HOMEBREW Digest #3750 Tue 02 October 2001


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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  re: brezel recipe/Duck(Ente )anyone ? ("Stephen Alexander")
  Teaberries in my beer? (gsferg)
  Stuck fermentation (David Passaretti)
  Re: thermal mass for picnic cooler ("Dennis Collins")
  RE: long mash times/dry beer (Paul Shick)
  Re: Browning fresh hops? ("Dave & Joan King")
  BUdvar malt - re: Beta Glucans in Malt ("Stephen Alexander")
  Gravity of Apple Cider (Robert.D.Dittmar)
  Superiority of 50 pt British system for BJCP scoring ("Tracy P. Hamilton")
  Mash and Kettle pH questions (Mike.Szwaya)
  Re-brewing for comps (Mike Bardallis)
  Budvar vs. Czechvar ("Eric R. Theiner")
  KROC World Brewers Forum (The Brews Traveler)

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 07:18:11 -0400 From: "Stephen Alexander" <steve-alexander at ieee.org> Subject: re: brezel recipe/Duck(Ente )anyone ? Bob Sheck writes ... >Try http://www.foodtv.com/recipes/re-r1/1,6281,,FF.html Bob, if you want a *German* recipe on the web you need to surf the *.de sites. Try http://kochbuch.unix-ag.uni-kl.de You need a little German or a version of babelfish to get thru it. 13 brezel recipes in my first search, tho' I don't know if I'm ready for bacon pretzels yet. I've used some of the bread recipes there over the part several years with good results. -S Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 07:22:33 -0400 From: gsferg at clary.gwi.net Subject: Teaberries in my beer? >Greetings, > Yesterday I was working out on a mountain top and ran across a patch of >teaberries. I managed along with some help to pick a full sandwich bag of >them. I would like to use these in a teaberry brew and was wondering if >anybody else out there had any experience with them they could share with >me. I am not even sure if I should add them to my mash, (I think they would >just float to the top) the boil, or maybe even my secondary fermentor. >Also, any recipes for an ale that would accentuate the teaberry flavor would >be much appreciated. Teaberries AKA Wintergreen berries (or extract) are a common ingredient in Root Beer. I see no reason why you couldn't use them in an ale recipe though I've never heard of it being done. Good reason to try it. Let us know how it turns out. George- - -- George S. Fergusson <gsferg at clary.gwi.net> Oracle DBA, Programmer, Humorist PGP Key: http://clary.gwi.net/gsferg/gsferg at clary.asc - -------------- I am a man, I can change, if I have to, I guess. Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 05:28:09 -0700 (PDT) From: David Passaretti <dpassaretti at yahoo.com> Subject: Stuck fermentation I recently brewed an American style pale ale (all grain) with an OG of 1.045. A 500cc White Labs Burton Ale yeast starter was pitched into 12 gallons of well aerated wort at about 78F. The fermentation was rip roaring in about 3 hours. After 3 days it stopped at 1.018. The resultant beer is now very sweet. I have let it sit for several weeks (after racking to a secondary) and the gravity has not budged. Was the fermentatiopn temp to high? What now? The beer now is likley oxygen free, correct? Should I reaerate and pitch more yeast, repitch without o2,...? Thanks David Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 20:30:26 -0400 From: "Dennis Collins" <dcollins at drain-all.com> Subject: Re: thermal mass for picnic cooler I thought I would throw in my two cents on this. When I got the ProMash program, I had no clue what to use for the thermal mass variable, but I knew if I preheated the cooler, it the variable would be zero. At the time I was brewing with a friend who actually had running hot tap water on a faucet outside where we brewed, so I just filled up my cooler with the hot tap water and let it sit for 15 minutes or so to preheat, then dumped out the water and mashed as usual. The mash temp predicted from ProMash with a thermal mass of zero was always right on. Now that I'm brewing at home, I have no such luxury of running hot water outside, so I was back to trying to figure out that pesky thermal mass variable. However, I am using a RIMS type system. So what I did was recirculate just my mash water through the heater (or heat exchanger in my case) at the temperature that ProMash gave using a thermal mass of zero. After about 10-15 minutes of recirculation, the cooler was preheated with the exact temperature water needed. Then I just stop the recirculation, pour the grain in and mash as usual. So far, the temps have come out dead on. Those of you out there