HOMEBREW Digest #1823 Tue 05 September 1995

Digest #1822 Digest #1824


	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Rob Gardner, Digest Janitor


Contents:
  Looking for address ( ROBERT P LEDDEN)
  Hops will not infect beer ("Roger Deschner  ")
  zinc in wort, maybe not in beer (Rob Lauriston)
  CF Crud, Rajotte'sSierra Blanca ("Pat Babcock")
  Making starter using DME (Rolland Everitt)
  bottle labels (PatrickM50)
  Aventinus (A. J. deLange)

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 04 Sep 1995 10:35:36 EDT From: BMJL93A at prodigy.com ( ROBERT P LEDDEN) Subject: Looking for address I have been looking for the address of Sierra Nevada without much luck. I want to write them to express my concern about this years Bigfoot Barley Wine. IMHO this years batch has much more of an edge on the bitterness than last years. I read somewhere that they went to a high alpha hop for bittering and that is the cause for the sharpness in the flavor. Sooo if anyone could help me out with this it would be much appreciated. Just another concerned beer drinker, Bob Ledden BMJL93A at prodigy.com Caln, Pa Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 1995 10:09:01 CDT From: "Roger Deschner " <U52983 at UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU> Subject: Hops will not infect beer Andy Kligerman homebre973 at aol.com said: >Someone wondered about having cold wort flow thru a bed of hops to add >hop aroma/flavor. The main problem with this is that it would be >likely to infect the wort unless a very good yeast starter was used. Nope. Hops are a natural disinfectant, and have been used in beer through the ages as much to prevent infection as to add flavor. There are beers which are dry-hopped in the secondary fermenter. Watch out, though, if you find a grassy flavor unpleasant, because that can happen with uncooked hops. Hops away! The more the better. =============== "Civilization was CAUSED by beer." ===================== Roger Deschner University of Illinois at Chicago rogerd at uic.edu Aliases: u52983 at uicvm.uic.edu U52983 at UICVM.BITNET R.Deschner at uic.edu Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 95 08:23:20 -0700 From: robtrish at noif.ncp.bc.ca (Rob Lauriston) Subject: zinc in wort, maybe not in beer In # 1821, Steven Lichtenberg <steve at inet.ttgva.com> wrote: >In todays (Friday) issue DONBREW recommended using galvanized fittings instead of brass for attaching drain valved to the kettle. ... DON"T DO IT. The zinc that is used to coat the steel when placed in an acid environment(beer) will leach out. In surprisingly small quantities, this is lethal. There are several deaths each year from community picnics etc. where people will mix lemonade in a galvanized trash can for large quanities of people. Yes, but yeast nutrition requires a small amount of zinc. This is usually provided by the malt, but some strains have a higher zinc requirement. In one brewery where I worked, when a brew was going to be fermented by one particular yeast the brewery used, a 'bracelet' of pieces of copper and zinc was hung in the kettle. This brewery was supervised by an extremely educated, knowledgeable and experienced brewmaster and so I have complete confidence that this was a sound practice. I would conclude that galvanized fittings aren't a problem as far as consuming zinc. There might be a problem with the galvanized coating corroding away and exposing the metal underneath. I sense John Palmer's post zipping through the ether at this instant... With trash can lemonade, the zinc goes into solution and is consumed directly. Perhaps you shouldn't sample the unfermented wort if using galvanized parts. The questions remain whether the yeast absorbs all or only most of the zinc, whether there are other mechanisms of zinc removal during processing, such as adsorption to trub -- I don't know. Also, at one point will the zinc become toxic to the yeast ? At the other extreme, when Kirk Harralson <kwh at roadnet.ups.com> asked, " If galvanized parts are OK, why not use a galvanized tub for a boiler? ", the answer is probably that the much larger amount of zinc leached out of the pot will adversely affect the beer and its consumer, the yeast AND the pot. I'd be interested in hearing comments on the effects of the galvanized pipes used in older homes. Rob Lauriston, The Low Overhead Brewery <robtrish at noif.ncp.bc.ca> Vernon, B. C. "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak up and remove all doubt" -- a chance I have to take Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 1995 11:20:14 +0500 From: "Pat Babcock" <pbabcock at oeonline.com> Subject: CF Crud, Rajotte'sSierra Blanca Sorry for the late response, but it's been a busy weekend! Now: on to business! In HOMEBREW Digest #1821, Keith Royster sez, commenting on CF chiller cleanliness: > This troubled me, as I have been using a CF chiller and have been > "cleaning" it this same way, as I beleive most brewers do. If the > break material clings to the outside of an immersion chiller with > such tenacity that it requires scrubbing to remove, then why should > we beleive that a good blast of water through a CF chiller will > adequately clean it out? This layer of gook that may be building up > inside is a great hiding place (and grazing field) for all sorts of > nasties. It will also protect them to some degree