Oilive Oil

[Stefan Kappel]

Is there any brewery using olive oil instead of aerating the wort? We have been doing it for 18 month now with great results. I'm just curious if we are the only brewery doing it.

1 ml olive oil for 10 hl wort in the whirlpool.

Stefan Kappel
Randers Bryghus
Denmark

[gdebisschop]

I remember an MBAA paper where New Belgium was adding small amounts of olive oil to their yeast in storage, but I think it was for uptake of fatty acids or something along those lines- they did have positive results if I recall, but I don't think it was used in lieu of aerating the wort.

geoff

[Swordboarder]

How is your head retention?

[beejay]

While working in Belgium we did this with great results. Also had no problems with head retention as the amounts you use are minuscule.

[gitchegumee]

Stephan, do you propagate and repitch, or use dry yeast? 1ml per 10hl is minuscule indeed! 1ppm? Is that the right figure? So, how does this work? Does it take the place of synthesizing compounds from oxygen for cell growth? I'd be grateful to anyone who can point me toward some literature on this subject. I'm intrigued!

[Vendetta]

Here's the NB paper on the subject:

http://www.brewcrazy.com/hull-olive-oil-thesis.pdf

Further (and this is something I believe Beejay may be in a position to comment on), there is this comment posted on a homebrewing board by Urbain from Struise:

“We at Struise use olive oil in our fermentation since end 2005 and never aerate our wort or starters anymore. This method of treating the yeast with olive oil or flax oil or linoleic acid during storage instead of aerating the wort does improve the overall flavor stability of the beer without compromising flavor quality. It is also widely understood that minimizing the exposure of beer or wort to oxygen will improve the finished product’s resistance to oxidation and so extend shelf life consistently. The goal of improving flavor stability is achieved through this way of fermentation but with a more than acceptable increase of esters and slightly slower but complete fermentation. We use our home yeast that is regenerated every 5 batches with 2 x 500 grams of T-58. But we use open fermentation too (batches are 30 - 60 hl), so there are always some extra bugs (~80 strains) in our beer.”

The basic idea is to use +- 5 billion cells of pure yeast, 0,1 mg linoleic acid, 10 mg cholesterol for 1 liter of beer to ferment. With an activator pack from Wyeast, at a minimum of 100 billion cells (enough to inoculate 19lt/5 gallons of beer), add 1.9mg of olive oil and 190 mg of cholesterol to the smack pack.

In other words you would add 1 mg of olive oil and 100 mg of cholesterol for every 52.6 billion cells of pure yeast and this to your smack pack or sterile storage container, 5 hours prior to use.

Use some apple juice at the same volume as your activator pack. Warm the juice up to 25° C or 77°F. Add the olive oil to the apple juice, shake that well. Add cholesterol (dried egg yolk), shake well again and add yeast. Work very sterile, extremely very sterile... No stir plate; it tends to tear down Krausen.

[Stefan Kappel]

Stephan, do you propagate and repitch, or use dry yeast? 1ml per 10hl is minuscule indeed! 1ppm? Is that the right figure? So, how does this work? Does it take the place of synthesizing compounds from oxygen for cell growth? I'd be grateful to anyone who can point me toward some literature on this subject. I'm intrigued!

No problems with headretention at all. We are using plain olive oil from the supermarket, nothing special at all. Get a small syringe (1ml) without needle and you can easily measure the right quantity. We are always using the same amount no matter what kind of yeast or cell count we have. We are using dry yeast without rehydration and we repitch whenever it is possible. No more than 4-5 times.

The olive oil is, as far as I know, synthesizing compounds from oxygen for the cell growth. Bare in mind that the amount of oxygen you can add to the wort is very small. We are talking PPM levels anyway.

Stefan Kappel
Randers Bryghus
Denmark

[Vendetta]

I'm surprised there's not more apparent interest in this thread. I understand there are deep seated fears about head retention and gambling with process changes, but this could potentially save money and add longevity to product in a lot of breweries. In my experience (not vast), wort oxygenation is often misused and applied imprecisely.

[South County]

I'm definitely intrigued. I think it still needs to develop and looks as though you would have to have a pretty serious lab setup to analyze and track the results. Could be that next step change in brewing tech!