with recirculating systems might want to consider this. Dennis Collins Knoxville, TN Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 08:43:51 -0500 From: Paul Shick <shick at jcu.edu> Subject: RE: long mash times/dry beer Hi all, Troy Hager writes in about his technique of mashing/sparging one day and boiling the next, commenting on they high attenuation he gets in his brews. Troy, I don't think it's the long mash time here, as much as it is the fact that you let the wort sit so long before bringing it to a boil. As you point out, the grain bed in most lautering systems rises only to the low 160s, so there's a lot of alpha amylase still active at that temperature. Leaving all of this in your wort overnight, still active, will chop up most of your dextrins into shorter chains. If you raise the temperature of the sweet wort shortly after runoff, I'll be you'll get beers with more body and less attenuation. Paul Shick Cleveland Hts, Oh Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 10:44:35 -0400 From: "Dave & Joan King" <dking3 at stny.rr.com> Subject: Re: Browning fresh hops? Badger, IMHO, the bag will not be helpful. Hops need to dry rather rapidly to maintain their freshness. The best I've found is a screen suspended horizontally from strings, raised up into the rafters of my garage. After 1 or 2 sunny days, the heat and low humidity does a nice job on them. I've used a clothes drier on low heat, but I'm afraid of cooking them. Dave King (BIER) Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 11:13:50 -0400 From: "Stephen Alexander" <steve-alexander at ieee.org> Subject: BUdvar malt - re: Beta Glucans in Malt Nathan Kanous writes ... >[...] the level of beta glucans in finished malt was controlled >almost entirely by the maltster. The raw grain have variable amounts of beta-glucan gums but Nathan is right - the maltster is largely in control of the amount of undegraded glucans in the finished malt. One surprise is that the degradation of beta-glucans in the malting process is usually complete before full modification occurs, but St.Pat's malt is pretty well modified at 38.33 Kolbach yet has higher BG levels. > To be honest I'm surprised that the folks at Miller don't know >this already. I might have missed the reference, but it should be no surprise to anyone that lesser modification of malt results in higher undegraded BG levels. Perhaps Miller was surprised at the extent of this effect for this malt given the relatively high Kolbach. The BG degradation can be manipulated by the malting procedure and given a low-kilned malt the brewer can further degrade BG in a 50C mash rest. I'd like to point out that the moderate increase in viscosity that sends commercial brewers into hissy-fits may give little or no difficulty to an HB lauter. If you've mashed with significant amounts of unmalted barley or rye you already know the drill. Keep some rice hulls on hand just in case but I wouldn't expect to need them in my system using this malt even w/o a 50C rest - YMMV. - -- The Hartong number listed for this malt (35 measured) makes no sense to me. I suspect the number might have been 3.5 which would indicate modest undermodification by extract measure. Lynn - can you check this ? BTW - M&BS (circa 1973) lists 30-33 SNR(Kolbach) as undermodified and 37-40 as overmodifed. St.Pats at 35-38(measured 38.33 by Miller) is not undermodified by historical standards by nitrogen measure. OTOH most pale malts today register north of 40%SNR and several into the mid 40's. Standards seem to have changed even for the Czechs. === OK - you guys who've tried St.Pats Budvar malt - what do you think ? Flavor, viscosity, difficulty sparging. What's the real story ? -S Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 10:16:46 -0500 From: Robert.D.Dittmar at stls.frb.org Subject: Gravity of Apple Cider Does anyone know off-hand the typical gravity of unfermented apple cider. I (of course) can take the gravity myself when I buy a gallon from the store, but I was planning to use a gallon of it in a brew and I'm trying to plan ahead. As I said, just a ballpark number would be fine. I just want to plan for enough starting gravity from other fermentables to hit my target O.G. Thanks, Rob Dittmar St. Louis, MO Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 11:11:47 -0500 From: "Tracy P. Hamilton" <chem013 at uabdpo.dpo.uab.edu> Subject: Superiority of 50 pt British system for BJCP scoring It ha'pence to be because there is a lot of "gimmes", swillings and fartings from the judges as they pound down the brews until it is time to quid, and