[colug-432] The smell, the smell! (Re: Looking for info on Columbus)

[Jeff Frontz]

Seeing as how the mash is where the boiling wort came from, I'm not
sure why your observations would conflict.  I know there've been
stories describing the odor's origin in the Dispatch at the time when
it first started to become amazingly pronounced -- in the
mid/late-70s?  (if only the Dispatch online archives went back that
far).  The tremendous amounts of air required to dry the spent mash
made it cost-prohibitive (or, rather, eliminated the profit incentive
to actually do the drying) to do any sort of odor abatement -- better
just to encourage the urban legend that it's the smell of the beer
being made (instead of the waste stream being made profitable).

Jeff



On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Robert Grimm <robertgrimm at gmail.com> wrote:
> That doesn't sound right. The smell is nearly identical to what I get during
> the boil stage when I'm brewing my own beer. I always assumed they were
> boiling wort when I can smell it.
>
> ---
> Robert Grimm
> 614-212-4625
> http://www.datablitz.net
> http://www.grimmphotography.com
>
> On Mar 1, 2011 12:44 PM, "Jeff Frontz" <jeff.frontz at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Unless they've dramatically changed their production methodology, the
>> smell from the Bud plant is actually from drying the "spent mash"
>> (whatever that gunk is that's left once they decant the wort). Once
>> it's sufficiently dry, they ship it off to feed mills to turn into
>> fake fodder. This used to really annoy the folks who found out about
>> it-- we'd been thinking that we had to tolerate the smell in order to
>> get the beer produced, but it was really the brewery seeking to make
>> more money by selling their waste stream. That this was optional and
>> that AB didn't do much to stem the reek didn't play well with the
>> locals (especially those who have smell-induced migraines).
>>
>> I've noticed that the smell has changed quite a bit in the last 30 or
>> so years. Not sure if that's because they changed their mash or went
>> to a different process or that my sense of smell has deteriorated.
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 8:53 AM, Jim Wildman <jim at rossberry.com> wrote:
>>> The beer plant on the north that blankets the area with the smell of
>>> fermentation on Sunday evening....
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