so) at the end of a brew, like a small sparge by soaking hte bag in the 160F water, to extract some residual sugars and slow boil into a thick syrup. I normally get efficiency ~82% so it is the last bits I extract.
Reason being, I freeze it and save for yeast starters. there is a good deal of proteins left so when i compare starters with my homemade extract vs LME or DME there is a huge difference in the trub after fermentation.
I wonder, how this could affect yeast starters and finished beer, ie starters with LME vs DME vs homemade Extract? Could you try an exbeeriment on this?
I recently did some research in regards to brewing water additions to try and correct this certain harshness to my NEIPAs I have been experiencing. The taste was rather bitter and astringent and the mouthfeel was always quite thin. I have always used Calcium Chloride to get to my targeted Chloride levels and modify my target mash PH. In my research, I came across a few people who suggested that the high Calcium levels was imparting the hard, dry, bitterness to the IPA.
In my most recent batch, I replaced most, not all of my Calcium Chloride with Pickling Salt, which still got me to my target Chloride and PH but instead of increasing Calcium, the increase was in the form of Sodium. The result, we exactly what I had been looking for, an aromatic, soft, juicy NEIPA. It was excellent. I was hoping you would maybe test this variable, as it makes sense that the extreme levels of Calcium imparted by the additions to get Chloride levels between 100-150 might have these adverse affects. Using RO water, the final levels were:
Calcium- 67 ppm
Mag – 8ppm
Sodium – 62ppm
Sulfate – 134 ppm
Chloride 138ppm
Estimated Mash PH 5.49
Thanks for a great site.
I have read a number of articles that contradict each other on whether mash pH should be measured at mash temp or the sample cooled to room temp at approx 20C. Wondered if any exbeeriment had been done or if it would make a difference or which would be the better? Given the narrow pH target bands advocated I am amazed the brewing world seems to be split using 2 different datums with an effective pH difference of around 0.35
So, about mash pH…
https://brulosophy.com/2017/01/30/water-chemistry-pt-7-evaluating-the-impact-of-low-mash-ph-exbeeriment-results/
https://brulosophy.com/2017/07/24/water-chemistry-pt-9-evaluating-the-impact-of-high-mash-ph-exbeeriment-results/
Recently been looking into yeast starters made from Goya Malta soda, wonder if you’d be interested in trying it out to see the effects.
For extract brews, people typically do a partial volume boil. Assuming you compensate for the IBU’s, do you think there is any difference in flavor / aroma between doing a 40% volume boil vs a full volume boil?
With the rise of contract brewing on the commercial side, I’d be interested in seeing if two home brewers could make indistinguishable beers. Basically a repeat of your fingerprint of a brewer exbeeriment but with both trying to hit the same water profile and adjusting the mash to hit the same OG numbers, using different equipment with different efficiencies.
Hi, love your stuff!
Have you ever tested the effects of releasing keg pressure for bottling and its effects on flavor/aroma?
There is a theory that everytime a keg is burped you lose aroma/flavor.
Is this true or noticeable to a panel of judges?
Thanks,
-Phil
I think you might be referring to something like this:
https://brulosophy.com/2018/07/30/the-impact-of-purging-keg-headspace-with-co2-on-new-england-ipa-exbeeriment-results/
Hi Marshall, thanks for the reply.
Yes, I saw that one and feel what I am asking for is different. I will try to explain.
When I fill bottles or growlers I usually turn the pressure way down and vent the keg so it will pour slowly and not create much head into growler or bottle. This is when I fear I am losing aroma/flavor. (Maybe there is a better way to fill growlers)
In your example, the purging is immediately at keg filling where maybe not too many aroma compounds have had the chance to escape the beer.
In my example, the beer may be 2 weeks old or more and have more headspace. I imagine more aromas have had the chance/time to escape.
What do you think?
-Phil
I was curious if you have ever considered comparing say a 60 IBU + high chloride IPA vs. a 45 IBU + high sulfate of the same grain bill? The idea being to understand the net sum outcome of IBU’s and salt additions that work in opposite of each other.
Hello,
Fermentis s-33 is recommended by manufacturer for NEIPAs. There is a sales flyer on how juicy it is etc. Have you experimented with this versus other popular strains for this style? (Wyeast 1318, Conan, WLP London fog, even us-04?)
Thank you!
-Phil
Hey there!
First of all, I really like and enjoy your content. You are like the Mythbuster of the homebrewer. Thank you so much, and I hope you are planning on continuing your good work for the greater good of our hobby!
I would like to suggest a test if I may. I have just started kegging my brew, and I have hear many different things about carbonation. One of them is that you should not carb your beer using the beer “out” dip tube. The reason would be that, it would not change the time required to carb anyway, since extra co2 exposure time is minimal. Secondly, it could make some of the hops aroma to “bubble out to the head space”. It would be a great test to do on a NEIPA or some other beer where hops aroma is really important, to see if it makes a difference in carbonation time, and if you can actually loose aroma doing so. The last reason would be that there is a chance that, when you reach equilibrium, beer could go back to your regulator and potentially destroy it.
If you are ever looking for some extra idea, i think this one could be an interesting one, especially for the NEIPA aroma seeker.
Cheers
– Francois
You should consider doing an xBmt that tests whether making a starter with DME vs table sugar (sucrose) is a noticeable difference.
Specifically because there’s a lot of forums that claim that sugar won’t work etc etc.
Here’s something pretty similar:
https://brulosophy.com/2015/06/05/real-wort-vs-dextrose-yeast-starter-exbeeriment-results/
The date sorting button doesn’t work correctly on the table – it sorts by the first digit rather than chronologically, meaning it views 01 January 2015 as more recent than 09 January 2018.
Looking into it
Hey, this can be easily remedied by providing the date in the format yyyy-mm-dd. I would like to have a working sorting by date as well! Cheers.