only bottles with crowns are allowed. Tracy P. Hamilton Birmingham Brewmasters Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 11:07:24 -0700 From: Mike.Szwaya at co.clark.wa.us Subject: Mash and Kettle pH questions Good morning. I have a couple of questions about maintaining mash and kettle pH. I decoction mashed a Dunkel yesterday using half undermodified malt and half Munich. Right after the strike, I measured pH at 5.2. I proceeded with the rest of the mash (acid rest at 98F, protein at 127, sacch. at 145-149, and dextrin/mash out at 170.). I pulled the 2 decoctions at the protein and sacch. rests and boiled 20 min. each time. To make the Dunkel, I added 2% carafa at the 30 min. mashout rest. By the end of the mash, the pH dropped to 4.9. I'm attributing the large drop to the carafa added at the end. I sparged over 60 min. and stopped runnings at 1.010 & 5.2 pH. Portland tap water is considered extremely soft and unless I'm brewing something with a very distinctive mineral profile, I leave it alone. For the Dunkel, I didn't do anything. Sparge water I typically adjust to pH 6 or so with lactic acid. Kettle wort measurements were 1.050 & 4.9 pH. Literature I've seen recommends a kettle pH between 5.1 and 5.5. At the least, I wanted to raise the pH up to the lower end of that range so I added about 1/8 tsp. chalk to 18 gal. No change. Added another 1/8th tsp. Still no change. Added 1/4 tsp. Again, no change in kettle wort pH. After this point, I left it alone. By knockout, I yielded 15 gal. of 1.059 wort and a pH of 4.7-4.8. My questions are this: - What else could (or should) I have done for pH management? More chalk? Left it alone? - What is the useful life of a sealed pH electrode that's used in the brewing environment (assuming it's stored in pH electrolyte solution)? - What sort of effects on the finished beer can I expect from what happened? Most literature warns of too high a pH, but what happens when it's too low? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mike Szwaya Portland, OR Email: Mike.Szwaya at co.clark.wa.us Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 15:21:33 -0400 From: Mike Bardallis <dbgrowler at provide.net> Subject: Re-brewing for comps Years back, I seem to recall seeing or interpreting that re-brewing was not permitted in the NHC. That is not the case now, nor for the last few years at least. I actually discussed this with Paul G. a couple of years ago, in the context of the problem of getting a bitter or mild to the second round in good condition, and he told me that there was no prohibition on re-brewing. As to fairness, I don't buy that argument. Everyone is permitted to; it's the brewer's decision; another thing to consider along with packaging, priming rate, etc. etc. Mike Bardallis, brewing near the big tire in Allen Park, MI Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 17:18:17 -0400 From: "Eric R. Theiner" <logic at skantech.com> Subject: Budvar vs. Czechvar I had Budvar in Austria and Munich, so maybe it wasn't as fresh as it could be... But there is a slight difference between the product there (remembered) and what I'm drinking here (perceived). It's in the crispness of the beer. I wish I could be more exact than that. It could reflect a low level of oxidation from the long trip between there and here. What do the rest of ya'll say? Rick Theiner Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 18:31:19 -0600 From: The Brews Traveler <BrewsTraveler at adamsco-inc.com> Subject: KROC World Brewers Forum I want to thank everyone that attending the KROC World Brewers Forum last Thursday evening making a huge success. Hopefully everyone that attended had a great time and we did raise a good deal of money for the American Red Cross in the process. Here is a brief description of the evening (in case you blew it and didn't make it): * Chris White presented an outstanding technical discussion on yeast. * Mark Dorber gave a very humorous presentation on the cask conditioning process. * Fred Eckhardt enumerated his perfect solution to fighting (and winning) terrorism. * James McCrorie awarded KROC in a show of his appreciation. * John Adams referred to James McCrorie as an Englishman. * 135 individuals from all around the globe, led by Fred Eckhardt, sang America the Beautiful. * We raised $835 for the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. Thank you everyone! - -- John "The Brews Traveler" Adams KROC World Brewers Forum Director http://www.adamsco-inc.com/BrewsTraveler Return to table of contents
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