[Natrat]

lab?

I'm not sure that I need a mass spectrometer and a foam analyzer to tell me if my beer's any good.

After reading the paper linked above, I went and looked up other research on the same topic. While most similar research didn't use olive oil, it all points to the same thing.

The amounts of oleic acid required are minute, and there is far more oil from using hops or orange peel in the boil.

At any rate, I've decided that it's worth risking a few batches on. I am propagating 2 new yeast batches from the same loupe. On one, I will go 5 gens using O2 to aerate, as usual. On the other I will go 5 gens with olive oil added to the yeast before pitching. Same beer. I'll use 2 fermenters and I won't cross pitch, just in case. If my olive oil beers are too estery, I can blend them with the aerated beers.

I'll let you know how it goes.
Me, I'm half convinced just by calculating what I could save in oxygen bills and equipment!

Nat

[South County]

I'm not sure that I need a mass spectrometer and a foam analyzer to tell me if my beer's any good.

After reading the paper linked above, I went and looked up other research on the same topic. While most similar research didn't use olive oil, it all points to the same thing.

The amounts of oleic acid required are minute, and there is far more oil from using hops or orange peel in the boil.

At any rate, I've decided that it's worth risking a few batches on. I am propagating 2 new yeast batches from the same loupe. On one, I will go 5 gens using O2 to aerate, as usual. On the other I will go 5 gens with olive oil added to the yeast before pitching. Same beer. I'll use 2 fermenters and I won't cross pitch, just in case. If my olive oil beers are too estery, I can blend them with the aerated beers.

I'll let you know how it goes.
Me, I'm half convinced just by calculating what I could save in oxygen bills and equipment!

Nat

You right, all you really need to do is to put a nose to your beer and quick taste to note striking differences. I guess the relativity factor is the size of you brewery and market base. If you a small brewery with forgiving patrons the switch or even trial period should be painless. I was merely suggesting that for a moderate size brewery its a little more complicated and the QC work needed to do a midstream process change and still meet market expectations of existing brands would be a small task in itself. Not to mention the study showed that certain "doasges" of oils and fatty acids yielded both wanted and unwanted results in regard to specific compounds and esters . I think it would be very hard to quantify those results with just your palate, particularly in the ppm variances were discussing here.

[Gordie]

Quick check on my math... 1 ml per 10 hl equates to basically 0.14 ml per bbl?

[Swordboarder]

Where are you adding to the process? I would think whirlpool to make sure it's sanitary and gets well mixed, but was curious.

[Natrat]

adding

As per the paper in the above link, I'm adding it to the yeast while its still in the brink.

I use modified kegs for brinks (basically a corny lid welded into the side of a sankey keg) so what I've decided to do is haul a full brink into the lab, sanitize the outside of the keg and flame the connections, open the corny lid, add the oil, flame and close, and then swirl the keg a bit to incorporate the oil.

I'm going to do this in the morning, just after dough-in. The papers I've read suggest that it takes 2-6 hours for the oil uptake to occur...however, there has been no real research on that.

The bottom line is that I'm NOT adding oil to the wort...I'm adding it to the yeast, and by the time it hits my wort, it's no longer oil. Right?

I started my new strains this morning...growing 2 new slants off the same loupe. #1 will be my control strain, and #2 treated with olive oil. I'll be sending beer samples to a better equipped lab so that I can have the fancy graphs for my grand experiment. The only person not too excited is my compressed gas rep!

Now if only I could find a way to eliminate bulk CO2!!

Nat

[Stefan Kappel]

Where are you adding to the process? I would think whirlpool to make sure it's sanitary and gets well mixed, but was curious.

At Randers Bryghus we are just adding the olive oil to the whirlpool before knockout. Well we dont have to care about delicate cleaning of stone in the injector as it is removed from the pipes. The right amount of oxygen flow and for that matter having enough compressed oxygen in a tank.

I'm looking forward to hear more about the your results. We have no way of telling the difference as we are 100% oxygen free and it is most unlikely that we are reversing to traditional aeration.

Stefan Kappel
Randers Bryghus