from the effects > of any sanitizing solutions you may siphon through before you use > your CF chiller the next time. Don't give up that CF chiller yet, Keith! Beliefs aside, the dynamics involved in break formation between immersion and CF chillers are very different. Consider these tidbits: o The wort is in constant motion within the CF chiller; it is fairly static around the immersion chiller. The break forming in the moving stream has less of a chance to cling to the tube walls. o The break formation in a CF chiller seems to be of smaller particles. I believe this is because it isn't being allowed to coalesce in the moving stream as it does in the fairly static wort around an immersion chiller. The smaller particle seem, again, less likely to cling to the tubing walls. Having had similar concerns in the past, I've 'blown' bits of cloth through the inner tube using pressurized water to see if anything would be dislodged. During those experiments, I've never seen anything come out with the cloth that didn't go in with it. Admittedly, this was done long ago with only a few batched run through the chiller, but I really don't expect anything different if I repeat it today. In fact, I am now saving this message, and am going out in the yard to retest my hypothesis! Will be back in a few... OK. Here's the scoop. One year and God only knows how many batches later (log book sez 23, but I didn't log all my batches), the strips come out clean. To be sure, I ended up putting a too-large piece of white denim in the input and had a rather tense few minutes where it looked like I'd plugged this puppy for good. Ended up as a cloth and water bazooka. Pretty cool! It, too, came out white and clean. No Count Crudula lurking inside that chiller, for all practical purposes. I suppose a 25' fiber-optic lens-and-light combo would be the next logical step, but not being a giraffe surgeon or horribly wealthy - I ain't got one... Last, but not least: Sanitation. If you sanitize by circulating boiling water or wort without chill water, you're doing an admirable job of zapping any nasties wherever they may be hiding: the copper normally heats to the temperature of its contents. Being inside of the outer tube without the chill water insulates the copper from heat loss and the copper does what it does best: conduct heat. Pretty soon, that whole copper tube is at the temperature of the boiling whatever flowing through it. Nowhere to run; nowhere to hide! The nasties are, frankly, toast! Of course, we could argue that Tyndalisation is required, but I'm not quite that anal abbout it, and I really don't believe there is anything left behind inside the tube to support spores. If my arguments are not convincing, and anyone still feels it necessary to scrap their CF chiller, e-mail me. I'll give you my address so that I might dispose of it for you ;-) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Now, for my question: I just finished up Rajotte's Belgian Ale book of the classic beer styles series. (Yes, his writing style is tough to follow! During his description of "Brewing with a Belgian Brewmaster", I found it difficult to tell who was who and what was what. He kept switching from third to first person perspective w/o warning! Yaaagggghhhh!) Anyway, in reviewing his Sierra Blanca recipe, I noticed that the all-grain and extract recipes are different. I mean different beers entirely. The all-grain recipes call for pale malt and crystal malt, while the extract recipe calls for pale malt syrup, and wheat malt syrup. What's wrong with this picture? Any one know which way to turn? Should it be pale mat and _wheat_ malt? His discussion following the recipe suggests a wheat beer (note the comment on acidity in the aftertaste). Should I "sacrifice" myself and brew it both ways? :-) See ya! Patrick (Pat) G. Babcock | "Drink all you want - I'll brew more!" President, Brew-Master | and Chief Taste-Tester | "Let a good beer be the exclamation point Drinkur Purdee pico Brewery | at the end of your day as every sentence pbabcock at oeonline.com | requires proper punctuation." -PGB SYSOP on The HomeBrew University - Motor City Campus BBS (313)397-9758 Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 1995 17:47:57 -0400 From: af509 at osfn.rhilinet.gov (Rolland Everitt) Subject: Making starter using DME I have been wanting to step up my yeast with a starter, and have been looking at recipes for preparing them. All the instructions I have found use either liquid malt extract or whole grain to make the starter wort. I use whole grain for most of my brews, but wanted the convenience of using dried malt extract for the starter bottle. I want to use a starter that has about the same gravity as my main batch (before pitching) so it doesn't throw off calculations of alcohol content, attenuation, etc. I don't seem to have any convenient source of information that tells me how much DME to add to a small quantity of water to get a desired gravity, so I decided to collect some experimental data. I heated one pint of water and added dried malt extract in increments of ten grams, measuring the temperature and gravity after each addition. I don't know what brand of DME this is. My local supplier bags it and sells it as "Dutch Amber". After each addition of DME was dissolved, I took a sample and cooled it in an ice/water bath before measuring gravity and temperature. The results appear in the following table DME Observed Temp. Temp. Apparent (grams) S.G.(+1) (Cent.) Corr. S.G.(+1) 10 0.009 39 0.006 0.015 20 0.018 33 0.004 0.022 30 0.028 29 0.003 0.031 40 0.035 28 0.003 0.038 50 0.040 31 0.004 0.044 60 0.048 32 0.004 0.052 70 0.054 34 0.004 0.058 80 0.062 34 0.004 0.066 90 0.068 33 0.004 0.072 100 0.078 34 0.004 0.082 Each sample was returned to the pot before adding the next dose of DME. A plot of Apparent gravity vs. grams of DME gives a fairly straight line. I used linear regression to fit a straight line to the data and got a good fit. The results were as follows: Regression Output: Constant 0.008133 Std Err of Y Est 0.000962 R Squared 0.998294 No. of Observations 10 Degrees of Freedom 8 X Coefficient(s) 0.000724 Std Err of Coef. 0.000010 This model says: S.G.(at 60F) = .0007 * (grams DME/pints H2O) + 1.008 The model is clearly imperfect, since it predicts that plain water has a S.G. of 1.008, but it is accurate enough for my needs. I would not use it for very high or very low gravities, but it should be reasonably accurate for the "normal" range of gravity for wort. I am confident that the following tolerances apply to my measurements: weight +/- .1 gram temperature +/- 1 degree centigrade Specific gravity +/- .004 I took my temperature corrections from Papazian (Joy...P.212). The greatest error came in taking the gravity readings. There is usually a persistent head on top of the sample in the hydrometer jar. I generally look through the liquid below the surface to take the reading for this reason. At higher concentrations of DME, this is difficult owing to the murkiness of the solution. Using the regression model and solving for weight, you get: Grams DME = pints H20 * ((desired S.G. - 1.008)/.0007) With this formula it is easy to construct a table showing what weight of DME to add to a given volume of water to get a desired gravity: Desired Pints of Water Gravity 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 1.025 24.3 30.4 36.4 42.5 48.6 1.030 31.4 39.3 47.1 55.0 62.9 1.035 38.6 48.2 57.9 67.5 77.1 1.040 45.7 57.1 68.6 80.0 91.4 1.045 52.9 66.1 79.3 92.5 105.7 1.050 60.0 75.0 90.0 105.0 120.0 1.055 67.1 83.9 100.7 117.5 134.3 1.060 74.3 92.9 111.4 130.0 148.6 1.065 81.4 101.8 122.1 142.5 162.9 1.070 88.6 110.7 132.9 155.0 177.1 1.075 95.7 119.6 143.6 167.5 191.4 1.080 102.9 128.6 154.3 180.0 205.7 1.085 110.0 137.5 165.0 192.5 220.0 1.090 117.1 146.4 175.7 205.0 234.3 1.095 124.3 155.4 186.4 217.5 248.6 1.100 131.4 164.3 197.1 230.0 262.9 This table could be used for larger volumes of wort by applying some conversion factors: 8 pints = 1 gallon (U.S.) 40 pints = 5 gallons (U.S.) 28.35 grams = 1 ounce (Avoir.) 453.6 grams = 1 pound I don't know how useful this information will be to anyone else. Please recall that I am adding a known weight of DME to a known volume of water, not dissolving it and bringing up the volume to a desired level. Note also that use of another type of DME may yield different results. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who cares to comment. Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 1995 18:00:10 -0400 From: PatrickM50 at aol.com Subject: bottle labels Vic Hugo says: >What is the best way to lable bottles? This may seem shallow but I really hate to soak...soak...scrub....etc for hours trying to get the commercial labels off of my growing collection. Are there any "easy-off" labels out there? Should I just go with some of the larger mailing type labels.< Try just using a permanent fine tip marker to write on the bottle caps instead. Then the "labels" are automatically removed when you open a beer. If you really must use your computer, get some sheets of Avery (or compatible) .75" round labels and, using any label program that includes the Avery template, use a small font to print out sheets of labels at a time. Let me know if you need more details and I'll look up the appropriate Avery info when I get back to work. Pat Maloney (patrickm50 at aol.com) Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 1995 20:13:12 -0500 From: ajdel at interramp.com (A. J. deLange) Subject: Aventinus Just picked up a bottle of Aventinus "Wheat Dopplebock Ale" at the newly opened Total Beverage (a mile from the house !!!!) and vaguely remember some discussion of it (can't remember whether it was here or in RCB) because, as they make quite plain on the label, they condition with the same yeast with which they ferment. Based on this I put some of the sediment under the 'scope and thought the group might be interested in what I saw. First, the vast majority of the yeast was viable! There is no date stamp on the label so I have no idea how old the sample bottle was. You all know that Weizenbier "crashes" suddenly with age and this bottle was not as fresh as what I remember from Munich, nevertheless the yeast were in good shape (even if vacuoles were prominent). Second, based on gross morphology, there were at least two strains of yeast present. Third, there were a large number of short rods. If I saw that many in one of my pitching cultures I would probably abort the brew but the beer had no taste or aroma components that would suggest infection. A.J. deLange Numquam in dubio, saepe in errore! ajdel at interramp.com Return to table of contents
End of HOMEBREW Digest #1823, 09/05/95